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Rhopalaea spp.
Elegant solitary ascidian, cylindrical, small (3-5 cm). Colour can change, but it is usually a blue tone: from transparent sky to an opaque darker blue. When disturbed, tunicates draw up the incurrent and excurrent apertures, much like a drawstring around the rim of a bag. Tunicates, or "sea squirts" are common in all marine habitats, attaching themselves to virtually any fixed object on a coral reef. To feed, they constantly filter out bacteria and phytoplankton by passing a continuous stream of water through their body. The larger of the two openings is the mouth, or incurrent aperture, and the smaller is the excurrent aperture. The water stream is kept moving by the action of tiny cilia (hairs) that line the inside of the tunicate body. Waste products are also expelled through the excurrent aperture.
Rhopalaea spp. are common on back reef, reef front but mainly along the external reef. Indo-Pacific
http://www.seadb.net/en_Blue-translucent... http://puteauxplongee.com/bio/qfiles.php...
Spotted on Oct 7, 2012
Submitted on Dec 10, 2012
6 Comments
beautiful capture Marta,congrats and thanks for sharing
Gorgeous!!!! Hard to believe they are chordates like us, isn't it?!
Wow that's really awesome Marta. You are very lucky and thank you so much for the info.
Thanks! Namitha, it is in the wild. I saw them while scuba diving in the Visayas, Philippines. They were abundant in the island of Cabilao. I think they don´t have a proper species name yet because sometimes they show the transparent blue to green ones as representatives of this species (which I have also seen there but looked quite different to me). These here are more opaque in the blue and have a yellow rim surrounding the mouths.
Wow a blue Ascidian. Cool spotting Marta. Is this spotting from its natural habitat or an aquarium.
beautiful!