Unknown's avatar

About dborys

Author of STREET STORIES suspense novels

Don’t Be A Slug

Unless you can be this awesome while doing it.

I saw this picture of a sea slug posted on Facebook book by I F***ing Love Science. I never paid much attention to slugs till I moved to Seattle and found them all over the place, like the blackberry bushes that also thrive here.  Say what you want about Facebook and the crap people post sometimes, but I love the way you can also find little gems like this.

 

Glaucus atlanticus is rarely seen except during periods of on-shore winds which bring them (and their prey) into coastal waters. Then, they can be found in numbers floating on the surface and, sometimes, even washed up on beaches. They are holoplanktonic, spending their entire lives drifting with the foot oriented toward the surface. They float partially by means of an air bubble that they have swallowed and stored in their gastric cavity and are able to move toward prey or mates by using their cerata to make slow swimming movements.

They eat a variety of drifting prey including the siphonophore Physalia utriculus (Portuguese man-o-war) as well as the chondrophores Velella velella and Porpita pacifica (see photo). Occasionally, they will also eat each other. Like many other aeolids, they store the nematocysts from their prey in the tips of their cerata for protection against predators. Unlike in most aeolids, the sting can be felt by humans.

The dark ventral coloration (which faces the sky) may help in concealing them from birds while the light dorsal coloration (facing down) may help in concealing them from fish. However, some pelagic fish do feed on them. (Note 1) Their egg mass is a straight thread of white eggs up to 17.5 mm long that floats freely in the water (Ross and Quetin, 1990). These authors also reported that freshly collected individuals produced 4-6 egg strings per hour with 36-96 eggs per string and a total of 3300-8900 eggs per day

via Glaucus atlanticus: main page.

“A real page turner”

Wistfullskimmie Kim over at Wistfulskimmie’s Book Reviews gave Painted Black a 5 star review today. I’m so excited because she had such nice things to say. It is so gratifying to have reviewers applaud the very elements I tried so hard to do right.

Thank, you, Kim. I will certainly let you know when the second Street Stories novel is ready to read.

I enjoyed this immensely, but it was also quite gritty at the same time and made me think of the fates of others, especially the ‘forgotten’ homeless. Whilst on the one hand highlighting the fate these teenagers have to face, it was also a good mystery at its heart. Jo and Chris are damaged in their own ways and must put aside their mistrust of each other to work together. It is a gripping story. A real page turner but also very sad. The characters were true to life and leapt out of the page at me, at times their pain was tangible. The ending was sad but right for the book. A great mystery that highlights the problems facing the homeless more or less every day. I shall certainly look out for more by this author.

via Wistfulskimmie’s Book Reviews: