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Image courtesy of Sara Thiebaud
Puget Sound, Washington
Image courtesy of Marc Chamberlain |
Hallaxa chani Gosliner & Williams, 1975 This weeks BOW is a not so common species that Marc Chamberlain and dive partner Sara Thiebaud seem to see more than occassionly in the waters of Puget Sound, Washington (recently renamed the Salish Sea, why I don't know). Terry Gosliner and Gary Williams named the species after one of their favorite college instructors, Gordon L. Chan at the College of Marin, in Kentfield, California. In addition to graduating such notables as Terry and Gary, the college also fledged Robin Williams, Naomi Judd and Pete Carroll, Coach of the Seattle Seahawks, my favorite football team. Hallaxa chani is rather small and very cryptic, just looking like a dull grey dorid nudibranch with a series of darker spots down the centerline (not visible here). The dorsum is covered with tubercles, which in Sara's photo look quite tall and pointed with white tips. The tubercles are more numerous near the margin. Its range extends from San Miguel Island in California to Ketchikan, Alaska. It grows to 30 mm in length and feeds on the slime sponge, Halicarca. Reference: Gosliner, T. M.; Williams, G. C. (1975). A genus of dorid nudibranch previously unrecorded from the Pacific coast of the Americas, with a description of a new species. The Veliger. 17(4): 396-405. |
Sara Thiebaud is an avid cold-water diver and nudibranch enthusiast. She is based in Seattle, WA, and enjoys looking for tiny invertebrates in the lovely Puget Sound. When not underwater, she works in vaccine research and can also be found cycling, knitting, and daydreaming about future dive travel! Sara uses an Olympus TG-6 with a Sea&Sea YS-03 strobe.
Send Sara email at sara.e.thiebaud@gmail.com
Dave Behrens
Sammamish, WA 98074
May., 2021
Send Dave email at davidwbehrens@gmail.com
Attention all you Sluggers, and you know who you are! The NSSI 2nd edition is now available in ebook PDF and book form . The hard back version will become available Nov. 1st. Both will cost $65 (individually). You will need to jump through a few hoops to get the electronic version as pdf distribution is protected by Adobe ID!! Please read the following to enable reading your electronic purchase! This new 2nd Edition is updated and reorganized, including 185 new species. Among other features, the new edition includes additional photographs of species, an identification key, and an up-to-date classification reflecting the latest evolutionary relationships. The Indo-Pacific represents the largest expanse of tropical ocean in the world, stretching from the Indian Ocean coast of southern Africa and the Red Sea to the central Pacific of the Hawaiian Islands, Easter Island and the Marquesas. This region supports the most diverse marine fauna of any place in the world for most groups of marine organisms. The nudibranchs and sea slugs are no exception to this rule; there are about 3,000 described species of these organisms in the world and at least 40% of these have been found exclusively in the Indo-Pacific tropics. This book illustrates 2,138 Indo-Pacific nudibranchs and sea slugs, including many undescribed species.
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