The 13th edition of Marine Life monthly post is sponsored by Dive Inspire. Dive Inspire offers unique products inspired by the beautiful and colorful marine life from our oceans. You can win one of their products if you can answer the quiz correctly. Trust me, you don’t have to be a marine biologist to join the quiz. Let’s get to know the nudibranch and grab the gifts!

Nudi is a nick name for the Nudibranch. You may think it is related to naked, yes, it is! Nudibranch means “naked gill”. It is an invertebrate animal from the molluscs group that can be found anywhere in the oceans. They are more diverse in tropical seawater like in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. There are more than 100 groups of Nudibranch; and Chromodoris is one of the more popular ones because it has a large number of species. Chromodoris is also called Goniobranchus.

Chromodoris has dorsal appendages called CERATA that function as a respiratory and digestive system. Its horns are called RHINOPHORE and contains the “nose” of the nudibranch. It functions as a sensory receptor to “chemical scents” and water current. Its MANTLE is body part of nudibranch that resembles a cloak.

According to Nudipixel.net database, there are 85 species identified as part of Chromodoris. The common things of these species are: they are able to release toxic, feed on sponges and store the sponges chemicals on their mantle. I don’t think the fish will find this nudibranch as tasty prey. However some nudibranch species are carnivore, they eat other nudibranch, usually from different species. Sort of cannibalism of nudi’s world.

The Fantastic Four Species of Chromodoris

I haven’t seen all 85 species of Nudibranch Chromodoris yet, but would love to. Perhaps it will be too optimistic to see all species in my future dives. Four Chromodoris species at once should be a good start. These fantastic four Chromodoris are commonly seen in Indo-Pacific region. Their images are as following (Please click the image for large version):

Their species names and descriptions are as following – (not in the order of the images):

Chromodoris magnifica, it has the orange band around the mantle and three black lines on top its body. Its rhinophores and cerata are both having orange colors.

Chromodoris willani, this nudibranch has bluish white or translucent white background color and black longitudinal stripes. Its cerata and rhinophores are speckled white.

Chromodoris annae has black longitudinal lines on top of blue colored background on its mantle. It has yellowish close to orange colored border on its mantle. Its cerata and rhinophores have orange colors.

Chromodoris geminus, the nudibranch’ mantle has an outermost white, then grayish purple, then white, then yellow. It has purplish-blue with white circles patterns on its mantle. Its rhinophores is yellow while its cerata is grayish.

The Gifts from Dive Inspire

Now, let’s test your new marine biology knowledge! You don’t have to be a scuba diver or marine biologist to participate in this quiz. What you have to do is answering the species name of image A to image D based on the description of four nudibranch species introduced.

Dive Inspire is kindly offering three items for three winners and the gifts are corresponding to the nudibranch Chromodoris 🙂

Let me introduce Dive Inspire as a company:

Dive Inspire is a young and energetic company based in Thailand. It was founded in May 2014 by passionate recreational scuba divers who have desire to incorporate the amazing underwater world with daily life. “Fulfilling our own desire” is the best way to describe Dive Inspire. Nudibranch is the initial inspiration of Dive Inspire.

Its collection was initially designed around the graceful nudibranch and later on extended to other deep-sea species aiming to introduce these fantastic creatures to all beloved divers and everyone. The items have been created for different functions from clothing, decorative items to accessories which can be tagged along anywhere you go. Dive Inspire wishes that its product can help alleviate sea-sick during working days for divers without carrying scuba tank, breathing through regulator or dealing with nitrogen narcosis including all who love or start falling in love with underwater world like us.

Official website of Dive Inspire: http://www.diveinspire.com/

Please join Dive Inspire in Facebook Page and Instagram to stay inspired by the beauty of ocean and its colorful marine life!

Rules of the Quiz

1. Check the images against the description of the nudibranch that I had mentioned, you will find the answers.
2. Please write down the nudibranch species name of each the image in the commentary box with the following format (just copy paste this to ease you):

   Image A – “your answer”
   Image B – “your answer”
   Image C – “your answer”
   Image D – “your answer”

3. The last comment for the answers is on Wednesday, 2^nd of September  2015 midnight of the Netherlands time.
4. Three winners will be selected from the commentators with correct answers using the “magic” Random Generator. One winner will get one gift.
5. Commentators with correct answers but do not win the gifts will be the “Honorable Mention of the Quiz”
6. The three winners, the honorable mention and the correct answers will be announced in a blog post on Thursday 3^rd of September, 2015

Thank you for participating in our quiz!

Stay tune for the next Marine Life post with Dive Inspire on 19^th September!

-The Quiz is CLOSED-