Postcard from The Reef - Look Even Closer
Tuesday, September 8. 2009
The smaller organisms get, the more variety you find and the stranger things become. Getting into the habit of looking for small creatures leads to interesting discoveries. Overlooked by the vast majority of divers there are small wonders to be seen in the most common of places. If you examine many of the sand patches between the coral you might come across one of these little guys, small golden nudibranchs not much larger than a grain of rice.
These little guys are small, surprisingly small when you find them, but very common. When you do find them it is not just one, look further and you will find them scattered across the sand in ones and twos every few feet.
Along the Kohala coast many sandy areas on the reef harbor them, anything not too badly wave churned and reasonably sheltered. I have only found them on small and mid-sized sandy areas, less than a few hundred meters square, among coral heads. Larger areas of sand and beaches will not do. So far I have only seen them at relatively shallow depths, maybe 20-50ft? They appear to feed among the algae and detritus that accumulate on these low lying sand patches.
The plan... Arrive at Mahukona in the mid-afternoon, do an afternoon dive. Then we fire up a barbeque and have dinner, talk story and watch sunset from a beautiful Hawaiian shore. When it gets dark we load up a second tank and head back out for a night
Tracked: Aug 15, 13:07
A Darker View
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All text, photographic and drawn material is the original work of myself unless otherwise noted, Andrew Cooper, all rights reserved. Copyright 1996 to 2010. I will often grant permission for non-profit and educational use of my work upon written request.
Karen Cheney, a scientific researcher at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia was directed to KUPS by John Hoover. They are investigating the evolution of conspicuous and cryptic nudibranchs e.g. why have some evolved bright colors to warn predators they are toxic, and why have some evolved ways to become cryptic with their background. To do this they have been using an image analysis program to look at how similar species of nudibranchs are to their background in terms of color and pattern. They use underwater photographs taken in the field and have quite a lot from various field trips, but are hoping to expand the range of species that they have photographs for. She writes to ask if KUPS members would be willing to loan them some images of nudibranchs underwater for their analysis. The images will not be used in any publications and will be used for research purposes only.
They do not require high resolution photographs: they need photographs that show nudibranchs with quite a lot of background (i.e. not too close up and don't fill the frame, which are what most of the photographs show on the internet). She has attached an example of the approximate proportion of nudibranch size to background they need.
The nudibranchs targeted are from the genera below. However, it really depends on how many species they get enough suitable photographs for, as they need multiple photos of the same species. Therefore, any species you can send would be good, especially members of Chromodorididae and Phyllidiidae.
Nembrotha sp., Roboastra sp., Tambja sp., Notodoris sp., Chromodoris sp., Glossodoris sp., Hypseldoris sp., Noumea sp., Risbecia sp., Halgerda sp., Dendrodoris sp., Phyllidia sp., Phyllidiella sp., Phyllidiopsis sp., Flabellina sp.
If you want to send the photographs in bulk, you can either use a site such as www.yousendit.com or you can upload the photos to our ftp site at the University of Queensland see http://uqconnect.net/helpdesk/guides/www/ftp/email/?show=staff. Otherwise you can email them through, which may be easier if you reduce them down to about 1500 pixels max width or height.
Karen is grateful for your help. Please share this with anyone you think may be interested in helping with this research. You may contact Karen directly per the below info:
Karen Cheney |Postdoctoral Researcher | School of Biological Sciences |
The University of Queensland | Brisbane QLD 4072 | Australia |
T 07 3365 2855 | F 07 3365 1655 | E k.cheney@uq.edu.au |
W http://profiles.bacs.uq.edu.au/Karen.Cheney.html
Mahalo! Wanda