Tritonia festiva from San Diego, California

September 18, 2003
From: Alan Shepard


Bill –
I recently had the opportunity to dive in the waters off San Diego, California and was able to photograph a few of the local nudibranchs. Here is a shot taken on the wreck of the Ruby E., an artificial reef. This is Tritonia festiva and I believe the gorgonian it is crawling on is Lophogorgia chilensis, which is listed as one of its food choices.

The Ruby E. is covered in invertebrates, particularly Corynactis anemones. I observed quite a number of nudibranchs on the wreck. In addition to Tritonia festiva I found Flabellina iodinea, Polycera tricolor, Hermissenda crassicornis, Janolus barbarensis, Dialula sandiegensis and Anisodoris nobilis.

This particular Tritonia festiva seemed to be larger than the maximum lengths I have read about. Behrens states a usual length of 20mm. This one was approximately double that but as you can see it was stretching itself across the gorgonian. The approximate depth of this find was 25m and the waters were a cool 10c.

Best wishes,
Alan Shepard
Tolland, CT, USA

alan.chepard@snet.net

Shepard, A., 2003 (Sep 18) Tritonia festiva from San Diego, California. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/10987

Thanks Alan,
I guess you will have noticed that the west coast fauna is rather different from that on the east coast
Best wishes
Bill Rudman

Factsheet

Tritonia festiva

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