Nudi Gal: Are you a lumper or a splitter?

I slept in a little more than usual today.

I heard a story yesterday that Neville Coleman collected the first specimen of what we now know is Melibe colemani. Supposedly, he told Terry about it and only agreed to send the specimen if Terry promised to name it after him. Thus the name. That’s not how it is supposed to work. A new species is supposed to be named by the scientist after someone they choose.

I have a lot of things to put on the Frogfish. The Frogfish is this huge keychain with a thumb drive attached to it. Mike is very adamant that Froggie lives in the Frog House.

It has been decided that tomorrow 4/7 we will be going to Devils Point and Cemetery. Then on Wednesday 4/9 we are going to Ligpo Bavan Sanctuary and then Dive & Trek.

We were all reminded that when we are turning over stones to look for slugs, make sure to turn it back. The things that live under the rock like to live under not over it.

Terry announced that there will be another protected Marine Park here in the Philippines. That’s so great.

There were two amazing dives at Bethlehem in the morning. I was really happy. I found a terribly mutant Doriprismatica atromarginata and brought it over to Terry but he only glanced at it for a moment and wasn’t really interested. Oh well.

Terry gave a talk at 2pm about “What’s in a Name?”. Here are the highlights…

There is a genus of birds called Turdus. How unfortunate.

There is a species of sponge that scientists called Spongiforma squarepantsii for sSponge Bob Square Pants. Who said scientists don’t have a sense of humor?

Then he told a story about Hypselodoris kanga. Everyone kept finding a different species very similar but not kanga. They were for short, just calling it “not kanga”. Eventually they called it “roo” and that species officially became Hyselodoris roo.

Some other species name meanings:

• Dalanghita is Tagalog word for mandarin orange

• Hituanensis means bus stop… this species was found where the bus to Manila stopped

• Buntot means tail

• Kalawakan means galaxy

Terry posed the question: Are you a lumper or a splitter? In other words, as a scientist do you like to lump species together or split them apart?

He also mentioned that the Russian scientists have been messing with the taxonomy when it really doesn’t need to be messed with.

On the afternoon dive I snooted on a diopter shot. I needed some help from Glenn to point the snoot, but I did it!

Then when I downloaded my photos, I ran out of space on Lightroom Cloud so I had to upgrade my storage space. It costs me a little more each month but I would rather do that than have to manage to under 1TB. I also store a backup of my photos on a physical hard drive.

News flash, my other lens is a 25mm, not 30mm. Oh well, I tried it anyway on the Blackwater dive. I got a couple of halfway decent shots, but still not great. I need to buy a 30mm lens and port. It was only Mike, Georgina, this guy Tyler and me. I saw my first paper nautilus. And I got a bad shot of the transparent wonderpus.