Word on the Reef
Inspiring interviews with marine conservation legends.
Word on the Reef
S3 E9: Meet Gary, the King of Nudibranchs (AKA the Ocean’s Craziest Sea Slugs)
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He's broken several world records: largest group skydive, longest scuba dive on a single tank—and the most species of nudibranchs ever found on a single dive (71).
He's spent 23 years chasing these tiny creatures, building a global following of more than 60,000 people who are equally obsessed.
But what even is a nudibranch—and why are thousands of people going nuts over them?
Well, they dress like drag queens, some of them can fire miniature deadly spears out of their flubbery bits, and some can even walk on water like Jesus — but upside down, and with only one foot.
In this fun and outlandish interview with the world's biggest nudie fanatic, we get up close and personal with these outrageously beautiful, neon-coloured ocean jewels found in every corner of our seas.
Listeners be warned: nudibranchs can be surprisingly addictive.
(I mean, JUST LOOK at the nudibranch in the thumbnail image. Does he look like he's the slightest bit bothered by ANYTHING or ANYONE? Go off, you fabulous creature!)
More info:
- Gary's Website, Gallery and Blog: www.nudibranch.com.au
- Gary's Facebook Page: Nudibranch Central
- 'My Nudibranch Passion': Short film about Gary showing his dive site at the Mooloolah River and many of the nudibranchs discussed in this episode.
- "Dive Into the Exotic World of Nudibranchs, the Spectacular Slugs of the Sea" - article about Gary in Smithsonian Magazine.
Cyclone Maila News Audio: Australian Broadcasting Association.
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Cyclone Maila's Fallout
SPEAKER_02You're listening to Word on the Reef diving into marine science and right barrier reef and beyond the Tanya Murphy and Red Fair. Good morning and welcome to Word on the Reef. I'm your host, diver and marine conservationist, Tanya Murphy. And with me, as always, is Cans Aquarium's marine educator and fish whisperer, Brett Goodman.
SPEAKER_06Good morning.
SPEAKER_02Now, Brett, thankfully it looks like Cyclone Mylar actually took your advice from last week and fizzled out before reaching the Queensland coast, leaving us with just a bit of rain.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, she did listen to me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but unfortunately, she didn't listen to you quickly enough because the impacts were quite severe earlier when Cyclone Mylar hit Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as a category five distorted. It was the strongest cyclone to hit the port modesty region in recorded history. So our thoughts are with everyone affected over there.
SPEAKER_06Absolutely. That's terrible.
SPEAKER_02Those regions are also home to some of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems on the planet. So environmental impacts are likely to be significant.
Intro to Gary Cobb
SPEAKER_02But now, let's dive into today's topic.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah, there's gotta be a ripper.
SPEAKER_02We're talking about one of my all-time favourite marine animals. Nudie Brankes.
SPEAKER_06Noties.
SPEAKER_02Now I can hear some listeners out there are going, Nudie, what? Yes, okay. And so if that's you, stick around because today we're about to discover some of the most incredible creatures that you may have never heard of. And joining us to help open up your eyes to this weird and wonderful world is one of their biggest champions, Gary Cobb. He lives on the Sunshine Coast in southeast Queensland and has spent the past 23 years diving and photographing his favourite animals. But while most divers head out in search of coral, sharks and turtles, Gary's idea of a perfect dive involves slowly edging along the muddy bottom of the Molula River mouth, hunting for tiny, spectacular sea slugs. He runs the website nudibrank.com.au and the Facebook group Nudiebrank's Central, which has more than 60,000 members worldwide, where he helps identify photos sent in by other Nudiebrank lovers from across the globe. He's discovered multiple new species, co-authored field guides and apps, and contributed to scientific research on Nudie Branks. People travel from across the globe to dive with him. He really is the Nudiebrank King, and we're super excited to have him with us today. Good morning, Gary, and welcome to Word on the Reef.
SPEAKER_06Good morning, thank you for having me. Morning, Gary. Thank you so much. This is going to be so cool.
SPEAKER_02It's great to have you on the show.
The Weird World of Nudibranchs
SPEAKER_02Now, Gary, for all those listeners who aren't familiar, what is a nudie brank?
SPEAKER_03A nudie brank is something to look at and be happy. I love that. That's great. I don't know anybody that's ever seen a nudie brank and not smiled in their mask.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But they're mollusks. They're similar to land snails, except they live in the ocean. As of recent times, after DNA's been done, uh land snails and sea snails are all under one umbrella called a heterobrank.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so they're they're related to sea snails that have uh lost their shells. How did they get their name nudibrank, Gary?
SPEAKER_03Well nudie branch is a is a generic term that I like to use for all sea slugs. Uh there are certain nudibranks that are in nudibranchia and they're the classical nudie branks. They have external gills, hence nudibrank means naked gill.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, their gills are on the outside. So if you imagine a human's lungs are full of many different branches. If you turn those inside out so that the branches are on the outside, nudibrank, naked branches.
SPEAKER_06They are fully comfortable in their own skin. This lot they're not worried about anything, are they? I've never seen a nudibrank that got puffed out.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_02Can you describe some of the main types or groups of nudie branks?
