omsshead Warbonnets (Chirolophis nugator) are not always the easiest fish to find as they tend to be pretty shy and hide in their holes – but they have such an interesting face and hair-style! I have shared a couple other posts of them before…(1, 2)
Category: Washington
These Horned Shrimp (Paracrangon echinata) are surprisingly well camouflaged even when they sit right out in the open…
These Long-mouthed Aeolids certainly are a funny looking nudibranch… They’re kind of like the elephants of the nudibranch world… I think they prey on tube worms and it seems they also use those tubes to lay their eggs to get them a little protection up…
While we’re on the subject of species similar to stuff I’ve seen in Florida… I previously posted photos some Flapping Dingbats (Gastropteron chacmolis) from Florida, but up here in Washington, they get Winged Sea Slugs (Gastropteron pacificum). Though I’ve never seen the Flapping Dingbats swimming…
On a recent dive, we were finding a ton of these Spotted Aglaja (Aglaja ocelligera). I have shared other aglaja from Florida before, so as soon as I saw these I knew they were in the aglaja family. They were quite pretty despite their relatively…
While we’re on the subject of ducks… Here are a few shots of a pair of Harlequin Ducks I managed to photograph at Keystone Jetty on Whidbey Island. I had seen a post that someone else saw them there and figured I would try getting…
Recently I’ve seen a few of these White-and-Orange Tipped Nudibranchs (Janolus fusca). In the past the few times I have seen these guys, they’ve been smaller and scrunched up so it was hard to even tell where their rhinophores are, but these couple I’ve been…
I haven’t been able to get an ID on these worms, but I’ve been seeing them fairly regularly on a number of my dives in the Puget Sound and Hood Canal. Some of them are rather long, ranging up to 6-10 inches (it is hard…
Since I shared more Stubby Squids, let’s look at some more Pacific Red Octos (Octopus rubescens), including a quick video taken by Randy Williams from Washington Scuba Alliance after our trash cleanup dive (I’m the one holding the octo). It was a good thing I…
Some more Stubby Squid (Rossia pacifica) shots showing off the color range of these little bobtail squids… They tend to be the reddish color most of the time but will show that white color when scared – the iridescence when they show the lighter color…
I don’t see these as often as I would like, but the Northern Opalescent Nudibranchs (Hermissenda crassicornis) are quite pretty…
Just a couple photos from the Pacific Northwest diving that I converted to black and white… I should probably do some like this more often…
I’ve seen a few of these Red Scale Worms on a couple different nudibranchs recently. From what I can find, it looks like they are a commensal worm, which is somewhere between a symbiotic relationship and a parasite… a commensal organism benefits from its host…
