Rare and mysterious creature spotted on UK beach
WeirdNews
Another one was spotted by a woman snorkelling in West Cornwall
LONDON (Web Desk) - A fascinating yet very rare sea slug has stunned locals after being spotted in the UK.
The unusual creature - known as Babakina anadoni - was discovered by a safari guide scouring rockpools in Falmouth, Cornwall last week.
Often referred to as rainbow sea slugs, the animal is characterised by its bright colours and abnormal shapes.
The species is a member of the aeolid nudibranch family and is usually found in warmer waters, such as the west coast of Spain and further south in the Atlantic.
But it has recently been found by divers around the UK with the first sighting in August last year - by a Seasearch volunteer off the Isles of Scilly.
Weeks later, another one was spotted by a woman snorkelling in West Cornwall.
The latest find was made by Vicky Barlow, who volunteers for community interest company The Rock Pool Project on its monthly 'BlueRecovery' Beach Days.
After discovering a large edible crab, a green sea urchin and multiple cushion stars, the rainbow slug was her last find of the day.
She wrote on her blog: "When you have been rock pooling as much as I have been in the last year, you start to get an eye for which rocks are most likely to have something interesting underneath.
"The last rock I picked up was exactly one of these. It was quite a large, heavy rock, covered in various seaweeds, and once lifted something extremely bright and unusual caught my eye.
"Having been reading up on nudibranchs a lot recently I knew exactly what the colourful blob in front of me was!
"The extremely rare Rainbow Sea Slug! Once delicately placed in a pot to view, the beautiful animal unfurled and revealed itself in full technicolour."
Vicky recently qualified as a rock pool safari guide, and helps locals as well as tourists to discover Falmouth’s rockpool wildlife.
She added: "Once everyone had taken some photographs and spent a bit of time watching it, we took this very small, but very hardy, critter back to the pools that it has made its new home.
"I included one of the new rainbow sea slug images when we uploaded our BioBlitz data to the Rock Pool Project’s database.
"These records are shared via IRecord and the National Biodiversity Network and therefore will be freely available to researchers, conservationists and the general public.
"There are currently no records for this species on the National Biodiversity Network and therefore this should be the first one!"
Nudibranchs, often known as sea slugs, are soft-bodied marine animals that are famous for their extraordinarily bright colours and striking shapes.
They are much like their land-based garden relatives and have a diet consisting of seaweeds, anemones and other sea slugs.
Sea slugs can incorporate the stinging cells from their prey into their own bodies giving them a defence against predators.
The Babakina anadoni species, which grows to around 2cm in length, was first described in 1979.