SPEAKER_03Well, there's chromodorus, which is one of the largest groups. There's hyphodorus, there's gymnodorus, and that's that genus likes to eat other nudie branks. They have the tendency to actually crawl along the substrate rather quickly, looking for slime trails from other nudie branks, and once it finds one, it usually follows it, and when it gets to the end, it eats oats at the end.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_03Uh there's dendrodorus, there's all kinds of dorises. Uh there's also philodesmians, and these are animals that have serata on their back versus just a gill. Uh there's also uh non-nudy branks, which are side gill nudie branks, and sometimes they have a shell, sometimes they don't. And again, they just sit there and look beautiful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I understand there's two sort of main groups for the beginners to understand. There's the Dorids are the ones which have the sort of round mantle, and then there's the Aeolids which have lots of appendages hanging off their backs, so they could be all different shapes and sizes.
SPEAKER_03That's right, yeah, that's in the nudie branch category, and not the sea slugs, which is another thing. But uh the aeolids have serrata on their back, and all those seratas on the back are expendable, they can come off uh when they're being bothered, and they also contain a vein which is their digestive organ.
SPEAKER_02It's actually a hard one to talk about on radio because you really have to see a picture of these things to appreciate.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so if anyone is at home or is not driving a vehicle or performing flying an aeroplane right now, or a rocket, or surgery, open up your phone, type in Needybrank, do it on your laptop or tablet, whatever, and just get a quick visual of what we're talking about, and you will understand why every single diver when they see one of these does a backflip. They are beautiful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and there's so many different types that they can have bright colours, the serata that uh these appendages off their back, which might resemble that they blend in with a coral, they can have spots or stripes, they can be bright purple, bright pink, they could be all neon colours, or they could be camouflage, the patterns. It's just like a surrealist artist has designed all of these
Gotta Catch 'Em All: Hunting for Nudies
SPEAKER_02things. And how many species are there, Gary?
SPEAKER_03Well, the old term used to be over three thousand, but there was a recent paper I saw that said there's over five thousand.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_03Uh just to give you a a little bit of scope, on the Sunshine Coast between Noosa and Redcliffe, I've recorded twelve hundred and seventy six species.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_03And seven hundred and seventy-three in just the Maloa River at La Balsa.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a very nudie branky place down where you dive, Gary?
SPEAKER_03It's a very nudie branky place.
SPEAKER_06It's a very nudie place to be. Is there is there something is it all of the um the runoff and and all the the sediment and lots of little bits and pieces to eat? Is that why they've fallen in love with that area?
SPEAKER_03You know, that's a good question, because people ask me, how come it's so diverse for nudie branches? And there's only one word that can explain it explicitly, and that's magic. Oh, we're gonna get along just fine. Okay. But anyway, so really uh you know, the distance it's about eight hundred meters to the river mouth, which is the ocean.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And there's an influx of tides two times a day, and an outward tide two times a day. And that brings in all kinds of velagers and eggs and even flying nudibranks sometimes. Like for instance, I got an email from a lady who lives in the high rise there at Point Cartwright, and she's looking down the river and she's like, What's that down there? It was a r it was a red thing. So she got her camera with a telephoto, and she took about a hundred pictures of a hexabranchus swimming in the river, which was completely amazing. Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02Wow, so so some of these sea slugs are so big you can see them from your balcony.
SPEAKER_03She was eight floors up and she saw this new branch swimming.
SPEAKER_06That's incredible. She can see anything then.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Yeah, wonderful to see that species in the river. The only time it's ever been recorded in the river.
SPEAKER_02And so you said people used to estimate there must be about three thousand species, that now it's been expanded to five thousand, and to be honest, there could be many thousands more, because every year you discover a few more species because they're just they're small, they're cryptic. Who knows how many are out there that we haven't even discovered yet? And and you've definitely brought a few new ones to light, haven't you, Gary?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and based on that three thousand number, that's an old number. So since then the popularity of Nudie Branks is sort of I hate to say it, but exploded.
SPEAKER_02Oh, thanks in no small part to your advocacy, I think. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Well, I my mission in life is to tell everybody about Nudie Branks. That's plain and simple. So now that there's more people looking, well, there's more more things to look for and discover, and this is what's happening nowadays. You've got a lot more species known to man.
SPEAKER_06And uh I believe that you have one named after yourself too. Is that right? I do. You have your own.
SPEAKER_03It's quite a uh thought, I guess you could say. Yeah, Murphy Doris Cobai. It was discovered on the Sunshine Coast in the early days of my nudie branking career. Yep. On the Maluba ocean side of the Spit. And we were in about waist high deep water, and we put our fins on and we descended down and did a little dive, and then we were on our way back, and we're just before we thought we would stand up, there was this little white nudie branch on this rock, and I went, Look at that, and I took some pictures of it and didn't think much about it until I got home, and then I realized it was a a new species. And uh since I've been diving in the river, that is the most common species in the river. Oh and it's also one of the most how do I say, the toughest of nudie branks, because they show up when other nudie branks haven't got a chance. Right.
SPEAKER_02If anyone was listening to the name of that nudie branch that was named after Gary, someone might have picked up some other important facts in its name, Murphy Doris Cobye.
SPEAKER_06Oh, you're right over there.
SPEAKER_02Uh so cobye, named after Gary Cobb, and uh Murphy Doris, uh named after Teddy Murphy, don't you?
