Most sea slugs do not have common names and the fact that we call them nudibranchs is a nice way to divorce ourselves from the idea of their not so pretty, slimy green garden cousins.<\/p>\n
If this little critter had a common name it might be the Splendid Nudibranch but in the literature it is just known as Goniobranchus splendidus<\/em>.<\/p>\n This species of nudibranch was the very first I saw dropping beneath the water on our Fly Point night dive at Nelson Bay. We saw many of them in the first 2-4m of water so it seems in this location they like the shallows more than deeper water.<\/p>\n It’s always exciting meeting a new critter on a dive but at the same time there is a sense of detachment not knowing anything about it, not even its name. For me creating an image and then later taking the time to learn a little more about its name, its habitat and its behaviours is just as rewarding as the dive itself.<\/p>\n Thank you Splendid One for posing for me and teaching me a little more about your world.<\/p>\n Photo: Robert Rath, ‘The Splendid One’, 1\/100s f\/22 ISO400 100mm<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most sea slugs do not have common names and the fact that we call them nudibranchs is a nice way to divorce ourselves from the idea of their not so pretty, slimy green garden cousins. If this little critter had a common name it might be the Splendid Nudibranch but in the literature it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[259,113,1394,82,1358,232,70,112,233,197],"class_list":["post-5803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-critters","tag-diving","tag-goniobranchussplendidus","tag-macro","tag-nelsonbay","tag-nudibranch","tag-ocean","tag-scuba","tag-seaslug","tag-underwater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5805,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5803\/revisions\/5805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}