Well - if they're to be found, you had to know I'd get some photos of nudibranchs. While there wasn't as wide of an assortment as Wakatobi, I did end up seeing at least four species. However, without a doubt, this pair was the highlight of the trip in terms of nudis.

This is a pair of Purple-Crowned Sea Goddess (Chromodoris or Mexichromis kempfi).

At first, I thought this behavior may have been mating, but as it turns out, nudibranchs have their sexual organs on the right side of their head, so they would have had to have been side by side, not single file like this. It is possible that this trailing behavior is a prelude to mating, but it still seems uncommon (though, I've been able to find several other photos of this species exhibiting this trailing behavior).

None-the-less, I was told by our dive masters on the trip that this species of nudibranch is pretty rare to see in that area. Ad considering I was the one to find them (actually, only Anya and I got to see them during the dive as we were at the end of the group, and everyone else had moved on).

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/120th sec at f/16. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in TTL Mode. Raw conversion and cropped in Photoshop CS5.

The original shot (mouseover to see) was very nicely done, but I also felt it would benefit from a nice tight crop to fille the frame with just the nudis.

I'll be sharing some of the others both of these two and of the other species we saw soon.

- Bill