We read about a sighting of several Apata pricei nudibranchs at Catalina Island last week. I only had one photo of this species and it was a bad one. Merry and I headed out for a pre-dawn jaunt to the island in search of the little guys. Not knowing exactly where to find them was going to be a challenge. We knew they were on eel grass, but there was a lot of sand to cover in Willow Cove. We anchored in the center of the cove, five feet from a large patch of eel grass that contained dozens of our targets. It turned out to be the only ones in the entire cove. It's better to be lucky than good.

I tried several different techniques and settings in an attempt to get a nice shot. The nudis were moving around quite a bit. I deleted about 3/4 of my shots when I got home due to the poor focus. I kept a few that I am happy with.

We left the island after only one dive. It was the longest dive Merry or I had ever made. I had two hours and eleven minutes on a single tank before Nature called and I returned to the boat. I still had enough gas in my tank for another thirty minutes but I wanted to beat the wind across the channel. Merry surfaced shortly before I did, but she also had a two hour dive.

Phoronopsis californica, California Phoronid

Chaenopsis alepidota, Orangethroat Pike Blenny

Apata pricei