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· 22ND OF JULY, THE YEAR 2005

I CAN QUIT ANY TIME

No doubt signaling the terrible lurch from interest to obsession, this morning I made my third tidepooling trip in as many months, to the same beach, to the same couple pools on that beach. Unlike last time, however, I had company in the form of Tony from Williams and Shawn from The Snake Job. Despite the n00bs, however, I seemed to take an even more nudibranch-centered approach to searching than I had before, so Tony and Shawn may have missed out on some of the other squidgy things to be found. Or not, we actually did find most of the regulars. On to the show. To the right (well, if you’re viewing this on my site, at exactly the right window size, and your name is Ken-ichi) you’ll see Hilton’s aeolid (Phidiana hiltoni), a new one for me that Tony found. Note the sort of red mustachio, the red band on the rhinophores, and the black-cored cerata, all of which set it apart from the opalescent nudibranch, in addition to the fact that it doesn’t have blue/orange crown on it’s head or a blue line running down its back.

Doto amyra
Another new one! We found several of these little guys (that big white blob is my thumb, er, for scale. Right). D. amyra is supposed to have red cerata, but even though ours had sort of purple ones, they had none of the dorsal markings that characterize other members of the genus. Really amazing with the hand lens.

Spotted dorid (Triopha maculata)I finally found a spotted triopha big enough to photograph properly. Here you can pretty clearly see its spotting.

White-lined dirona (Dirona albolineata)I’ve been hoping to see this one ever since I started looking through the guides, and today I got lucky. Shawn said it looked like an angel. I guess I’d prefer the term ‘Vorlon,’ but yes, yes it does.

White-lined dirona (Dirona albolineata), again

Clown dorid (Triopha catalinae)Seen it before, but only once, and this one was especially big.

Tony also found some nudibranch eggs, another thing I’ve been hoping to see. They were probably eggs from the opalescent nudibranch, and they were damn cool. In the hand lens you could see all the tiny individual eggs. Other features included a damn big sculpin of unknown species, that weird mystery fish from last time that looks like a greenling, another cryptic kelp crab, regular kelp crabs, and two very strange and tiny crabs that I was unable to ID. One almost looked more like a spider than a crab, tiny, seemed to have a segmented carapace. The other was also tiny, hairy, and had a flattened abdomen, which makes me think it may have been a Hepalogaster sp., but who knows. I’m ashamed to say I gave them the short shrift due to sluggy excitement.