Strobe Ineptitude

I got up pretty early today. In fact, I forced myself to sleep in until 4:30am at least.  Then I made my way down to the dining room to work on photos/list/blog and to watch the sunrise.  It is really calm out there.  I am super excited for four amazing dives today.

Mike gave a talk this morning about many of the nudis we are seeing here.

He made a reference to a cookie jar… and crap, I won an awesome cookie jar on eBay and never paid for it!  It’s this shark cookie jar that plays the Jaws theme when you open it and go to get a cookie.  Hilarious!

Gladys and Mike joined our boat for the first dive.  She continues to be a food junkie.  She brought this awesome candy from China for after the dive that tasted like the middle of a butterfingers bar.

The guy Mike forgot to pick up at the airport, Rob, joined our boat for the second dive.  He is stationed in Okinawa and grew up in Ohio.  He’s a critter photographer but not really a nudi fanatic.

Dave gave a presentation about geology and why this area is so special to the animal kingdom but since Pirjo and I had already heard it last year, we just worked on our photos and species list and turned it into Jim by 2pm.  We were able to write in a few new nudis to Jim’s list.

Mike came on the afternoon/evening dives with us and he gave us a mini-lecture/reminder on the boat about shutter speed/f-stop/strobes.  I hate all that technical detail, but I did a pretty good job answering his pop quiz about what the different components do.  He recommended some settings for me… so I tried them out underwater and they SUCKED.  He swam over to me and asked (underwater) if they were working out and I gave him a huge thumbs down.  Then he messed with things a little more for me… and it seemed to be better, but I’m still a little baffled.  Luckily I’m able to mess with things enough that I can get a decent shot when I want to.  It’s all hocus-pocus I swear!

I also wore my new wetsuit (finally) on this dive.  I’ve taken it on a couple of dive trips already without using it and it is finally time to bite the bullet to break it in.  The wetsuit was soooo buoyant that I put on an extra EIGHT pounds!!!!  Considering the situation I did OK, but at the end of the dive I was low on air and tried to do a safety stop… but I for the life of me couldn’t stay at 15 feet.  I just floated right up.  Ugh.  The night dive was better and I was able to do my safety stop.  My goal is to always have a dry wetsuit to put on, so I’d like to wear my old one in the mornings and then switch to my new one for the afternoon/evening.  We’ll see how that goes (it’s going to be a lot of switching weights).

It’s pretty warm so I’m not wearing a hood.  Last night my hair was such a mess.  Even though I over conditioned it and brushed it in the shower I swear that I pulled half of it out of my head.

Jim gave me a preview copy of his iBook.  It’s much better than the PDF.  It has several pictures per species and you can search on any part of the nudi name you can remember.  Then you can copy the species name and paste it to your dive log/spreadsheet.

Ghost shrimp keep photo bombing my nudibranch photos.  I’d like to be annoyed but they are hilarious. 

Also found a beautiful red flatworm with rhinophores.  Just so confusing!!!  But I guess there is an exception to every rule!

Here's what we saw today:

26 - Goniobranchus albonares

27 - Flabellina bilas

28 - Mexichromis multituberculata

29 - Ceratosoma tenue

30 - Goniobranchus hintuanensis

31 - Doto sp. 2

32 - Aegires sp. 7

33 - Oxynoe sp. 5

34 - Colpodaspis thompsoni

35 - Facelinid sp. 2

36 - Stiliger sp. E

37 - Pteraeolidia semperi

38 - Eubranchus sp. 22

39 - Okenia brunneomaculata

40 - Mexichromis trilineata

41 - Phyllodesmium magnum

42 - Hypselodoris whitei

43 - Melibe viridis

44 - Costasiella kuroshimae

45 - Chelidonura inornata

46 - Eubranchus sp. 25

47 -Lomanotus sp. A

48 - Tenellia lugubris

49 - Doto sp. 6

We're gonna need a vacation from this vacation!

We got picked up in the morning around 8am.  It was so great to see Pirjo and Francis again.  The van ride was much longer than I remember but it was fun to take in the sights of the street life in the Philippines as we drove by.

Mike, Gladys, Dave and Jim greeted us at the reception desk.

Jim’s wife Leslie stopped diving, so she didn’t make the trip.  Pirjo and I are going to miss her!  She is fun to have around.

I got assigned my own room.  It is really very nice with a cool view.  

We got all of our gear set up and everything of mine seems to be in working order.  Hooray!

We had a welcome presentation and I got to wear my nudi sarong and give the extra one I bought to Pirjot.  She loved it and immediately wore it as a scarf.  The French!

