25 September 2010

Sea Slug Scientific Serendipity (I do love the smell of alliteration in the morning

A nudibranch if not the species in question


I remember someone defining serendipity as looking for a needle in a haystack but finding the farmer’s daughter. This definition will hold for many but for a naturalist perhaps serendipity is finding a new species in your back yard (so to speak)

According to Science Daily this is what happened to Jeff Goddard, project scientist with the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara.

Goddard was working in the tide pools at Carpinteria Reef, in Carpinteria State Park, Calif., when he found a new species of nudibranch. Recognizing it as new, Goddard carefully documented the living specimen before preserving it and sending it off to Terrence M. Gosliner, an authority on the taxonomy of sea slugs at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco

Gosliner named the new sea slug after Goddard when he described it -- and one other newly discovered species of California nudibranch -- in the Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences.


Not much of a story if you are not interested in sea molluscs of the gastropode sort but I would be as pleased as Punch (but only half as handsome, sadly!)

It does provide an excuse for my next post too

13 comments:

Anneke (Mudhooks) said...

They are amazing creatures and are prolific in their amazing variation... as well as being delicious....

magiceye said...

a very beautiful creature indeed!

jams o donnell said...

Thanks.. though I've never eaten one Anneke!

Ann, Chen Jie Xue 陈洁雪 said...

Don't let the Chinese know where your sea cucumbers are, otherwise your alleration becomes obliteration.

My bro in Australia goes for sea cucumber, but the work to process them is too much effort.

Alice Audrey said...

Wow, that sucker is actually beautiful.

Traveling Bells said...

Brightly beautiful (couldn't resist my own alliteration!)...

jams o donnell said...

Thanks They are truly beautiful.. not sure about eating them though!

susan said...

Remarkable. Without you I'd never have known.

Gledwood said...

That looks like a gorgeous Japanese breakfast. i bet it would go really well with raw seaweed and soy sauce!!

(Joke! I loathe Japanese food. Except Japanese curry.)

Hey wouldn't it be great to have one of those as an aquarium pet :-)

nursemyra said...

fantabulous

jams o donnell said...

There you go Susan. You're welcome

It truly is Nursie!

I've always loved Sushi but I would draw the line at that on a nilgi!

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I would say that if there is a spare slug colorful enough like this one, I wouldn't mind being associated with one.

jams o donnell said...

They look so beautiful don't they