Nudi Gal: T-Shirt Fashion

Well, I went to sleep early last night, so I am up early this morning. There was another power blip and the internet went out again.

I talked to Harvey some more about our camera. He gave me some good hints and tricks and I implemented them. Also I learned that in order to get out of the magnify mode, just hold in the button for a couple of seconds.

Tomorrow we leave early on the boat (like 7am) and have to bring our ID and Certification cards. It is a long trip and we are doing three dives at Bavan Sanctuary and Dive & Trek.

I realized today that Mike should have a nudibranch thumb drive instead of a frogfish one. I think I have a good assignment for 2027.

In the morning review, everyone loved my cuddle puddle (Terry called them maggots!)… Mike suggested that maybe I flip it? Meh, I don’t think so.

I learned that Caloria have tentacular foot corners.

I completely forgot to change my batteries this morning so on the first dive, my focus light was not working. Ugh. So I switched it for my kraken underwater and that was OK.

At the surface interval, I opened the focus light up. I hate doing that on the boat but if I just put the batteries in backward, that is an easy fix. That was not the case. Then Mike, “The Godfather” stepped in. He makes me so nervous. He looked at it and then just like me concluded the batteries weren’t charged. But, Mario had batteries on the boat and lent them to me. Mike joked that I needed TWO MEN to save my dive. I hate that… I never want to rely on men, but I was grateful to have working focus light.

We decided that Francis’ nickname should be “Dr. Snoot” because all he does is snoot his subjects. I also like to call Pirjo “Photobomb” because she photobombed some selfies I did with slugs years ago.

I took pictures of all the nudibranch t-shirts at lunch.

I asked Terry how many species he has described. He said like 430ish. Wow. I asked him if he ever got tired of it. He said, no. That he is still really excited about it. The only challenge is when there is uninformed discussion on one of his scientific papers.

After lunch it was just Mike and I on a dive with Glen. He took down three of Terry’s collected specimens and I was able to shoot two of the three. I even had help snooting a diopter photo on one Siphopteron nakakatuwa.

I finally feel like I have graduated to a real photographer.

Blackwater was canceled because we didn’t have a boat. But we had a great night dive and spent a lot of time in the shallows. I feel like Glenn has really upped his spotting game in the last couple of days.

We finally have WiFi again. It was out for almost two days.

Just keep slugging…

138 - Goniobranchus albopunctatus