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My squishy (Scyllaea pelagica)
This was the highlight of my annual beach vacation, and I wanted to share it with you fine furry folk.
I caught this little fellow tumbling in the surf in the Outer Banks of North Carolina a couple weeks ago. My family has been going there every year for as long as I can remember and I’d never seen anything like this. Shi was thrashing about when I first caught hir but after shi calmed down it became clear shi was some sort of nudibranch. I took some pictures and released hir back where I found hir.
After I got home I did some research and identified my specimen as a Scyllaea pelagica, also known as the Sargassum nudibranch. They typically live in free-floating mats of seaweed in the ocean, where their shape and color acts as camouflage; this makes sense, because there was a lot of seaweed around that day. They are distributed worldwide and, despite me never having seen one before, are actually relatively common.
They eat small creatures that also live on the seaweed. It’s amazing to me to think that a clump of seaweed floating in the open ocean can support an entire ecosystem where tiny creatures live in fear of voracious behemoths that measure a monstrous two inches long.
I caught this little fellow tumbling in the surf in the Outer Banks of North Carolina a couple weeks ago. My family has been going there every year for as long as I can remember and I’d never seen anything like this. Shi was thrashing about when I first caught hir but after shi calmed down it became clear shi was some sort of nudibranch. I took some pictures and released hir back where I found hir.
After I got home I did some research and identified my specimen as a Scyllaea pelagica, also known as the Sargassum nudibranch. They typically live in free-floating mats of seaweed in the ocean, where their shape and color acts as camouflage; this makes sense, because there was a lot of seaweed around that day. They are distributed worldwide and, despite me never having seen one before, are actually relatively common.
They eat small creatures that also live on the seaweed. It’s amazing to me to think that a clump of seaweed floating in the open ocean can support an entire ecosystem where tiny creatures live in fear of voracious behemoths that measure a monstrous two inches long.
Category Photography / Animal related (non-anthro)
Species Aquatic (Other)
Size 1280 x 962px
File Size 166.6 kB
Listed in Folders
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