The underwater world in Sardinia: fishes and stars

...and after the crustaceans and the nudibranches, today I will present you some charming and some scary fishes:-) Some of them were enjoying being photographed...not the moray eel though!

The sea stars, also know as star fishes, are actually echinoderms and show a wide range of colours.

The underwater world in Sardinia: nudibranches

A nudibranch is a soft-bodied mollusk (= invertebrate animal) which leaves their shell after their larval stage. They are famous and loved for their often extraordinary colors and striking forms. There are more than 3,000 described species of nudibranches. The word "nudibranch" comes from the Latin nudus, naked, and the Greek brankhia, gills.

While in Sardinia we were told that nudibranches in the Mediterranean sea love cold water and when the summer start they are more rarely sighed, but we were still lucky enough to discover and see different ones:-) The biggest one is the so called in Italian "vaccheta di mare" (the white with the balk dots, literally the "sea cow"). It can reach up to 10 cm.

Most of the them are however really tiny, from 0,5 to 2-3cm. The bright and impressive colours are signal for predators that the soft body contains venom. This is also their only protection...

Orgosolo, the mural paintings village of Sardinia

The tiny an difficult to reach village Orgosolo is located in the mountainious middle of Sardinia. Nowadays it is famous for its over 120 mural paintings /murales, which depicts social, political and cultural problems from the last and current centuries...

The first of all murales here was painted in 1968...Sometimes its about events in Sardinia, sometimes its about European or worldwide troubles. The walls were the scene for different artists through the years to show their opinions and thoughts!

The underwater world in Sardinia: crustaceans

Underwater one may meet several different species: not only fishes, but also crustaceans (such as individuals from the crabs and lobsters), cephalopods (an example are the octopuses from my previous blog entry) and or the tiny and colourful nudibranches, Today I will show you some impressively beautiful crustaceans. In my selection you may find the hermit crab, the slipper lobster, the crayfish..

The slipper lobster (second picture) is not a real lobster, despite its name. It is however eatable. some species in Australia are called "bug". This kind has tons of different names: shovel-nosed lobster or spanish lobster, mudbug or sandbug, sometimes even flathead or bulldozer lobster:-)) The one we met had edges of its body coloured in purple...

Above is Nico holding the empty houses of two sea urchins... A Specialty in some restaurants here is "spagetthi ai ricci di mare" (pasta with sea urchin). Of course not only the people but also other sea inhabitants love them.

Some funny info about the hermit crab (first and last picture) : As the hermit crab grows in size, it has to find a larger shell and abandon the previous one. This habit of living in a second hand shell gives rise to the popular name "hermit crab", by analogy to a hermit who lives alone.

A stroll through Cagliari....

The capital of Sardinia impresses its visitors with majestetic stone buildings and charmed them with its huge palm trees as well as with its beauty. This could have been somewhere in Paris, I started thinking aloud while looking at the lovely ornaments at one old house in the centre. The center of Cagliari is called Castello and it was build on a top of a hill.

Nowadays the city has 170 000 inhabitants and offers next to narrow shopping streets, also a Botanic garden, old churches and a huge harbour.