SPEAKER_06She's taken half your nudie, mate.
SPEAKER_02Just joking. Uh there's a lot of there's a lot of us Murphy's in the world. Just a couple.
SPEAKER_03There's another species that was named with my name, and it's a little bubble shell that lives in the like two inches of water on the rocks at Point Cartwright and all the intertidal zones, and that one's called Haloa Cobai.
SPEAKER_06That should be Haloa Goodband. There's only three of us in the c in Australia. That'd be more rare. Really? Yeah, that'd we wear it. I can't hide from anything.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, these are in the intertidal zones that are well and truly out of the wave action. And sometimes in the summertime that water can be really, really warm. But these little meody branks with the shell, they're crawling around. You can see the little trails. And if you get on your hands and knees and look really closely, you can see them in this little bitty algae sandy bottom, which is quite amazing.
SPEAKER_02I understand that nudibranks can be found in oceans all over the planet, even in, you know, not necessarily in warm tropical seas as well. Is that right, Gary?
SPEAKER_03Even under the Arctic ice. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Oh I'd like to see what that kind of nudibrank looks like. I'm just imagining something that resembles a snowman or something.
SPEAKER_06A little Yeti or something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because they all have these crazy appearances. Like they have mo many of them have two sort of antennae at the front of their face, but these antennae are called rhino fours, and they sort of look like bunny rabbit ears. So even though they're tiny, when people take close-up photos of them, they just look like adorable little Pokemon creatures.
SPEAKER_06It'd be like giving a two-year-old a bag of red lollies some crayons in a piece of paper. And to draw me something colourful. That's some of them just look like that, don't they? They're incredible.
SPEAKER_02They're like little aliens, but they also kind of look like cute bunny rabbits with their two little furry antenna at the front.
SPEAKER_03They're so cute.
SPEAKER_02They're actually adorable.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and you know, you when you talk about nudibranks that are found everywhere, there's even been uh nudibranks that have been found in between sand grains in fresh water in little creeks in Vanuatu.
SPEAKER_02Wow, they they're moving on to land again, they're coming to take over.
SPEAKER_03See, the thing is, this this big world called the Earth is really huge and it's impossible to look at everything. But when you do find something, you go somewhere else to look, and then you find something else, and that's the way nudie branks work, actually.
SPEAKER_02We're all looking out of the window hoping to see something big and impressive, but if you just get a magnifying glass and crawl around on you with your with your face a few inches from the ground or from the uh seafloor, that's where you're gonna see aliens from outer space.
SPEAKER_06Yep, just pick pick a spot and stick to it.
SPEAKER_03So uh
The Biggest Nudie Ever
SPEAKER_03Well was a there was a couple of Christmases ago. I had the best Christmas of my life. It was Christmas Eve, and I was on the top of a rock in the river, and I descended down just like flying like Superman, and I landed on the channel sand. And I looked up and in front of me was something I'd been dreaming of seeing, and it was a 750 millimeter Milibi japanica, and I didn't have a measuring device, but I laid next to it and it went from my fingertips to the ball of my shoulder, and that measures 750. Wow. The largest nudie branch ever recorded.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I understand you've got a few records, so you've seen that, which was the largest nudie brank ever recorded, and you've got video footage of it, right? Because I saw it on the YouTube video. It is this crazy looking thing. People need to look up Gary Cobb YouTube video so you can see some of the the photos of all these nudie branks, and and there's the video in there of this particular one, and it is crazy looking. Do you want to describe for someone who's never seen it, Gary?
SPEAKER_03Oh try. Good luck. It's a it's a red and white animal, and it's flat like a pancake, and it has these I can't think of any other term, but if you were to take your hand and cut it off at the wrist and attach it three times on each side of its body that size, that's what it's got. Those are the serrata. And in the front, it's got this big giant huge oral veil that's like circular, and it's got little fine hairs up in the inside, and what it does is it it blows out this oral veil like a balloon onto the sand, and all the little hairs tickle the sand, and all these little shrimps jump up, and it closes it up and it eats everything, and it it's an amazing feeding machine, and to see it in live person was just the best, best Christmas.
SPEAKER_06Oh, that would have been incredible.
SPEAKER_02All I want for Christmas is a nudie brain.
SPEAKER_06Yep, Miliby. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think you're right, Gary. That's that's proof that magic is real. You know, like magic is the only way to explain it.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Because when you see them, you just sit there in awe looking at it, going, who, what, why, when, how, where did you turn up? Why are you looking forward to it? How are you? Just so many questions, and it just sort of swims past. You're like, get a champ.
SPEAKER_02How do you exist? Is this real or did I has someone slipped me some drugs or something?
SPEAKER_06Or have I got way too much nitrogen narcosis? Is that what they're actually working?
What to feed your Nudibranch
SPEAKER_02So, uh Gary, what can nudibles eat? Well, you described that one, eating small shrimps, but they eat all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_03Well, for one, they some eat other nudie branks. Uh there's Boy Zoan sponges are done by a lot of the Chromodorus Dorids who do a lot of sponge eating. How do you go to a pet shop and buy a particular species of sponge for your nudie branch? I don't know how that works.
SPEAKER_02Well, look, so they don't they don't eat peanut butter.
