Wailea:Rare Nudibranch Dive w/Friends

Dana, Ben, Heidi, Sadie, and I all gathered together for a fun scuba diver at Wailea point. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we all felt quite warm in our 5mm wetsuits as we walked from the parking lot down to the beach. I love it when you hit that cold, refreshing water on a really hot day. This turned out to be the perfect temperature and one of the few dives where I haven't felt cold towards the end. The water was clear and blue making it a great place for a dive.

Part of the dive was a refresher for Dana and Sadie. Once we saw that they were doing great Heidi and I started concentrating on finding those elusive nudibranchs. Usually Wailea Point is a great place to find sea slugs. Today did not disappoint.
On the roof of a cave I found this snow goddess pictured on the right. We did our best not to disturb it because it was in the process of laying eggs. The orange/yellow ribbon under the snow goddess nudibranch are its eggs, being attached to the rock. Then Heidi noticed this purple, orange, and white nudibranch in the same cave. We had never seen this species before. Its amazing how sometimes all it takes is slowing down and then you start spotting much more.

The big find of the dive were these black margin nudibranchs (Glossodoris atromarginata). Seen only a handful of times in all of Hawaii we never expected to see one of these, much less two! But here they were, crawling over the sand. The bigger of the two was still smaller than Heidi's pinky finger. We were blown away. Two new species, plus two that we had seen only once before!
 The snow goddess and the Sphinx Phyllidia (Phyllidiopsis sphingis) pictured below were known to us from one other sighting before today. Like I said, Wailea Point did not disappoint. I ended the dive finding this huge Hawaiian Day Octopus hiding in a little tunnel. He would peer out at me from one end then jet over to the other side and peer out at me again. I noticed a very hungry looking moray eel nearby hiding behind a red slate pencil urchin. Maybe the octopus wasn't peering out at me after all.



Comments

  1. Ethan J. BrownMay 10, 2012 at 6:19 AM

    Looks like you have interest in the same types of animals that I do. I will be back in Maui soon, shore diving and taking photos - any chance you do private tours?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dai Mar TamarackMay 11, 2012 at 7:24 AM

    Send me your email and we can certainly talk about timing and private tours. -Dai Mar (dtamarack@gmail)

    ReplyDelete

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