A Journal, with Pictures

As a Christ­mas gift Joyce gave me a ride in Crazy Horse a twin seat P-51 based in Kissim­mee Florida. In Jan­u­ary of 2009 my son-in-law Mike and I flew to Stal­lion 51 Flight oper­a­tions for a 0ne hour flight. Eric my instruc­tor briefed me and intro­duced me to the cock­pit as well as described what we would be doing.

We tax­ied out, zigza­g­ing to see over the 15oo horse power Mer­lin engine. Eric started the take off roll got us air­born and turned the air­plane over to me for the rest of the flight.

Click on this link to join me on the flight P-51 Flight

Fly­ing the P-51 was a thrill of a life time, a great air­plane !

Nudi­branchs are col­or­ful crea­tures, that fun­da­men­tally are sea slugs that do not have shells. The name comes from the Latin “naked gills”, since their gills are exter­nal. They have very prim­i­tive eyes, quar­ter mil­lime­ter in diam­e­ter, in their body with five photo recep­tors each. They have horns called rhinophores to detect odors. They are car­niv­o­rous, eat­ing sponges, jelly fish, bar­na­cles, etc, as well as other nudi­branchs. There are around 3000 species and range in size from .75 inches to 24 inches, and come in many col­ors and shapes. Their pro­tec­tion comes from ingest­ing sting­ing or bad tast­ing cells from other crea­tures, and adver­tise this with bright col­oration. There are some very inter­est­ing sub-species, such as the solar pow­ered nudi­branch that ingests sponges then receives nutri­ents from pho­to­syn­the­sis. Another vari­ety that we call the “vac­uum cleaner” nudi­brach has an inter­est­ing feed­ing mech­a­nism. Nudi­branchs lay eggs, as seen in the case of the orange poka dot spec­i­men below. These images were cap­tured in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent loca­tions around the world, as the nudi­branch is found in most oceans.

“Vac­uum cleaner” nudi­branch feed­ing sequence.

Solar Pow­ered Nudi­branch