SPEAKER_03They don't like peanut butter, no. But uh asidians, hydroids, there's a few different species of hydroids that a lot of nudie branks love and they're little polyps like little flowers. And um I I tell you recently the I'm talking about hydroids, there was a species I found in the river a couple of years ago that was just actually stunning. And I'm look at this thing, you know, so I collected one and I took it home and then it it hit me. I remembered a paper I received about a month or two previous to this find, and uh it looked exactly like this species in the paper, which is uh described from India and that's about ten thousand kilometers uh far away. And I was called this thing Kitina Pawa Shindiorum, which was named after two Indian scientists, Pawa and Shindi. And recently we had DNA sequencing done on some samples that I collected, and it's confirmed ninety-nine and one hundred percent that these are in fact the same animals as the ones in India. So that begs the question, how did they get there? And the other thing is they show up in the hundreds and hundreds, thousands in the river, unlike India. But in the river you can go on a dive and see hydroid bushes all along the rocks, and you'll see like ten nudibranks in an area the size of your fist. And uh how did this species occur in the river described from India is a is a really good question. I mean, I'm believing okay, if they were discovered in India, but that doesn't mean they weren't discovered anywhere else in the world. And uh to show up in the river unannounced and years before that, never saw one. I think of them as a tramp species that may have uh had velagers in the ballast of a ship and in the room to stall the water and it came up the river and they flourish like a big dog.
Baby Nudibranchs
SPEAKER_02Gary, how do nudiebranks move around? You mentioned they've got a slime trail, can they swim as well?
SPEAKER_03Well, there's a number of interesting facts about that. Most nudibranks are born out of their egg and it's velagars, and these velagers are actually swimming two little paddles and they have a shell, and they go wherever the current takes them and they eat plankton. And when they grow up or a metamorphosis, they land on a substrate. If the weather is perfect, the food sources are there and the temperature's right, they flourish. If not, they die. It's as easy as that. And then you got some that lay their eggs and then they hatch on the food source as a one millimeter nudibrank eating the food. So those are direct developers.
Nudibranch Self Defense
SPEAKER_02You mentioned that nudibranks, when they first hatch, a lot of them do have a tiny, tiny spiral shell like the uh uh ancestors that they evolved from the snails. But after that larval stage, they uh leave their shell behind, and um that's a pretty bold move for something so small and squishy and vulnerable, but they're actually far from defenseless, aren't they? What are some of the ways they can defend themselves?
SPEAKER_03Well, with all the different species of nudie branks, everyone is born in an egg, every one of them has a shell. Uh there's some species that just sit in the shell. They don't even use it, they just sit in it and then they're they're born. They come out of the shell as a nudie branch. But many nudie branks maintain the shell after birth. Many nudie branks only have a portion of it, like under their skin, and then other ones just get rid of it, don't even have it, don't even need it because they have mantle glands that can give off nasty little things that make fish run away.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I understand that scientists have done experiments because nudie branks are toxic. Uh well a lot of them can produce toxic chemicals, and so most fish know this because the nudibranks have these really bright neon colours. I guess that's one of the reasons why they come in so many beautiful colours that are pretty for us to look at, because in nature bright colours means don't eat.
SPEAKER_06That's right, red flag, don't come near me champ.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but you can sometimes I think this I saw that experiments were done where there was a young, naive fish that hadn't learned this lesson yet. What happens? Have you seen it if a fish tries to swallow a a toxic nudie branch, Gary?
SPEAKER_03I lifted over a rock one day, and I saw a pleurobranchus bright orange, look like a jube, and I was photographing it, and this ras about the length of my forearm, brightly colored, comes in, grabs the sea sug and instantly spits it out and starts banging its head, bashing banging on the rock with such a big pain. And I'm going, That'll teach you. And then I reached up and grabbed the medi bank, put it back under the rock, turned the rock over and kept going.
SPEAKER_02Well, that fish isn't gonna do that again, is it?
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Thing with fish, they eat anything they see.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_03They try it out, they try it out, say by I I watched I watched a fish one time in the river just take mouthfuls of sand and then spit it out through its gills, you know, like take another one. Spit it out through its gills.
SPEAKER_02I guess it was getting some kind of nutrients out of algae and sand, maybe.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well there's there's little shrimps that live in the sand. Probably about six different species, I reckon, because they're different sizes, colors. Quite amazing. Some of them are very, very tiny.
SPEAKER_02So another way that some nudibranks can defend themselves is by uh pinching or stealing stinging cells from the corals and anemones that they eat and then recycling them. Is is that right, Gary? How's that work?
SPEAKER_03That's absolutely right. The aeolids are in particular have serrata and they have uh the capability of eating hydroids which have stinging cells in them, and then they can take those stinging cells and send them to the tips of their serrata, where they can use them in defense and have the same stinging power as the actual food source.
SPEAKER_02It's incredible to think how they do that because they're eating the stinging cells without getting stung themselves, without them firing off. And then sort of they've evolved to store them at the tips of their flubbery dates. And then as soon as something comes along, they fire it off. That's just like little cannons.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. But on another note, if you're walking on the beach, you might see these little blue and silver nudie branks.
SPEAKER_04Uh huh.
