Strangers with the strangest eyes.

In an older post we talked about C.Mediterraneus and how lonely it feels in our seas, because none of the 400 members of its family live in our neighborhood. In our fantasy, we can imagine that a similar (it actually only looks similar) species heard its sad story and visited him to live in the neighborhood with big opportunities for the marine animals. It is called Strombus persicus and comes at Medisea from the east as an immigrant. It is also the only member of its family in the region (a second species may have beem possibly established, the Strombus mutabilis).

Strombus sp. are strange gastropods with big human-like eyes. When you see it you think that you are looking at something different than a snail. Maybe a cursed mermaid, who knows? Except from its strange eyes it has an unexpected way of moving. Its operculum is sickle-shaped and hooks to the bottom helping the snail to move. The movement looks like little jumps and it’s very different from the sliding movement of the other snails. For its bad luck it is not able to dig with the strange operculum. If it digs it can find fossils of a famous big snail that lived at the Mediterranean Sea before thousands of years called Strombus bubonius.
Info about the superfamily Stromboidea you can find on this site!!!

Strombus bubonius; Tyrrhen, 97.000 years old, Pleistocene; San Juan de los Terreros, Almeria, Spain; 82 mm; Coll. Aart Dekkers STR9063
Photo contributed by www.stromboidea.de and Mr.Aart Dekkers

I'm sticking with you

Limpets are gastropod shells but they do not have the typical gastropod shell shape, as can be seen in the picture. The common hey hole limpet can reach 40 mm long and can be found in the Mediterranean sea, but no longer in the North Sea, any specimens in the south eastern part of the North sea that are washed out are thought to be fossils. When viewed from above, Diodora graeca, is oval shaped with radiating ribs and bold growth lines. The color varies from creamy to yellow white often with brown, radiating rays. The hole on the top of the shell serves as an outlet for water and waste products. It can be found in deep water up to 200 meters, but this specimen was photographed in Platanitsi at a depth of 10 m. Just like other limpets it adheres firmly on the sides of rocks, making it very hard to detach, unless you use a knife...but why would you do that to such a beautiful, docile creature. This family is mostly herbivorous but the key hole limpet likes to feed on certain species of sponge, especially Halichondria and Hymeniacidon.
And as the Velvet Underground song goes.....I'm sticking with you....coz' I'm made out of glue!

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.

The Green Ormer

These shells are popularly called sea-ears and the scientific name Haliotis comes from the Greek halios and otis meaning ear.
They are a single shelled gastropod that crawls over the rocks feeding on algae. It can grow up to 12 cm and the interior of the shell is a magnificent wavy mother-of-pearl covering. They have separate sexes and breed in the summer. Masters of camouflage with calcareous algae and other seaweeds living on their shell, they can easily be sniffed out by octopus..look closely in the following picture


Their flesh is prized both by men and octopi... today, on what it seems like the last dive of the year,..a very big ear-shell was just about to be eaten by a viciously hungry octopus, when "tank girl" came to the rescue to get a photo...the octopus left slowly towards the right leaving the very expanded shell to its peace, towards the left.
In this incident we can see the rare situation of the shell's mantle being completely expanded outwards giving it a frilly white margin, and the octopus looking very annoyed...
It seems the French love this shell and it has a history for heavy fishing north until the Channel Islands, where they first beat the hard flesh and then fry it////it is delicious!

So, to close off this first year of Medi-sea..adventures

Sea ear, Sea ear
if you can hear
all we want for New Year

No more all around trawling gear/fear

MARINE PROTECTED AREAS IN GREECE, NOW


and many love Hugs and Fishes
to All and to All good night

Hexaplex trunculus

Attacking a Callista chione bivalve shell.

The hatching of the eggs doesn't happen at the same time as you can see from this photo.

One common gastropod of the Mediterranean Sea is the Hexaplex trunculus or Banded Murex. This snail was very popular through the ancient times because it was used to produce purple dye. It is also used as bait for long-lines. A hunter with great success against bivalve shells (photo)but it also likes dead fishes. It is powerful enough to make holes in bivalve shells. Fishermen attract them by throwing dead fishes and crabs. Over its shell can grow weeds, asbestolithic weeds and sponges. The most impressive point in its life is its reproduction. It has separate sexes and a lot of individuals spawn over the same place making that strange group of eggs that we can find in the shallow water (photo). The first nymph stages of his life passes inside the egg and it hatches as a crawling shell. It lives in polluted areas and sometimes this results in finding female animals with male genitals.

Conus the Mediterranean

Conus mediterraneus is far away from his family. He belongs to a great family of snails with more than 400 species. Unfortunately he is the only specie of the family Conidae at the Mediterranean sea. Once at 1986 a cousin of him C.fumigatus visit him from the Red sea that he lived but he didn't stay for a lot. So C.mediterraneus continues his life by hunting polychaetes and other animals with his venomous harpoon!!! You can find him at shallow water hanging around with a lazy style.
Photos from Kolimpithres beach Paros.
Conus ventricosus is a synonym.

The eye of Neptune

-This little inconspicuous gastropod is very good in hiding himself from predators, most of the times you pass by it and would not know it was there, unless you can distinguish it's shape from the surroundings.

-But flip it over and you reveal the most beautiful door (operculum)in the known universe...This circular orange operculum is what protects the shell from hungry fish but it's not octopus proof. I have seen octopus sucking the snail out and leaving only the shell and operculum...here in Greece it is lucky to find it, and we call it "The eye of Neptune" amongst other names. On the other side you will see a perfect spiral on every operculum. In the tropics I have found an operculum that is more than 15cm in diameter!



-It is a pity to kill these snails for their operculum, but if I find it in the sea I collect it because I know that it died naturally, it won't be any use to any hermit crabs..as a tribute to the artist snail that makes these perfect spirals!

Josephine's moon-shell

1.follow the signs
2.find her

3.admire her.

-watch out for the eggs.
-photos taken at Kolimpithres beach Paros. (Don't swim there without a big buoy) at May 2009.

The spiral of life!

- This spiral of eggs belongs to a species of a nudibranch.
- Most of the times they are a perfect spiral like the one on the left.
- It is very fragile and easy to be disturbed (right) so perfect your buoyancy and don't touch please(babies inside)!
-Most of the times I have seen it, it's on rock cliffs, probably for aeration

Atlantic trumpet triton - Βούκινο ή Μπουρού

One animal that it is referred to the Mediterranean culture is Atlantic trumpet Triton or Charonia variegata. This specie used to be called Charonia tritonis variegata and that's the reason of confusion with his Indo-Pacific cousin Charonia tritonis (which used to be called Charonia tritonis tritonis). In Mediterranean Sea we can meet one more member of the family the Charonia lampas which can grow bigger than C.variegata but it is relatively rare to meet it at the eastern part of Mediterranean sea.
Tritons take their name by an ancient god of Greeks who was the messenger of the sea and son of Poseidon. They also called trumpet because of their shape and of the fact that their shell was used by the ancient civilization as a trumpet. The bad habit of the divers collecting the Tritons for their shells is a danger for their population. If we like their shell we have to wait until we found an empty one at the beach. Also we should avoid buying this shells at markets. It is said that it lives more than 20 years.
It feeds mainly on seastars and other molluscs. It is makes big distances to find a seastar and it likes moving straight-line undisturbed by any blocks. They have separated sexes.
Photo and video taken at my beloved Apothika beach at Chios.