Capturing the Moment

A beautiful swallow tail slug Gloomy Nudibranch in the sand   Magic Island, Oahu   One exciting thing about exploring a new island is finding new wildlife. Even though Oahu is less than 100 miles away from Maui, there have been underwater wildlife sightings here that have never been seen in the waters off Maui. Almost all of the fish are the same, but what we are looking for can be a whole new ball game. Nudibranchs. In the definitive underwater invertebrate guide book, Hoover's "Hawaii's Sea Creatures, a Guide to Hawaii's Marine Invertebrates", many of the more rare nudibranchs were spotted here on Oahu. And many of those were found at Magic Island. So that is where we headed for our next exploratory Oahu dive. Leaf Scorpionfish Saddleback Butterflyfish   We started our dive in the Magic Island boat channel in about 5ft visibility. We have found this muck to be good nudibranch habitat in the past, but after finding only one gloomy nudibranch...

a lone Imperial Nudibranch the dusky blues of a Gloomy Nudibranch Decorator Nudibranch ( Goniobranchus decorus) Kangaroo Nudibranch Trembling Nudibranch Tom Smith's Nudibranch Indian Nudibranch Porcupine Fish close-up 2 Imperial Nudibranchs trailing What a dive. Muck diving here in Maui has turned up yet another treasure trove of nudibranchs. On this dive at one of our favorite spots we found 20 nudibranchs! Here are just a few of them. Some people are calling this spot "Dai Mar's reef", although Dai Mar and Heidi's reef would be more fitting. I think eventually it should be named nudibranch heaven or 'Nudi Flats'. Sometimes all you have to do is put it in writing and its official.