Meet The Marine Neighbours - The Violet Sea Slug - Flabellina Pedata
- Anya Frampton
- Feb 28
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 1
When we think of slugs, our mind conjures the image of a fat, slimy garden slug, that leaves it gooey trails behind as it moves. However under the water they become something rather special. The correct name for a sea slug is nudibranch, which is made up from the Latin and Ancient Greek words meaning “naked” and “gills”. They are a soft bodied mollusc that sheds its shell after the larval stage, they are colourful and come in some amazing shapes. There are over 3,000 species known worldwide at present and in this article I am going to introduce you to a colourful, if tiny, local resident , The violet sea slug - Flabellina Pedata
The name gives you a clue to this one’s choice of colour as they are a bright pink/purple nudibranch. Very distinctive, they are often the first UK sea slug that divers get to recognise. The best way to describe them is imagine a slug, along its body are cerata/projections that look a little like tassels. They are arranged in bunches and each one has a white tip. The head has two sets of forks – the top one is the rhinophores and the second the oral process or mouth, these have a white tip to them too. Got that image, now picture something the size of a strand of brightly coloured cotton, I did say tiny!!
Preferring to stay in one place, they live on and around on the hydroids that that provides their food. A common enough nudibranch, but the size can make it a challenge to see them, I have only managed to find about a dozen over the years by moving slowly and searching areas carefully whilst scuba diving – we call it a nudibranch hunt. Occasionally your eye is drawn to the white tips moving gently in the water. To add to the challenge of finding them, this tiny slug is generally seen as an individual or in mating pairs. Once mated they lay their eggs as a thin white thread that wraps around the base of their favourite food, and I have seen plenty of these!! It often the eggs that nudibranch hunters spot first…why?... the white colour against the red/orange background stands out and the egg thread is generally much bigger than the parents who are about 2cms when fully grown!!
Divers tend to either love or hate nudibranch, I am a lover if could not tell, but with at least 30 species to be found off the beach at Selsey and in Sussex, hunting these small beauties and capturing them on camera is a lot of fun.
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