Dave loved the gavel and said that he needed a picture to put on Facebook!

I got put on a boat with just Francis and Pirjot with Glenn as our guide.  How awesome is that?

We have to turn in our list of nudis found each day by 2pm.  I put Pirjo in charge of the list because I get too busy with my log, pictures and IDs.  She really just focuses on IDs while she’s on her trip.  Then when she gets back she takes her time going through the pictures and photo editing.  I try to keep up on the trip or I feel like they will never get done.

One of the guests never got picked up at the airport.  Doh!  He was a last minute add and Mike totally forgot to tell the van drivers to go get him.

This one guy loved the sarongs so much he wanted to get one for his wife.  So I turned him on to Red Bubble to get one of his own.  Then I wore a nudi dress to dinner and he wanted to know if he could buy one of those too.  I had to educate him on what A-line dresses were.  J

Maybe I need to ask Red Bubble for a royalty with all these people I refer to them!

The dives were very good, but I just felt off.  On my first dive, my mask was fogging up so bad – even AFTER I did the toothpaste trick and using the miracle of shark spit.  I seem to have gotten it figured out for the second dive though.  Also, as usual my wetsuit felt off.  I think I need to do the whole plastic bag over the foot thing.  But the nice thing is that here we only put our wetsuits on twice a day.  We stay in them for two dives.

I feel like I can’t “see” what I’m doing underwater anymore.  I’m not sure what it is.  Maybe my lack of patience or my eyesight?  I realize that was only dive two but I need to slow it down and really work on getting the shot.

The water is very warm.  It seems much warmer than last year but that’s probably because we are here almost two months later.

We stayed up late after dinner and worked on our photos.  It is so fun looking at my photos afterward and discovering even more!  This is my happy place among these happy people.  I slept pretty well….

Here is the list of Day 1 Nudibranchs (from two afternoon dives):

1 - Doriprismatica atromarginata

2 - Favorinus tsuruganus

Two together eating the eggs of a sea rose… and if you look closely, there is another one at the bottom.

3 - Favorinus mirabilis

4 - Phyllidia picta

5 - Chromodoris annae

6 - Hypselodoris bullockii

7 - Goniobranchus fidelis

8 - Halgerda batangas

9 - Phyllidiella pustulosa

10 - Hypselodoris tryoni

11 - Nembrotha chamberlaini

12 - Flabellina bicolor

13 - Miamira alleni

14 - Goniobranchus geometricus

15 - Caloria indica

Ha, yes it's pretty much the same picture... there's a second nudibranch in there!

16 - Goniobranchus reticulatus

17 - Phyllodesmium briareum

18 - Chromodoris magnifica

19 - Elysia marginata

20 - Flabellina rubrolineata

Nice butt shot.  I’m sure I’ll get many more chances to photograph this one.

21 - Nembrotha lineolata

22 - Asteronotus hepaticus

23 - Phyllodesmium tuberculatum

24 - Pleurobranchus forskalii

25 - Dendrodoris tuberculosa

Slugfest II (aka Anilao Nudibranch Festival)

Woo Hoo!  Slugfest II, here I come!

But wait, this year it’s called the Anilao Nudibranch Festival.  Boring.

I guess the Filipinos were showing up at Crystal Blue Dive Resort last year looking for a basketball tournament.  “Slug” means a basket in Filipino basketball terms.  Lame.

I am super excited!  I brought a gavel for Dave Behrens.  He is one of the only few Nudibranch Scientists who can discover and name new nudis.  We often get into big debates on these trips about the identification of the nudibranchs and then we have to go to NUDI COUNCIL.  This consists of each of us making our argument for the ID of the nudi and then Dave making a ruling on it.  I figured he needed an official gavel.  So I ordered some nudibranch magnets and I glued one on the gavel.  Now he can rule nudi council in style.  The nudi I glued on is one that he named: Goniobranchus dianae, after his (now) ex-wife.  Unfortunately, that was the only one available on the website that he discovered.

I also brought a nudibranch sarong for Pirjot from Red Bubble, just like mine.  We can have matching ones!

I know about 50% of the people who will be on this 10 day festival.

My flights were very easy over to Manila.  I got in late and only spent one night in the local hotel.

BowieBranchia

Wow.  Slugs, Rock Stars and Fashion!!!

https://bowiebranchia.tumblr.com/

Slugfest Results on Amazon

Wow, Jim Anderson compiled the results of Slugfest 2016 in an amazing book available on Amazon:

 https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/anilao-nudibranchs-2016/id1210743768?ls=1&mt=11