Steinbeck Slug Sentences

This came across my feed today:

https://slugsite.us/bow2007/nudwk1442.htm

In the book Cannery Row, Steinbeck mentions nudibranchs twice in the first 27 pages.  So cool.  

I guess I need to read that book now.

Nudi Merch

Waterlust just launched some nudi wear!

https://waterlust.com/collections/nudibranchs-marine-ecosystem-biodiversity

Blackwater Cozumel Slugs

From 7/16/26 - 7/24/26, I went on a trip to Cozumel to improve my Blackwater Dive skills.  I wasn't necessarily looking for any nudis but I came across three that I will share here.

On the first day, I did two morning checkout dives to ensure that my gear was functioning.

We had a great dive guide named Maya who was from Canada.  She found two slugs for me:

Thuridilla picta

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/382677417

Elysia ornata

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/382677416

On the very last blackwater dive, I left my camera on the boat.  On purpose.  I had forgotten to change the camera battery.  I was ok with this and just went with my spotter light.  Of course, as soon as I got down, I saw it.  The Pelagic Nudibranch!!!  I was sad because I didn't have my camera but ecstatic that I got to see it.

Phylliroe bucephala

Here is a picture of a pelagic nudibranch from Linda Ianniello:

https://lindaiphotography.com/black-water-mollusks/

I will find it again someday.  In fact, I am already considering a couple of other Blackwater trips.

Wool Creature Lab

A friend tipped me off to this vendor who makes nudibranchs made of wool.  Pretty awesome!

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/03/wool-creature-lab-arina-bovenich-felted-wool-nudibranchs/

https://woolcreaturelab.com/

Slug Summary

Here is the photo we took on the boat:

Back: John, Anne-Li, Karolle, Karen, Jeremy, Kristen, Me, Caroline

Front: Jeanette, Vanessa, Roxy, Elisha, Gary

I left a good tip and nice note to the resort about JR:

It was Kristen's birthday today and even though we were leaving at 2pm, they presented her with a cake and a song at breakfast!

We had to be out of the rooms by 11am because there is another big group coming in today.

I packed and then spent a little over an hour at the pool.  It was HOT!

We all sat around the bar and had lunch and then cake before leaving.  

Gary's count overall was 171 species.  Here is the visual he put together.

I only saw 91 of them.  Here is my Trending Graph for this trip:

Here are the ones that were new to me in life.

1. The very special Elysia sp.
2. Elysia sp. 8
3. Gymnodoris sp. 23
4. Mariaglaja alexisi/Nakamigawaia sp. 1
5. Plakobranchus papua
6. Scyllaea fulva
7. Tenellia sp. 6
8. Trinchesiid sp. (cream with yellow and orange patch behind rhinophores)
9. Trinchesiid sp. (cream with purple oral tentacles and orange cerata with pink tips)

I did 34 dives bringing me to a lifetime total of 2571.  

Until next time!

Snootatunity

Five of our group are going on a day tour to see tarsiers, how salt is made and have a Filipino lunch on a floating restaurant.  I wasn't willing to give up a day of diving to do that.

John is so kind and lent me his floats to try out for the day.  He is leaving on an earlier flight tomorrow and isn't diving.  I am excited to see if I'm annoyed by them or if I like them.

The first dive was FABULOUS!!!  There were so many big juicy species!  Why we didn't do this dive until the last day is beyond me.  When I asked Larry, he said that it was because all Gary wanted was "Low and Slow".  That he didn't want to go deep. I'm pretty bummed.  I would have loved to dive this site way more often than just once on the last day.  Luckily, JR had me switch to Nitrox today so I could stay deep longer.

I was also dealing with new equipment (the floats) and a redistribution of weights (I put another 4 pounds on).  Here is my assessment of using the floats:

• It is easier on my wrist - I think the older I get, the less strength I am going to have in my right arm/fingers
• It is easier to focus - I don't have to support the weight of the housing anymore, just 
• Because the strobes are in a different position, there is less backscatter
• It is heavier on land
• There is more drag underwater, but if I put it either right in front of my body or just dangle it out to my right, it seems to be fine... in current, it might be another story
• The safety carabiner for my focus light should go on the right side as the left side will be used for snooting
• It is hard to turn the housing and shoot portrait, but that doesn't happen too often, and the benefits outweigh the annoyance
• It is an overall bigger setup and I am looking to get smaller, not bigger! 

Given this assessment, I think I am going to get two arms/floats and a port float.  I swear the underwater photography spend never ends!

As we were coming back up on the first dive, Caroline and JR were signaling to me about a camera.  I wondered what they meant.  Were they asking me how I liked the new float set up?  That's weird.  Why would they ask me that underwater during the dive?

Upon surfacing, I found out the story.  Caroline took her little camera down.  The only problem is that it is only rated to a certain depth, and we needed to go deeper to see some of the slugs.  So she left it on a ledge in the wall.  As we were coming back up, she couldn't find it.  That's what she and JR were signaling!!!

She surfaced without finding it and was so sad since she already had issues with two other cameras and purchased this one from Gary.  And she is headed to Romblon next.  I cannot imagine diving there without a camera.

It turns out that Larry found the camera on the wall... not knowing Caroline's plan and took it.  So yay!  She got her camera back.

I made up a new word: Snootatunity.  The perfect opportunity to snoot a subject.  Usually when a nudi is up on high, there is no current/backscatter and we are not in a rush.  Even more ideal if I have a dive guide willing to hold the snoot.

On the second dive, I had a snootatunity.  I shot a typically boring Phyllodesmium briareum and made it look sexy.

On the last dive of the day (and of the trip), Gary wanted to do just one really long dive.  I resigned.  We did a 120 minute dive at the Exploration Dive Site that has been dubbed "Nudi Central" after Gary's Facebook Group.  I think this site totally sucks and in my opinion, there was no reason to spend two hours on it.

During the dive I found a broken coconut and broke off a piece because it can be a nice natural background to photograph a species on.  I found a tiny little Goniobranchus coi that I carefully extracted and put on the coconut shell.  I asked the guide Jay to give it back to me and he agreed.  But after it got passed from person to person on that shell, it never made its way back to me.  Boo Hoo.  

After that last dive I was SO EXHAUSTED.  I cleaned up all my gear the best I could and then went back to my room to just hibernate for a bit.

This is the big party night, so I put on a nice dress and wore my glaucus atlanticus swatch and necklace to dinner.

Everyone was hanging out at the bar having drinks.  I bought John one to say thank you for lending me his floats for the day.  I spotted a Jenga game and fired one up with the dive guides.  It was a good game!  And it fell just before dinner so it was a perfect distraction.

The chef had prepared a special dinner buffet with a pig roast.

During dinner Gary was talking to Jamie, the resort manager and was insisting that the dive crew come to sit with us.  There were no chairs nor space to do so, but Gary was fired up about it.  Jamie insisted that Gary not talk to them.  This is a cultural thing and they don't want the waitstaff to wait on them as they are peers.  Gary went anyway.  Even after a stern warning not to.  

There was a live band playing and the resort staff put on a special dance and then sang a goodbye song to "leaving on a jet plane".  It was very sweet and there was some dancing with everyone but I needed to exit to get some alone time.

Species Wrap

83 - Aegires minor

84 - Aegires serenae

85 - Tambja morosa

86 - Goniobranchus leopardus

87 - Phyllidiopsis fissurata

88 - Chromodoris willani

89 - Philine orca

90 - Mariaglaja alexisi <- New in life for me 

Gary says this is Nakamigawaia sp. 1.

91 - Chelidonura varians

Special Elysia

I think John and I are the only two people uploading to the Magic Oceans slideshow.

We had our group shot taken on the boat.  I was worried that we would forget about it and not include some people who were leaving a little early.  I whispered in Gary's ear asking about when that might happen... and we did it right away there on the boat.  I'm doing my best to be a "Gary whisperer".

I have an idea for a Nudi Spelling Bee.  My idea is to have a few of the experts get shown a nudibranch and then they have to name it and spell it correctly.  Since the experts are across the globe, we could do it on Zoom and as a fundraiser for nudi research.  Terry Gosliner would moderate... and people could vote for which expert they think will win by donating to the cause.

I also really would love to do a nudi fashion show at some point.  People could show off all of their nudibranch themed merchandise.  I mentioned it here at Magic Oceans to the manager Jamie to see if we could set up a runway... and Gary squashed the idea faster than I could get it out of my mouth.  I get that this is his trip, but new ideas might be fun and interesting.

Gary very excited about a shell of a veliger sea butterfly/sea angel he found on the afternoon dive.  I didn't think sea angels were nudis, but upon further research, pages 386 and 387 in NSSI2 talk about Pteropods.  OMG, I continue to learn new things.  I wonder if he will count it even though he just found the shell.

On another note, he wants to count the land slug we keep seeing.  Really?

There was a very special nudi on the night dive.  I ran out of bottom time because on air and JR brought the critter up to me in a shell so I could shoot it.

I started calling Caroline "Tiny Eyes" because she will just sit at a certain place for like five minutes and find the tiniest things. Then I was singing it to the tune "Private Eye" by Hall and Oates.  

At dinner, Gary wanted to buy my Glaucus atlanticus necklace from me.  He wouldn't give up and was willing to pay $600 for it.  I told him no way because I got it from my sisters who found it on eBay.  I told him I'd send him that link so he could buy his own.

Then he misremembered who found the Phyllidiopsis shireenae.  I found it, not Elisha... but he kept insisting it was her.  I think he was a few beers in...

More More More:

77 - Trinchesiid sp. <- New in life for me 

Posted to Nudibase

From Marli Wakeling:

Trinchesiid; I have not found a match.

78 - Tenellia sibogae

79 - Phyllidiopsis shireenae

80 - Phyllidia willani

81 - Chromodoris strigata

82 - Elysia sp. <- New in life for me 

From Cory Pittman on Nudibase:

Your animal has extraordinarily long rhinophores with a single prominent branch of the digestive gland running to their tips (with only a few short side branches). In contrast, mercieri has rhinophores that are longer than most Elysia spp but not that long. And, they have many complex branches of the digestive gland. Also, the brick-red spots are random rather than fused behind the head. And, the papillae are more prominent. That's based on images from i-nat and NSSI2. So, I could be wrong (some Elysia spp are "hyper-variable") but I probably wouldn't lump them...

It's most likely undescribed. There's no closer match in NSSI2...

From Hilton Galvão Filho on Nudibase:

I’m obsessed with this. There are tons of undescribed Elysia species, but this one is particularly intriguing. In addition to its remarkably long rhinophores, with digestive gland branching inside, and the bright red neck mark, it has a very distinctive parapodial shape. The paired protuberance right before the tail is stunning. The parapodia also show a wing-like projection right in the middle. I wonder where this species would fall in a phylogenetic tree, given all these body modifications.

From Marli Wakeling on Nudibase:

Agreed, it is an interesting animal; when I looked for similar animals I found only one with these odd rhinophores, but the body shape is quite different: https://nudibranchdomain.org/wp-content/uploads/Cap-Elysia-sp32-790w.jpg

From Hilton Galvão Filho on Nudibase:

bora coletar :)

I had to look up what that meant.  It is a common Brazilian Portuguese slang phrase to initiate a group action.  It serves as an invitation to move, create, or act together, similar to "let's go" in English.

Facebook translates it to "let's collect", which make sense.

Here are some other views of it: