SPOTLIGHT ON: NUDIBRANCHIA Underwater photography.

Hi guys, a few days back I made my first post in this community, as a lover of underwater photography I wanted to show you some of my many shots but with a wealth of photos it was difficult to make a choice so I decided to concentrate on one type of fish the Scorpion fish. I enjoyed the concept of highlighting one variety at a time so this is how I plan to continue on here, if you missed the previous post I will leave a link at the bottom of the page.

For the last few years I have been living and diving in Moalboal a small town in the south of Cebu in the Philippines. All of today's photos come from that area and the subject of the day is Nudibrachia, these are brightly coloured sea slugs of varying sizes, mostly quite small but there are some large varieties.

The name Nudibranch in the singular originates from the Latin word "nudus" meaning naked and the ancient Greek "brankhia" meaning Gills, making Nudibrachia. The nude part of the name comes from the fact the this group of gastropod molluscs start life with a shell that is discarded in early life. Over 5000 plus varieties exist worldwide with a large concentration here in the tropics, So let take a look at a couple of the many. First up is one of the larger varieties (35 - 50cm long) know as the "Spanish dancer", it gets the name from how it looks when free swimming the frilly skirt around it's base extends out swirling in the water taking on the form of a Flamenco dancers dress.

Big is beautiful, Spanish dancer "Ole".

This one was so large it required a wide angle lens for the shot, usually when shooting Nudi's I use a 60mm macro lens, next up is something a little smaller at about 8cm long the Coi's magnificent sea slug, Chromodoris coi.

Truly magnificent.

As you can already see there are massive differences between them and with 5000 plus and many more to be discovered many oceanographers concentrated solely on these stunning critters. Many are spotted for the first time by amateur photographers and like finding a star in the nights sky they get to name them, that being the case with the previous "Coi's" and this one "Anna's" sea slug Chromodoris Annae.

Anna's lucky find.

Most nudibranchia have a common name but for this next shot I only know the Latin name despite searching the interweb so if anyone knows I would be happy to find out, Risbecia tryoni. Until such time as I can find the common name i'm going to take it on myself to call this one.........

Bryan the slug.

Ok guys that's me done for now, I for sure will do other features on nudibranchia as there are so many but for now you will have to survive on this teaser, as mentioned in my previous post I am a amateur photographer and always appreciate input from the pro's so don't be shy I would love to here your thoughts good and bad. As promised below the link to my Scorpion fish post, until next time stay safe folks!

(https://hive.blog/hive-194913/@biggypauls/scorpion-fish-in-the-spotlight)

[//]:# (!pinmapple 9.950802 lat 123.364231 long Panagsama beach moalboal d3scr)