Flamingotongue

I spotted my first Flamingotongue during a night-dive at the house reef of Sun Reef Village on Curaçao: Boca St. Michiel. The Flamingotongue is a nudibranch of 1 to 5 cm that can only be found in the Caribbean Sea. We saw this animal quite often in books and was very high on our wishing list when we went diving in the Dutch Antilles. The orange with black spots that you see is a mantle (soft tissue) what the slug throws around his hard shell. It feeds itself with polyps that he grazes of soft coral. After we saw the flamingotongue during the nighttime, we spotted them at night and even during the day more often. Under the soft coral but also under gorgonian fans. Not one but sometimes 10 to 50 during one dive. Whereby they grazed whole fields of polyps from soft coral like cows. It helps when you know a lot of the animals environment by reading lots of books (it also helps when you have spotted that animal). I’ve seen more than hundred Flamingotongues on the Antilles. But more of these beautiful slugs may follow!