Pearson College Marine Science

Courtney, our seafront coordinator, came upstairs from the dock just before lunch today (Wednesday 12 November) to say there were many hooded sea slugs (Melibe leonina) clustered around the boat lift. It has been extremely windy over the past 24 hours and it seems as though the nudibranchs have been blown into Pedder Bay by the strong wind.

At 3 pm today the slugs were still there, hanging out on the surface tension of the seawater. They’re not dead or floating, but crawling on the thin skin of the water’s surface.

When the surface tension breaks, Melibe must swim which is demonstrated in the video above.

How many Melibe can you find in the photo above?

Tags: hooded nudibranch, Melibe leonina, Pearson College dock

This entry was posted on November 12, 2014 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Events, Marine organisms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.