SPEAKER_03Those are glaucus and glaucilla species. They eat blue bottle stinging cells. And if you touch one, it could fire off a blue bottle sting that has the possibility of killing you. Oh you're allergic to it. So when you see these critters on the beach, don't pick them up. So many people pick them up and they want to put them back in the water. That's not their time, it's not your right. You shouldn't do that. Just leave them be and admire them. Yeah, they have swimmed their whole entire life upside down under the surface of the water.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so they're kind of like upside down Jesus. They're sort of walking on the surface of the water, but they're but they're upside down. And and so for anyone who's not familiar, Google it. It's the common name is the blue dragon, right? And so they look like they have four feathery hands. But that's so cute. But they're slugs, so they don't that the you know, they don't actually have hands, but it just looks like that because they've got two hands at the front with the splayed out fingers that kind of look like wings, and then two at the back as well. And then they get their blue colour because of the fact that they eat the blue bottle stinging cells.
SPEAKER_06You know, I I don't know. Of all the things that you would look down to on the beach and go, do you know what I'm gonna touch that? I that's probably not one of them. I know, it's incredible. People touch everything. You look at them and go, Yeah, I don't know, it's pretty cute, but I don't know if I'll give that a touch.
SPEAKER_03Well, there was there was an it was in the paper a couple of years ago where uh two guys were walking along the Murichi River on the on the sand, and one guy sees a little blue and silver thing and picks it up and he starts twiggling it between his fingers, and all of a sudden he ends up in a hospital near death.
SPEAKER_02Oh goodness. Well, so it's it's another good reminder for everyone out there to never touch things that you don't know what they are in the ocean.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Now Yeah, th those are called Glocus. So Glocus and Glockilla.
SPEAKER_02Glocus?
SPEAKER_03Glocus and Glockilla. Yeah, absolutely. And just don't touch them.
SPEAKER_06All right, so those people who have got onto their tablets, like I suggested before, type that in and they have a look at the little dude next morning.
SPEAKER_02And they're like, surely this is AI, this can't be real. They're just but it's not, it's not AI, it's not a big these things are crazy.
SPEAKER_06It's about as real as the emergency department. Don't touch one.
Nudibranch Reproduction
SPEAKER_02So we are on live radio and it's a school holidays, kids are not at school, they are home, they could be listening to the radio. So I feel like we can't talk too much about how nudie branks reproduce because I think we'll just end up accidentally saying something that sounds dodgy.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it's a chance.
SPEAKER_02But uh but I'll I'll try to sum it up. I understand nudie branks are uh hermaphrodites, which means all of them have both male and female parts, so when they meet another nudie brank, they don't have to be fussy, they can just mate with anyone. And uh both of them impregnate the other and they both end up pregnant and both lay eggs. Is that right, Gary?
SPEAKER_03Without a doubt.
SPEAKER_06Gee, that's knocking out the middleman, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Well, it they can lay eggs anywhere from a thousand to a million.
SPEAKER_06It's a lot of nappies.
SPEAKER_03So when somebody says, Oh, you collected that nitty branch and killed it for science, well, yes I did. What if that was the last one? I don't think so.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they they only live for up to a year. Some of them live much shorter. So they've got to really get it done. They've got to pump out the eggs and get it all done quickly. So they they're a species that operates through having millions of babies.
SPEAKER_03Now uh when you dive the river, you you just cruise along, and every bush and hydroid and piece of rock, you'll see literally millions of eggs, millions of potential little baby nudie bags.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've seen their beautiful egg spirals. Some of them lay eggs in a really cool, it looks like a ribbon sewed into a rose shape, like on an 80s wedding dress. Um, but bright colours like yellow, and they're just just even seeing the eggs, they're just beautiful. Now my partner Reese actually submitted a question because he's a bit of a gun at spotting nudie branks when we go diving and snorkeling, and he wants to know why some of them are often found in pairs with one following the other in a kind of nudie conga line. And I I hope this isn't something rude that we can't say on the radio, but what are they doing?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Off to the shops. And they trail. That's just part of their DNA. Uh why they trail? Well, they well, think about it this if you're in a world where you don't know where your next lunch and dinner is gonna be, but you have a friend and he seems to be knowing where he's going, wouldn't you want to follow him just to see if he's right?
SPEAKER_02I wonder I wonder if the one at the front has a bumper sticker. Don't follow me, I'm lost too.
SPEAKER_03It's all in the DNA. Yeah. And then the other thing is, I mean, think about it, you know, you trail with this other person and you've got some somebody to mate with.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So when the time is right, you don't have to go far.
SPEAKER_06So the one at the front's got no idea what's coming. He's off he's off for dinner and he's gonna get more than he bargained for at some point.
SPEAKER_03Well, well, the the actual anterior end of the Ipsodorus nudie brank actually is attached to the tail of the animal in the front. And wherever it goes, it just follows.
You Only Live Once: Do Everything, Like Gary
SPEAKER_02Gary, we've learned a lot about nudie branks so far, but we're really interested to learn a bit more about you as well because there was a time when you didn't know what a nudie brank was either, right? So can you tell us a bit about your background, where you're from, and how you ended up discovering your passion for nudie branks?
