Awesome creatures of the Northern Expedition

Long after the Northern Expedition is over, the photographers have been working hard processing the bazillion shots they took of the vast variety of creatures discovered during the Expedition. Here's a glimpse at some of them.

Rene One has shared several sets of glorious photos on her Naturely Curious facebook page. One set features all kinds of creatures from echinoderms to jellyfish, bryozoans to bivalves.


One of the super highlights of the Expedition was to find a large basket star! Although the team that regularly visits our shores have found small ones, this large one is a nice surprise in one of the dredge surveys. This animal is an echinoderm, like sea stars and brittle stars.

These lively creatures are Scintilla bivalves that behave like slugs! They can creep about and even leap around with a mobile foot, and have lots of 'tentacles' sticking out of the body mantle.

A colourful scallop. This tiny clam has a ring of eyes and fine tentacles. It can 'swim' by clapping its valves together and using jet propulsion.

Rene also has a set on worms. Worms can be quite attractive! Flatworms come in a bewildering variety of colours and patterns.

The spaghetti worm has lots of fine tendrils on its head to gather food.

The Beautiful fireworm can swim about in the water and has lots of bristles that give a nasty sting. So don't touch it!

This set also features super tiny 'pods' of all kinds. Amphipods, isopods and copepods.

This is a copepod!

Rene has another set for snails and slugs. Our snails can be quite spectacular!

A lovely Margin snail. Rarely seen alive!

These super tiny Strawberry slugs are sap-suckers and live on Fan seaweeds.

A pretty spotty Bubble snail.

A lovely little Cerberilla nudibranch.

The Mangrove leaf slug looks much better in the photo than when it was creeping about in the mud!

Arthur Anker has also posted lots of lovely photos of MORE marine creatures discovered during the Northern Expedition. More of his photos in this earlier post.

More surveys will be conducted between now and the Southern Expedition in May 2013. Do look out for information sent to registered volunteers through the Mega Marine Survey yahoo groups mailing list.

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