Petit Jardin

Sea slugs, what you only see when you slow down

The register of Martinique sites lists Petits Jardins at number 83, in the southern sector, between Petit Mur and Caye des Boucaniers, whose neighbour we dive under the name Sec Boucanier.

Animals a few centimetres long

The photograph above shows a sea slug, its edges frilled like a lettuce leaf. It is a few centimetres long. Many of its cousins do not reach three.

These are molluscs that have lost their shell. A snail without a house, in effect, but dressed in colours no garden snail ever wore.

Why they do not hide

It is the question everyone asks: how can an animal this slow, this conspicuous and this soft survive on a reef full of predators?

Because it is inedible. Many of these slugs are toxic or taste appalling, and their colours exist precisely to announce it. Some go further: they feed on stinging animals and take over the stinging cells for their own use, without setting them off.

In other words, they steal the weapon of what they eat.

How you find them

Not by swimming. A sea slug is not seen while covering ground: it is seen when you stop over one square metre of bottom and actually look.

That runs against the instinct of the beginner, who wants to see everything and never stops moving. A dive that covers less sees more. Ask us to show you, it is a way of diving that can be learned.

What level you need here