SPEAKER_03Well, I used to dive in Florida, but back then in the early 70s, diving was wasn't the easiest thing to do. Um but uh after quite a few years I moved to California and I met a girl and we got recertified. And on that Vanuatu trip on the last dive at Middle Noller Point, this friend of sister's waiting, come, come, you come, look at this. And it was on the bow of this small wreck on the rail. And we got up there and like, oh my goodness, look at that. It's a red thing with yellow spots. And I'm looking at it, I'm looking at it, meanwhile, everybody's left. And um we're right near the shore, getting ready to get out, and I was low on air, and I'm just looking at it and I'm poking it, and I go, Well, what is that? And that just completely changed my life. And then I realized I had like five bar left, and I oop better scoot.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_03And then that's when I got home and started looking into it. Looking into what this thing was, and and as a species, that was Gymnodorus Arita. So that was made in to find that animal. It it didn't run away, it just stayed there, it looked great. Uh that changed everything. That's twenty-three years ago.
SPEAKER_02Twenty-three years of loving Nudibranks, and I understand you are a adventure mouse, you used to work as a skydiving instructor, you're into surfing and rock climbing, you've you've done all the adventures, haven't you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, skydiving was a big part of my life. I did over five thousand skydives and did world records and team and uh I was an instructor and I I tried to teach people the right way to do it so they had the most amount of fun. And uh we we also did parachuting, where you open your parachute and you you dock on with other parachutes, and that was uh that was quite fun. We did a world record in Texas with twenty-four people stacked in a stack. That was that was the largest stack ever done in the history of uh world records, officially, not unofficially.
SPEAKER_02You've got quite a few world records, but they're very different. They're they're from the largest nudie brank ever found to the largest amount of people skydiving in a group.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and also at Sunshine Plaza, Greg Ridell of Sunroof Scuba Diving, we uh did a world record for the longest submergence on a single tank of air, and that was seven hours, forty minutes and hang on a second.
SPEAKER_02It's pretty good on his air, on one tank?
SPEAKER_03One twelve liter steel tank, yes.
SPEAKER_06With what, two hundred bar or a bit more than that? You packed more.
SPEAKER_03Stop it.
SPEAKER_06Seven hours.
SPEAKER_02Well, they don't go you didn't go very deep. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Fourteen seconds. No, it's only in a two meter by two meter by two meter trailer tank underneath the clock tower, and uh it was uh it was a day out for everybody, and they were watching us not breathe. So the way I did that, and I did it, I did it mathematically, was uh figured out the only way we're gonna do eight hours, that's what we planned, is to do one breath cycle per minute.
SPEAKER_06One breath per minute.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so we're on the couch, try to do one breath cycle per minute. See how you go.
SPEAKER_02So rule number one, uh you know, as a diving instructor, is don't hold your breath while you're diving, but you can breathe in and out very, very slowly, of course.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Something to work towards. So there's a big difference between the thrill of jumping out of aeroplanes versus dedicating the rest of your life to studying nudibanks, Gary. So why? Why nudie branks of all the things in the world that you could dedicate the last 23 years of your life to? What what is it about nudiebranks that you love so much?
SPEAKER_03Well, in in skydiving I pretty much did everything I ever wanted to do. And with uh box ticks. And then after I got married, of course, there was this little discussion one night about scuba diving. I'm like, Yeah, yeah, I remember I used to do that. And then I found out that uh my wife's brother was gonna do a trip with his friends to Vanuatu, and that's when that all started. So we got recertified and I'd never look back, so I've done thousands of dives and every one of them I go low and slow and try to find every little speck of the nudie
How & Where to Find Nudibranchs
SPEAKER_03brank.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I understand uh one of the reasons why you love nudie branks uh as a subject is because they don't swim away from you like almost everything else in the ocean does.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, they're not concerned about anything.
SPEAKER_03They sit there and they let you look at them.
SPEAKER_02They just love it. They love it. They're like please take more photos of me.
SPEAKER_06I um I was talking to you about this just before, wasn't I, off-air, that the low and slow. You know, some of the best guided dives that I ever did in my career with people was I'd just drop them to the bottom to my favourite bomby and just sit there and I could see them looking at me going, Are we going to go anywhere? And I'd just say, just wait, just wait five minutes. And they could see them getting angry thinking, How much have I paid for this tour? And we're not moving. I said, just ride on my slateboard, be patient. And then all of a sudden, after about five or six minutes, a lionfish would pop up, and then you'd see a noody branch and a turtle would be there, or a Mora eel would stick its head out, and it was the best dive they ever had. Because they're just giving the animals time to produce themselves and come out, and it was just incredible. And that's that's the whole ticket, isn't it? You see the Ferrari of scuba divers go across you if you've got a ten minute bottom time and you're getting two hours and they want to know how you did it. It's like just stop.
SPEAKER_02Let everything come here.
SPEAKER_06Stop. Just stop and enjoy it and and have a really good look inside the coral. It's amazing what you'll find.
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, there's there's a thing about scuba diving, you've got these flippers on your feet. If you have the tendency to use them a lot, it's like running. You're gonna use a lot of air up. Yep. But if you don't use them and you get close to the substrate, you're gonna see the magic of what the substrate has to offer. That's it. You cannot see the same picture a meter and a half above the substrate spinning along. You will never see the magic of the reef, never.
SPEAKER_02Well, new branks are often very camouflaged, and as you mentioned, some are only one millimeter long, so sticking very close to the bottom is great advice. And I would say to all the listeners out there, you probably will will need to get a scuba diving license because you can see nudies by snorkeling, but mainly the bigger, brighter coloured ones. Yeah. And I mean, sure, you can even see some of them, they are so big you can see them from an eight-story high balcony.
