Les Davis muck dive

[Mateo1147]

Met up with Linedog, Scoobie do, Mpenders and a fifth budy last night at Les Davis and proceeded to spend the next 65 minutes finding more small critters than I could count. Scoobie and I were keeping penders hopping with the camera rig. There was one creature found that none of us could i.d. Hopefully when the pictures from last nights dive hit the board we can have some help coming up with a name.
Great dive gentlemen and can't wait to do it again.
Matt.

[Linedog]

Yes, yes good time was had by all. But just what was that critter?

[mpenders]

According to Scoobie, it was a Disheveled Sea Mouse. I'll post pics later - we just finished diving among the giant nudibranchs with Dusty and Kim at Fox Island West Wall

[Scubie Doo]

That is what I read in my PNW bible still want to see the pics though.

Great diving with you guys!

[Linedog]

Any Sea Mouse is disheveled with Scubie around.

[Scubie Doo]

Any Sea Mouse is disheveled with Scubie around.

I do have that affect on sea mice :-D

[Mateo1147]

According to Scoobie, it was a Disheveled Sea Mouse. I'll post pics later - we just finished diving among the giant nudibranchs with Dusty and Kim at Fox Island West Wall

I just looked at some online pictures and would say that's it. Weirdest thing I have seen so far......

[Scubie Doo]

According to Scoobie, it was a Disheveled Sea Mouse. I'll post pics later - we just finished diving among the giant nudibranchs with Dusty and Kim at Fox Island West Wall

I just looked at some online pictures and would say that's it. Weirdest thing I have seen so far......

Wow, google only revealed a handful of pics. I wonder if it is a rare find? It sure was cool.

[mpenders]

Okay, here's a few shots from Sat night. Not all are "keeper" quality - but we saw so much unique stuff that many of the pictures were purely to document what we found.

Sea Mouse

Sea Mouse - head on. Check out the iridescence.

Sea Mouse - more iridescent "hair" detail

Barnacle Eating Dorid pair impersonating a dandelion flower.

Heart Crab

One of several different types worms we found this dive.

Yet another worm - this one was several feet long.

Pacific Winged Stomach

Scubie Doo and Trintonia

Mateo's White Lined Dirona

Scubie's Sea Spider

A tiny Janolus Fuscus

Red Octo

[mpenders]

Wow, google only revealed a handful of pics. I wonder if it is a rare find? It sure was cool.

I found a second one at our safety stop, half the size of the one we'd found earlier. It wasn't moving along like the first one, and I had to "nudge" it to see if it was alive or just a pile of muck. It was alive - but Les Davis silt killed all attempts at getting a pic of it.

[Scubie Doo]

Way to go Penders! You sure captured the night of creepy crawlers! Felt like we were diving in the twilight zone.

[LCF]

That's a crazy haul of really, really cool finds! I've only ever seen one of those ribbon worms -- I imagine it stood out brilliantly in the Les Davis silt!

I had never heard of a sea mouse, so I looked it up -- for those who are as ignorant as I, it's a polychaete worm, and one of the identifying features is the setae, or bristles. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about them:

The spines, or setae,[2] that emerge from the scaled back of the sea mouse are one of its unique features. Normally, these have a red sheen, warning off predators, but when the light shines on them perpendicularly, they flush green and blue, a "remarkable example of photonic engineering by a living organism". These colors are believed to be a defense mechanism, giving warning to potential predators. The effect is produced by many hexagonal cylinders within the spines, which "perform much more efficiently than man-made optical fibres".[1]

[Mateo1147]

All this time I gave George Lucas so much credit for all the crazy creatures in the Star Wars films. I believe it was in Return of the Jedi that a creature very similar to this one appears. I tried but couldn't find a photo.

[gymratdiver]

Looks like I missed a good one. Maybe next time.