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I chanced upon this baffling creature in 17m of water at the San Juan Reef dive site (off the western coast of Samal Island, Philippines). I was taking photos of an elephant ear anemone and spotted this very flat, translucent, crawling thing underneath the anemone's disc. Apparently disturbed, it crawled to the top of the anemone and continued crawling away from me. It measured approximately 3cm long and 2cm wide.
Spotted on Aug 12, 2012
Submitted on Aug 13, 2012
6 Comments
Thanks Laura! Appreciate it. :)
This is so cool, Blogie! I am also thinking definitely flatworm, the texture on this one looks very similar to some individuals from the Paraplanocera genus. Flatworms are hard to ID, I will see if anyone in my department has a reef flatworm ID book!
Thanks for the input, martinl!
My guess is a flatworm in the group platyhelminthes. While they are often very colorful, i fully expect some transparent species would exist and be rarely photographed. http://www.hawaiisfishes.com/inverts/pol...
Thanks, Lisa and Marinus!
I doubt if it's a nudibranch, or even that it's a mollusk... I do hope I can get this identified soon!
This is really intriguing Blogie. I have never seen anything like it! Awesome spotting!