SPEAKER_06Apparently, so while you're having a cup of tea and an ice vivo, you can see.
SPEAKER_02But if you want to pursue uh nudie banks seriously, definitely uh invest in getting your scuba certification, and you need a fair bit of experience to get that close to the seafloor without crashing into it. You need to really practice your buoyancy. So it's going to be a it's it's often something that divers get into once they're a bit more experienced. When you when you first do your dive license, you're going to be absolutely flipping it out, swimming after turtles and sharks and things, because it's they're incredible too. But after a while, when you get a bit more control over your ability to hover, that's when a lot of divers get to the nudie crazy stage of their life.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yep.
SPEAKER_02So Gary, uh in your opinion, what are the best locations in the world to dive for nudie branks?
SPEAKER_03Everywhere. But my favorite place is the Balsa in uh Sunshine Coast. I've dived in quite a lot of places all over the world, and I can find more nudie branks on a dive than anywhere else I've ever dived. So why? Magic maybe? I don't know. But when you think about it, they're everywhere. They're everywhere. It's just how do you go and you see them? You know, you you can go over to a certain spot and see some nudie branks, but you didn't go to that spot over there. There's probably more nudie branks over there. You never know. You you just it's too vast. Yeah. And the only way you can do it is just to keep doing it. Keep diving. And it's it's but then again, you don't really need a s a scuba certification to find nudibles because you've got all the intertidal zones all over the world, along the beaches and rocks and headlands. And at low tide, you can go in there and find nudie branks, and in particular lifting over rocks, looking under rocks, because that's where most of them hide during the day in low tide, and then putting the rock back. But I've uh like for instance, Alex Headland, I've found probably over 350 different species at Alex Headland in uh Sunshine Coast.
SPEAKER_02Do you mean just by walking there at low tide?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Okay, so so I stand walking in water that's ankle deep.
SPEAKER_02I stand completely corrected, everyone out there. You don't need a scuba certification to start hunting for nudies. But I do suspect once you start really getting into them, you'll want to see the ones that live in deeper water as well. So maybe it's just a natural progression. But I also think, you know, if you're turning over rocks, you've got to be really careful as well in case there's a deadly cone snail underneath or something.
SPEAKER_06Or a stonefish waving at you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, some things look like stones. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Always be careful what you look at and always check something out before you touch it. That's the way the rules work.
SPEAKER_02We talked about your world records before. Uh is it you also have a record for the most nudie branks spotted on a single dive?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Uh a diving friend of mine, Cheryl, we did a dive at La Valsa uh one day, and uh we just happened to find 71 species and seven new species to our list. And I took two cameras and I took almost six hundred shots and I was flabbergasted, absolutely flabbergasted. I've never found the the previous record was fifty-six at Old Woman Island, but uh 71 species on one dive and documented on the blog at midybrank.com.au.
SPEAKER_06Nudie utopia.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so that spot, La Balsa Park, is on the Malula River mouth in the Sunshine Coast, which is where you live. So you you've got easy access to go and check it out all the time. And I understand, so you said that's your favourite spot, obviously, that's why you live there. But you also mentioned that you do often go on trips to Papua New Guinea because there's a lot of nudie branks there as well.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes. Papua New Guinea, particularly a place which is dear to my heart called Chihwali, and it's on the north side of that spur called Milney Bay. Uh you go there and the only way you can get there is by boat. There's no roads getting there. There's mountains behind it where the prevailing winds come from, so you got no wind, and there's big island chains out in front, and there's no swell. So it's like you're diving in a lake. It's absolutely stunning. Wow. And I heard you talking earlier about the storms that hit up New Guinea and how we you know it could change everything. Well, there was a change. There was a change that happened this week, and it was absolutely blew my mind. There is a big liveaboard boat that used to be docked there at Tiwali, and uh it used to be very active, but then it became too expensive to fix, I guess you could say. And the storm sunk it right in front of the wharf. So now there is a wreck dive between five and twenty five meters on the slope, right five meters off the wharf. So you can it's probably the closest wreck dive to land that I know of.
SPEAKER_02Wow, so give that give that a year or two to get covered in nudie branks and we'll be off to go check it out.
SPEAKER_03The nudie hotel. Absolutely. It's it's a brand new slate, so Mother Nature will take care of all those little services that are right now have nothing but dust on them.
SPEAKER_02Add that to our ever growing and expensive bucket list, Brad.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, just chuck it in the list.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Wow. Okay. Tiwali is uh um I try to do well, I have been doing a nudie brink expeditions to Tiwali every year. So we've got one coming up in I think it's eighty-three sleeps in July.
SPEAKER_02But who's counting?
SPEAKER_03I love that. No, no, no, I don't count. I don't count. It just happens. And there's uh eleven of us, uh we're from all over the world, and we're gonna go there and learn about nudie branks and go find them, go low and slow and eat sleep and talk about nudie branks. That's what we do for uh from from the eighth to the twentieth.
SPEAKER_06Sounds like heaven.
SPEAKER_03Fun fun fun. And when we go to when we go there on these expeditions to Tiwali, we find o over two hundred species of nudie branks between us.
