Nudibranch sex - not for minors

[Cave Diver]

Last year I happen across an event that happens once a year, for roughly 2 minutes.

Sent them out earlier tonight...turns out that is not how they thought they did it....

I'm not asking this as a slam, just idle curiosity - How come you waited so long to share/send them out? Did you not realize what you had, do you have that many photos that you're just behind in processing, did life just get in the way...?

 

[Puffer Fish]

I'm not asking this as a slam, just idle curiosity - How come you waited so long to share/send them out? Did you not realize what you had, do you have that many photos that you're just behind in processing, did life just get in the way...?

Hummm... well I don't post a lot of my images here. Mostly I post images to show something or to do a trip report. Commercial images (one that are used for prints or for publication usually don't get posted.

These, sort of fit in no man's land...not commercial, not really good for a trip report (you know, the seas were two feet, vis was 35, etc, etc). So they just sort of got put in a folder. When I got that image of the Dendrodoris Warta, a member here asked me to send images to a nudi expert.. which got me thinking about this series, so I put it together and sent it, and then thought others might like to see them. I had no idea that the events shown here were not common knowledge among nudi people.

 

[bygolly]

Magificent series! Thanks for posting.

You can almost see that nudi panting for breath in the penultimate picture

Sadly, it was too wet for them to light up a smoke.

 

[ScubaSam]

Wow, those pics are amazing! The most colorful PDA I've seen on SB.

Thanks for posting.

 

[Zippsy]

I'm confused. We see nudibranch mating all the time over here and I guaranty that they do it a heck of a lot more than once a year. We also see lots of egg masses and the nudis laying them and it never happens like you describe. I'm not saying you are wrong but this sequence may be fairly unique to this species. Have you been able to identify it?

 

[DiverBeth]

Nudis are all hermaphrodites. They all have eggs and sperm so they are impregnating each other.

Nice pics, thanks for sharing.

 

[N2DeepInAz]

Wow, truly amazing that you were able to catch that. Thanks again for sharing!!!

That was :cool2: !!!

 

[Farback]

Which one has to sleep in the white lump in the middle of the rock?

Seriously though, fantastic pictures.

 

[Puffer Fish]

I'm confused. We see nudibranch mating all the time over here and I guaranty that they do it a heck of a lot more than once a year. We also see lots of egg masses and the nudis laying them and it never happens like you describe. I'm not saying you are wrong but this sequence may be fairly unique to this species. Have you been able to identify it?

The species is a Florida Regal Sea Goddess... the only species of nudi we see here. And while very common, we don't see egg masses, but that might be because they hide them.

This is a very seasonal environment here.. going from water temperatures less than 50 F to over 85 F (less than 10 C to over 30 C)..life tends to revolve around temperature.

Their food (they are algae eaters) only grows during some of the year. Short days and low vis are the norm during the winter months, and these guys typically live around 30 meters. They only clump together in the May time frame...Water has warmed, days are much longer and the water tends to be clearer.

Those images are time stamped, and the first 4 represent around 2 minutes of time (feel free to check yourself, I left all the data on the images. )

As you see them mate all the time, would you be nice enough to post images of what they do do? As I have no idea, if it is different, how different it is.

There should be no surprise in their mating being seasonal, Sea Turtles do the same thing... those in say the great barrier reef mate and lay eggs all the time.... ones living in seasonal areas only do it once a year....Our trees do that also.

I have no idea how they know when to clump.. how they manage to pick mates, or even how they managed to know what to do. Seems to me a pretty complex process, and my take of sea slugs is that they are not the brightest animal in the ocean. But if you look at the timing of those images, the passing the lump back and forth took place fairly quickly. I am not surprised at all that warm water ones do things differently.

 

[mike_s]

I cut out the really graphic stuff.

You should start a "[-]OneSpeed's[/-] Pufferfish's Hot Nudibranch Babe" thread for that.