Glowing from Within

On a clear, sunny morning Heidi and I went scuba diving at one of our favorite nudibranch hunting spots, Wailea Point. The beach has golden sand, palm trees, and lots of tourist from the nearby resorts but the real treasures are underwater. Kicking out to the rocky point to the left of the beach the reef begins very shallow and extends farther out to a depth of around 40ft. Big coral covered boulders give us plenty of places to search for hard to find reef creatures.

On this dive we were under for an 1hr 14minutes and came across two octopus, moray eels, peacock razor wrasse, and lots of juvenile butterfly fish. We passed a fuchsia flatworm early on in the dive and I thought we might not find any new nudis until this Gold Lace Nudibranch floated right by my face as I was checking out a cavern.

The colors on these sea slugs are just amazing. It looks like it is glowing from within. It is easy to identify with its interlocking golden pattern and speckled black gills and rhinophores. It is amazing that nudibranchs can be so hard to find even though they are so brightly colored. I guess it is good camouflage for a brightly colored reef scape.

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