Meg Sodano – Illustration & Design

The most colorful creature in If You Live in the Sea, Who Would You Be? is the Spanish Shawl nudibranch. Aren’t these stunning?

Nudibranchs (NOO-dee-branks) are gastropod mollusks – in other words, sea slugs. They have very bright colors. The ones you see in my book are Spanish Shawl nudibranchs (Flabellinopsis iodinea). They have purple, yellow, “crimson and blue colors.” This species grows as long as 3 inches! And the young ones are smaller and super cute! If you compare them to the periwinkle snail shell on the left of my illustration, you can see their accurate size. You can see these nudibranchs in tidepools from British Columbia in Canada to Baja California, Mexico.

Their favorite food is hydroids, shown attached to a rock behind the nudibranchs. Related to anemones, hydroids have tentacles that are very small. So small that I didn’t illustrate them. Behind Julie’s text is the red (pink) coralline algae that attaches to rocks, and another red algae (which is a seaweed).

What are all those red/orange/yellow things on the nudi’s back, you wonder? They are called Cerata (suh-RAH-tuh)!

_{My sketch of the anatomy of a Spanish Shawl nudibranch. They do have very small dark eyes, which you can see in my illustration.}