Still busy, so here's "a hungry blob of jelly"

I'm still hard at work, chasing a deadline.

But I had occasion today to skim through my old dormant blog on Delphi, and decided that some of those old posts were interesting and could profitably be moved here.

So from time to time, I will dig one or two out and repost it.

This one is from last May, shortly after I started blogging.


A hungry blob of jelly

Melibe leonina: the Lion Nudibranch

In my wanderings, I sometimes run across fellow travellers that become instant and forever friends. One of these was Melibe leonina.

It was a couple of years ago, in mid-summer. Laurie and I were walking along the shore at Maplewood Flats in North Vancouver, he taking pictures, me patrolling the edge of the water looking for anenomes, and finding only more barnacles and mussels. I had come to the end of the flat beach and was about to call it a day, when I saw something moving. Not at the bottom, but in the water, moving oddly; it was no fish. Stooping as close as I dared over a treacherous bit of rock, I could see something that looked like a transparent mouth making its way out to deeper water, jerking itself this way and that awkwardly as if swimming didn't come naturally to it.

It was very hard to see; the water was murky, the animalcule transparent. All that was obvious was that hungry, gaping mouth, rimmed with teeth.

Laurie tried to get photos; impossible. His best efforts, later, showed a slight thickening of the brownish murk.

I found it on the web, after much searching. It is a sea slug, a nudibranch. These are beautiful little creatures, some of amazing colours; lemon yellow, bright reds, purest white. Melibe is not an exhibitionist, though; she* is transparent, showing up in photos only when highlighted by bright lighting. Her specialty is the mouth, or hood. When open, it is as wide as the whole body is long, and serves her much as a fisherman's net, trapping smaller beasties than herself, closing that hood on them, locking them in with the fringe of tentacles (not teeth, after all.)

The sea slugs usually stay attached to the seaweeds and eelgrass, but when the water has been agitated, may be forced to swim. One website tells me they are good swimmers, although the one I saw seemed to expend a lot of energy in thrashing about. Maybe she was fishing.

*Melibe leonina is hermaphrodite. May as well call it "she". It's a mother, after all.

The photo I used came from here. This is not the prettiest of the bunch, but is closest to what I saw that day.

Today: Checking out the photo here, I was reminded of fishermen on Patzcuaro Lake, in Michoacan, Mexico. I just had to add a photo. And here's a link to a great photo site; the nets out of the water.

And now, back to the grindstone.