SPEAKER_06Gosh, I can't even It's a dream. I would be absolutely bending over backwards back in the day if I'd seen two or three. I I can't even imagine seeing so many on a dive.
SPEAKER_03Well there's a beach called Lawadi, which is just up the coast from Tiwali Resort. And it's a look a black sand little bay, and there's there's a village there, and these people are so kind, they're so good. And uh this is black sand, flat, little brock, little green bushes, shallow water, but if you head out, you can go down to 160 meters or something unbelievable, down deep. But in the shallows, five meters, it's magic. It it it this is where the term muck diving was invented by the American years ago at Lawadi. So that's that's the motherfucker. The original muck diving of muck diving. You can find easily at maybe twenty species on a dive.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. Well, we don't have that much time left because um it always happens on our show, Gary, when we're talking about things that we love. Uh we could keep going for hours and hours, but I've just got three more questions I want to try and fit in if we can be in the next five minutes.
Protecting Nudibranchs
SPEAKER_02So I understand nudibrank toxins might have some applications in the world of medical science. So they're very valuable not only because they're just so incredible and beautiful, aren't they, Gary?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. There's so many things about the anatomy of nudibranks it's unexplained yet, you know. So that's that's new science.
SPEAKER_02Are there any threats to nudibranks that you're aware of?
SPEAKER_03The biggest threat to nudie branks is fresh water.
SPEAKER_06Oh, okay. Yep.
SPEAKER_02So flooding isn't gonna help them out?
SPEAKER_03No. The no, I mean I've seen polluted waters, they're still going good. Uh the some species like cleaner water, like the river has lots of particulate in the water, so some species that are out on the reef can't tolerate that kind of water.
SPEAKER_02Hmm, yeah, and and of course they have very specialized food sources like particular sponges, particular hydroids, particular corals. So with climate change or water pollution or any other threats, if those are threatening the food sources, the sponges, etc., then it's obviously going to have a flow on effect to the nudies. But it's good to know that you're still seeing them in vast, vast numbers. They might be one of the really tough species that can, you know, with their millions of babies, they can sort of hang in there really well. Gary,
Gary's Mission in Life
SPEAKER_02uh When you answered the phone when I called you earlier, you said hello nudie branks central. How can I help you? So your life literally is nudie branks. So what does a typical day in the life of Gary Cobb look like?
SPEAKER_03Well, I get up at two o'clock and I do a ten K walk. I come back home, sleep for a couple of hours to recover, get up and I have a smoothie, and I go straight to Nudie Brank Central and I approve or disapprove members, new members, and then I post or disapprove posts and I answer all the questions and IDs. And then I also uh work on applications that I've developed with Apple and Android. So you can get Nudibrank ID apps, which there's seven and they represent all the areas of the world. So I'm continuously gathering up information up on updates and storing them in a folder, getting ready to do the next update. And if I find something new or go diving, I've got to go diving, so I one of these days I'd go diving. And then when I get back, I gotta go through all the photos, do a species list. So that's on the blog. Every dive I do is on the blog of nudibrank.com.au.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's a big day. I mean you it is a full-time job. If you're taking six hundred photos on a dive, that is gonna take you the whole rest of your day to go through the phone.
SPEAKER_06Oh, I still haven't got past the 2 a.m. wake up.
SPEAKER_02It's pretty incredible. You're what a machine. You're living a life of vitality. You definitely haven't wasted a moment, Gary. I think you're an inspiration for everyone out there who has a passion and wants to make sure that you use life to the full. We don't have much time left, but I understand, Gary, you always wear a t-shirt and hat covered in nudie branks.
SPEAKER_03I have a dozen shirts, white with black drawings from an old German nudie brank book. So it's a repeat pattern all over. And I wear these and nothing else. And I have a nudie brank cap, and I wear these things because I want people to look at them and ask me, What is that? Which happens a lot, doesn't it? Was that a nudie brank? Oh, do you know about nudie branks? And we we carry on a conversation. This is advertising, this is what I want people to see, I want them to know. That's what I do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so I understand you'll strike up conversations with random strangers at the shops and say, Hey, do you know what a nudie brank is? And I mean it's surprising to us because we love them so much being divers, but there's so many people in the world that just have no idea that there are these amazing animals out there in the ocean.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, and just recently council put in two informative signs at La Balsa. One was with just nudie branks and showing some pictures that I took, and also like like squids and seahorses, white seahorse, which is rare. That is always the things that occur in the river. So people on land walking by can see the diversity of the river.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I understand you're working with council to keep that section of the river protected.
SPEAKER_03I want it protected so bad.
SPEAKER_02We only have thirty seconds left. So uh where can people follow you online? And if people want to go diving with you and find out more about Nudie Branks, where can they find you?
SPEAKER_03Well, my email is Gary at nudiebrank.com.au. Or you can just go to the website and all the information is there at nudiebrank.com.au, or you can join Nudiebrank Central Facebook and we can carry on a conversation today.
SPEAKER_02Amazing.
SPEAKER_06Fantastic.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Gary Cobb, an expert on Nudiebrank, the special type of marine sea slug. Thanks for all your amazing work and thanks for joining us on Word on the Reef today.
SPEAKER_06Thank you, Gary. Thank you for having me.
