Name: 50 shades of Nudibranch
Uploaded: 2025-05-04T17:07:36.000Z
Duration: 4 min 48 s
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This episode of Wild Ocean series is a report of Sodwana Bay in South Africa.

While it is fairly young for a coral reef, it is absolutely full of marine life in all its shapes and sizes.

It is also very healthy thanks to its remoteness from any coastal cities.

There is precisely 1,283 confirmed species of fish that live here.

Today I'd like to focus on creatures that are usually neglected, but are equally as interesting as large reef inhabitants.

Sea slugs are one of the most gratifying subjects for a filmmaker.

It's nudibranchs, which means naked gills.

Their gills are uncovered and protrude out of their bodies in the form of hairlike organ at the back of most nudibranchs.

Some are able to retract them in case of danger, but most have to rely on the fact that their eye popping colors and patterns are generally considered poisonous amongst other inhabitants of the reef.

Compared to other marine life, sea slugs are perfect actors.

On an average dive on the reef, it is almost guaranteed to find at least one.

However, you have to look closely as they are generally tiny.

While simply filming these almost still creatures is quite easy, finding them actually doing something interesting is another matter.

The key to make it interesting is to find different and ever more colorful or bizarre species.

Nudibranchs do not have eyes and use rhinophores, those two antenna pointing out of their heads, which house the senses of smell and touch.

There is another branch of the family, nudibranchs that have no separate gills, but their whole body is covered with protrusions that combine all of life support features.

I was lucky enough to spot a quite unusual and rare behavior for these animals.

Two individuals of the biggest known species, crimson Spanish dancers, who were locked together in a lava embrace.

Mating of nudibranchs is somewhat bizarre as they are hermaphrodites, meaning they have sexual organs of both sexes, but they cannot fertilize themselves.

These particular pairs stayed in this position fertilizing one another for definitely longer than 24 hours.

As I went back to the same place the next day to find them still there.

What is even more interesting is the fact that they were not entirely alone, Spanish dancers, as they are so big, are a perfect home for commensal shrimps living literally on the slug for most of their lives.

Taking care of parasites as payment for lifetime rent.

This creature has no body cavities or fully developed internal organs and absorbs oxygen and nutrients by diffusion.

On one dive, I had an encounter with a free swimming flatworm, a rare and beautiful sight, the worm was definitely keen to be in the spotlight as it swam towards my camera.