Nudibranchs
West Coast

Nudibranchs are basically sea snails that have no shells. The ones below I photographed at Pt. Lobos, Carmel, CA in August of '96.

This is a Horned Nudibranch. There was some debate about which picture in my friends identification book this nudibranch most resembles, but I have been told that the shape of the antennae make the difference, not the coloring. This one's antennae are squiggly instead of smooth which is how I identified it.

This is a Lemondrop Nudibranch hanging out next to a Bat Star. These ones are really cute, and I saw several of them on this vacation. They have something that looks like a big flower sticking out the back of them. I saw a huge one earlier in the summer in Victoria, BC, but I was using a video camera on that dive. The one in Vancouver was easily 6 or 7 inches in length and had some white around its perimeter. In contrast, the ones I have seen here in New England are usually about the size of my pinky thumbnail (about 1cm.)