A goby in the muck

So, it has been a couple of months I haven't visited Kalogria in Chalkidiki, and luckily Hector visited me so we went!
It was wonderful to be in the water again, but unfortunately the sight we saw was not a very pretty one. Ok the sea bed was covered by the seasonal weeds but the shock was that of very sick sponges ... that were covered by a white slime, that looked like it was suffocating the sponges, causing them to melt....we are looking into what is causing this and will keep you posted. In between the slime, a lonely Thorogobius ephippiatus looked kinda confused....
The leopard spotted goby is one of the easiest gobies to identify because of his pale fawn body and distinctive dark purple or black spots. It has a relatively large body, reaching a maximum length of 13 cm, and the breading males are darker in colour with a conspicuous light-pale blue edge to the dorsal and anal fins. These gobies love to eat amphipod crustaceans and worms.
Most often you will find them in ledges and crevices in vertical rock faces down to a depth of 40m. This fish was photographed at 25 meters.

Looks like a ghost but it is a long cousin!

Tunicates or sea-squirts or ascidians is common names that we use for the members of the class Ascidia (or class Ascidiacea). This class belongs to the phylum Chordata which is the phylum that belongs and “our” class Mammalia.
Cione roulei, Lahille, 1887 is also known as red tunicate. It seemed very strange to me when I first see it at Paros. I don’t think that it is common to find this animal at the eastern Mediterranean. It is strange and I didn’t understand that it is a tunicate at first sight. It has an inner and outer part of the animal. The outer part looks like a cloak or a ghosts sheet. If you touch it the inner red part will move while the outer not. I find them at less than 5 meters depth and this animal prefer living at deeper. After I found the impressive couple of the first photo I continue swimming around to find more of them. I found one without obvious ghost sheet and one without color inside. I think that all this are C.roulei but I cannot be sure because I left them there. In next posts we will learn more about tunicate biology and meet more members of that class.

Tiny creature with brilliant color

Take a look inside the shadowy hole. Something strange seems to be there. It's bad luck that my curiosity disturbs its peace,but I cannot let this chance for a better look at this strange color, go by. Luckily it’s stuck on a stone which can be moved. I really don’t like to disturb the creatures I meet and I rarely do, unless it is something really unique and I cannot take a photo otherwise. It is a tiny limpet and it has a color that I have never seen before on a limpet. Its size is not bigger than 3mm and it was very hard to take this picture with a compact camera that I found on a nearby diver’s hand (thank you Hildegard)!!! I asked Spanish collaborator of www.sealifebase.org Victor Simon if he knows which species it is and he thought that it is a Leptea fulva but he cannot be sure. The shape and the color indicate to this but L.fulva it usually lives deep. Limpets are members of the Superfamily Patellacea of the Order Archaeogastropoda which are the first Gastropoda in the evolution (Archaeo is from a greek word which means ancient).

Snail attack!

On the previous post we saw a tiny, lonely Bittium shell balancing over the huge Pina shell!
Very impressive site caught on camera. This picture shows a mass of Bittium shells muching on the seagrass Zostera marina. These masses are more oftenly encountered in the summer months and less likely in the colder months. If you are swimming by quickly it looks like the seaweed is dirty, but look a little closer and you will see so many tiny little shells, of all colors!
It is a pity the photo was not very clear, but it is very hard for me to focus on something so small with seaweed everywhere. By the end of this summer season expect to find a big variety of miniscule shells that live in the Greek waters. I have collected their dead shells all my life, now is the time for the live animals...stay tuned!

Walking on cliff’s edge?

This tiny gastropod is one of the smallest shells that we can observe in our sea. I think it’s much easier to spot it if it chooses to go for a walk over the Mediterranean's biggest shell Pina nobilis! In this photo, given to us by our friend Sokratis Karalis, the small shell looks like walking between a cliff and a river (it’s a Greek expression don’t blame me if you didn’t understand). I am very happy when I find nice pictures from Mediterranean not so fancy animals. It is very hard to tell which of the Bittium sp. it is but most often we meet at the depths the Bittium latreillii (Payraudeau, 1826).
Sometimes I have detected Bittium sp. between urchin spines so I think these tiny animals are nature’s admirers like all of us.

Tiger Year Vs Valentine Day

The Chinese lunar calendar rolls in as the Year of the Tiger, quite ironic if you

consider that the South China Tiger is listed as one of the world's 10 most

endangered animals with only a few thousand remaining in the wild.

Human activity has all ready decimated 3 sub-species of tiger....

Valentines Day, the day of love and affection finds us far away from our big

love, the sea so we dedicate this post to her, as always.

Calyx nicaeensis is not always

heart shaped, but this lucky encounter took place in Pilio.

Unfortunately, the populations of this sponge have suffered from

a disease outbreak in many parts of the Mediterranean, so it can be considered

rare in a few places, however their populations have not yet been evaluated.

The disease has affected Greece as well.

Old fishermen also used a small part of this sponge to defog their masks.

Sponges are a very important storehouse for biochemical compounds,

with marked medicinal properties and the research has only just begun!!!!

My one and only

2010 has been declared as the year of Biodiversity by the UN.
Hopefully this will actually mean something more than just a "fancy name " for this year.
Marine Biodiversity in the tropics is immense due to the thousands species of coral and
all the animals that are associated with them, that is well known. Here in snowy Greece
(and the rest of the Mediterranean) we have the one and only scleractinian coral that can
form reefs, Cladocora caespitosa.
We might only have one reef building species of coral here, but our seas are as spectacular
as the tropics, only sized down a little bit, but that does not matter! (Dive Greece Baby!)


Cladocora caespitosa

This amazing coral can form colonies up to 1m in diameter and one big colony was discovered
some years ago on a reef in Vourvourou, Chalkidiki(hope it's still there!)! As most corals, it is
composed of an external, calcareous skeleton which is secreted by the living organism contained
within it. The individual coral polyps(the little tentacles that are visible in the picture above) are
symbiotic with algal zooxanthellae, which photosynthesize to produce nutrients for its host.
The Cladocora coral reproduces sexually, releasing orange eggs and bundles of sperm before the
full moon in the summer months, in the Adriatic banks of this coral this happened in June.
The shape of the colonies depend on depth, light and currents.
It has a growth rate of a few mm per year, making it extremely slow growing.

Diving in Pilion last summer we were shocked to find massive coral structures completely
torn to bits at a depth of 40 meters.


The first time I encountered these massive formations and they were all dead....
Vizualising these corals when they were alive and the life they contained within and around them
is wondrous, but for the sake of biodiversity and for a healthy ecosystem...
I hope this year we permit our one and only reef building coral to grow.