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September 13, 2018

Nudibranch

BY: Carlos Minguell

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© OCEANA / Carlos Minguell

 

Our workday started today just like it did in my previous diary entry: we were visited by journalists, only this time they were from the Finnish newspaper, Pohjalainen. Later, before heading to our new port of Vaasa, we conducted a dive in the area near Holgrundberget, in rather murky waters at a maximum depth of 3,5 meters.

In all, in almost 115 minutes, we only saw two species of fish, both gobbies, and the same marine plants we saw on previous dives. The only place that really caught my interest was a small, sandy zone covered by thousands of empty bivalve and snail shells, most probably due to the water’s dynamics in that area.

Our biggest surprise for the day came on the last dive, when we discovered several tiny nudibranchs (Tenellia adspersa) next to their eggs and hydras, which seem to be their food source, on the stalks of a marine plant. This is the only species of nudibranch described in the whole area known as the “Proper Baltic Sea”, and its discovery agrees with what we’ve have been observing, that these waters lack biodiversity.