Wll its been a fair while since I last posted an update. So what's been happening in my world of diving.
Firstly our project to document Nudibranch species in the UAE and surrounding countries has been going from strength to strength. When I started there were only around 33 species of Nudibranch documented for the UAE on Nudipixel. So using that as a base I attempted to compile a record all all species of Opistobtranch that had been found in the Arabian Gulf and Oman Sea. This was done using a number of differents methods.
1. Nudi photo sites - we looked for reports of confirmed sightings in the surrounding waters and added them to our list.
2. Scientific papers - A few had been produced but to be honest these were few and far between.
3. Self discoveries - Using the UAE Branchers Facebook page as a reference point we posted our different discoveries and attempted to identify them. Others also posted their finds which helped to expand our references.
4. Carole Harris - The pioneer of Nudi hunting in the UAE has helped me tremendously by allowing me access to her own records of her finds over many years whilst in the Gulf.

What this has resulted in is that we now stand at a total of 185 different specied found, some of which are still undescribed. We are hoping to hit 200 by the end of 2014 - but this will depend on how much time I get to spend in the water. We also probably need to look in a few different dive sites and expand our horizons.

This weekend we decided to try a diferent site to the usual. So instead of diving on Inchcape 2 we decided to head to Inchcape 1. Now in the past this has not been my most favourite site. It sits at 30m which means bottom time is somewhat restricted, it can get really busy with people wanting to do a "deep" dive, and generally I never really see that much on it apart from seahorses and big Honeycomb Eels.
Well when we turned up on Friday there were already 3 boats moored up with divers either already in the water or preparing to go down - things weren't looking promising.
Myself and Dragan descended into the gloom and eventually found the wreck. I decided to go off and check the sand for any unusual Nudibranchs but after 10 minutes I gave up. I then proceeded to the deck of the wreck. I found a nice little Chromodoris verrieri which I haven't photographed before. I then carried on my search until I found a nice little Trapani (possibly japonica but now thinking toddi).
By this time I was getting close to ny NDL so I indicated to Dragan that I was ascending and off I went.
On the surface it was somewhat chaotic. One of the previous boats that was moored up decided to pull up the bailout cylinder and bugger off leaving the divers in the water somewhat at risk. Once I was on the boat we spotted a couple of divers had drifted about 100m+ from the boats and were heading out to sea in a strong current - the company they were with being completely oblivious to their fate. We rescued them and returned them to their boat - no guesses to whom the boat belonged.
Once we collected all of our divers we headed back to the centre. Dragan mentioned that he had spotted something rather special on the first dive and promised to show me it on the second. We had a 2 hour surface interval in order to off gas as much as possible seeing we were diving the same deep site again.
On the second dive I followed Dragan down the the port side of the stern where he showed me what I believe is one of the most spectacular Nudibranchs I have ever seen. We are still not completely sure of its species, and the debates are centred around 3 possible species of Janolus (eximius, toyamensis or indicus).
Whatever it is I hope to find it again in the very near future.
We just seem to be discovering lots of interesting Nudis at the moment, I suppose since Carole Harris left the UAE noone has really been looking for them properly.