Newly discovered deep sea nudibranch and shows next weekend.

Who loves nudibranchs?

Who loves nudibranchs? I do for sure. I’ll talk about a newly discovered deep ocean nudi just below but first, if you’re in the Portland area, I have two shows coming up next weekend.

Saturday, December 21st, I’lll be performing in the 3 Leg Torso holiday show, The Elves of Frostland at the beautiful Alberta Rose Theatre. I love 3 Leg Torso music and the show is loaded with hot guest stars like comedy flamenco singer Pepe Raphael and the Norman Sylvester Band, the godfather of Portland blues. Info and tickets here: https://tinyurl.com/Elves2024

And Sunday Dec. 22nd at the Alberta Rose I will be performing Fly Through Time with Leapin’ Louie, the greatest comedy cowboy circus biodiversity science show ever. It’s about the five groups of animals that developed flight: Insects, pterosaurs, birds, bats and —at the last instant—humans. And it has all the comedy and big cowboy and circus tricks you expect from a Leapin’ Louie show. Tickets and info: https://bit.ly/3AJ0G8w Be there or be bored!

Back to nudibranchs. A new species of deep sea nudibranch was recently christened Bathydevius caudactylus and described by scientists in the journal Deep Sea Research.

B. caudactylus is the first nudibranch to be found swimming freely deep in the midnight zone, 1,000 to 4,000 meters deep (3,300 to 13,100 feet), where sunlight cannot penetrate. By the way, the pitch black waters of the midnight zone are the vast majority of the biosphere, but I’ll wait until next week to do that deep dive.

Nudibranchs are sea slugs with their breathing gills frilling on the outside of their body. (Nudi-branchia — naked lungs) And they are the most psychedelically colored and shaped critters on the planet.

All nudibranchs are carnivores and many are able to eat poisonous animals and transfer the poison without harm to the tips of their cerata to use for their own defense.

Nudibranchs are all hermaphrodites, each equipped with both male and female sets of equipment. They can mate with any other of their species that they might encounter and both crawl away pregnant afterwards, a system of enviable efficiency. Many species have amusing sex life variations such as the disposable penises of Chromodoris reticulata.

Nearly all the 3500 known species of nudibranchs crawl around on the sea floor in the shallow sunlight zone of the ocean. A few other free-swimming nudibranchs have been found like the Blue Dragons that I have written about

or the Spanish Dancers, famous for their skirt flowing swim.

But the newly discovered B. caudactylus is the first found swimming in the midnight zone. Like many deep sea creatures it is mostly transparent, which is great for camouflage, except for a few organs that it cannot hide that way. And like most deep sea creatures, this nudibranch can chemically produce phosphorescent light when it wishes. It has been observed lighting up the phosphorescence to scare a predator and then breaking off a free floating glowing piece of itself as a decoy.

Most nudibranchs have raspy teeth for scraping hard-shelled animals off sea floor rock, but B. caudactylus has a cavernous hood that it uses to encircle tiny prey, much like the Hooded Nudibranch that is common in shallow seafloor off the Pacific Northwest.

B. caudactylus was discovered by Monterey Bay Aquarium scientists and they have a cool video about the creature here.

They have a deep sea capable robot that they have been operating in Monterey Canyon down to 3000 meters deep for 20 years. It has been expensive and rare getting human eyes onto to the deep ocean and little is known about the vast dark below. We’ll descend to those depths and talk about Sylvia Earle next week.

How much do I love nudibranchs? Well—-, this much

Saturday, December 21st, The Elves of Frostland at the beautiful Alberta Rose Theatre. Info and tickets here: https://tinyurl.com/Elves2024

And Sunday Dec. 22nd at the Alberta Rose I will be performing Fly Through Time with Leapin’ Louie Tickets and info: https://bit.ly/3AJ0G8w Be there or be bored!