Northwest Dive Club

Greg, Greg, Greg.... When are you going to get over your little exoskeleton fixation? It's time to bristle up and face facts.... If I had meant the second most wonderful group of animals in the whole wide world I would have said so!

I am so, so, SO creeped out right now. The photos on that page were Just. Too. Much. At least all in one place. Yeow. Fascinating and skin crawling at the same time. I'm sitting at my desk and had just eaten a hard boiled egg. This is not good, folks, not at all. What! Are you actually dissing the ...

They're actually getting wiped out on some islands as too many are taken for food to successfully replenish the population.

1 & 2 are great shots. In the first one you can really see why this genus was named Schizobranchia which means split branchiae. The feathery crowns are made up of radioles (the individual branches) which all carry 2 rows of fine pinnules that filter food particles out of the water & absorb o...

Fish spine seems much more reasonable. Even if it was a polychaete and a new species just a picture doesn't do much. To have your name immortalized you need to either collect some & forward them to a taxonomist who can describe it or contact one of the programs that will allow you to choose a na...

It's not really inside. The Arctonoe is a juvenile and juveniles are almost always translucent. The colors of the two animals are so similar it's hard to tell where one starts & the other ends.

I'd go with Sipunculus - that reticulated pattern in the skin is typical for the genus

Dusty2 wrote:Nice shots. that Clown nudie is in re.al trouble. That scale worm is wrapped over his gills and restricting his breathing.

That Arctonoe is long past the point where it should have found a cuke or something else to ride. Kinda like a baby bird that doesn't want to leave the nest!

I agree that they are very wormy indeed but creepy? Beautiful, majestic, sexy - those are better words to describe one of these magnificent creatures. As to what it is, it's a polychaete in either the genus Nereis or Neanthes in search of sex. It's a good picture - you can clearly see that there are...

Leslie's a little puzzled herself. If it is a polychaete it would be a syllid but there's something about it not quite right. Kelly, did you see it move or was it just lying there?

We get Cerebratulus that are over 12' contracted which may mean over 10 feet when extended. I really think they should be called rubber worms, not ribbon worms.

The critter is a polychaete scale worm in the family Polynoidae.

No clue and I can't tell if they're the same or not. All the important characters for both genus & species are either hidden by the tube or can only be seen under a microscope. Great pics though!

Greg alerted me to this one. There are a few feather dusters whose color is diagnostic (like Eudistylia vancouveri) but that's not always true. With luck he may manage to find a couple so I can figure out exactly what it is.

Looks like a bunch of vultures fighting over a carcass.....

Hi Greg - Is H. abdomiinalis a specialist on tridens or does it parasitize other species as well?

Easy on genus anyway - Phyllodoce in the family Phyllodocidae. Someday I'll get a specimen & figure out the species name but until then....

Flatworm is a perfectly good id, short, to the point, avoids unnecessary waffling about why you can't identify it! Greg's not bad for a crabby kind of guy. it's a sabellariid, probably an Idanthyrsus. Those long thin brown sausages at the base of the tube are strings of poop. They disintegrate rapid...

The short answer is that I don't know, Nancy. It takes an extreme macro shot to show the apertures but here's what they look like for arcuata & subtorquata: http://www.bryozoa.net/cheilostomata/watersiporidae/watersipora.html Apertures in the new species look like those of subtorquata. Between m...

We've got 3 species of Watersipora in California - W. arcuata (an eastern Pacific native), W. subtorquata (invasive), and another species that's undescribed (also thought to be invasive). Subtorquata & arcuata can be distinguished by the shape of the aperture of the individual zooids while the n...

True. The most common hitch hikers on nudis seem to be Arctonoe pulchra and Arctonoe vittata. Both are in Lamb & Hanby. Color is variable and the pigment patterns that are supposed to characterize them (a red band in vittata and red marginal circles on the scales for pulchra) are often not there...

It's not anything I recognize. Was it acting in some way that made you think it was a worm?

(edit) Just saw Greg's post. I'll pass the photo onto some pod-loving friends.

Leeches, doing what leeches do best.... or worst, depending on your point of view. At least they will drop off once full unlike many other parsites which stay with the host until it dies.

Most likely some sort of scale worm. I can't see enough detail to go past a "kinda sorta ish-ish" id, sorry.

Kelp is pretty much restricted to the big browns - Macrocystis, Nereocystis, Laminaria, Alaria, Agarum, etc. Anything smaller is just brown algae.

Aren't those parasitic copepod egg sacs coming out of the nudibranch?