Microshelling

OK now this one is going to need some explaining. I hope I don’t bore you all with this. My main pastime apart from photography that is, is studying seashells and the animals that produce them. Not in a general sense (though that is how it started many years ago) but as a specialism confined to a couple of obscure mollscan groups.
Most of the species I study are small, and some frankly microscopic. Some live in sand, some in gravel, some in mud, a few in coral reefs, and a few even parasitize parrot fish at night! But most live in the algal ‘fuzz’ that covers rocks on the seabed. They are found from the infralittoral zone (just below low tide) to the Bathyal (deep ocean) and from the Mediterranean in the north to Antarctica in the south. I have personally studied them on field trips to the Caribbean, South America, West Africa, the Indian Ocean, Australia and New Zealand, but surprisingly, not until now, the Mediterranean.
So today, I took up my collecting things which really only consist of a sieve net and a small brush, and went snorkelling in the shallow but clear water in the north of the island, to see what I could find. I acquired a small amount of sediment and weed in my net and then tipped it all in a bucket of seawater and covered it with a towel to exclude the light. Then half an hour later had a look to see what had crawled out and up the sides of the bucket. There were the usual sea hares, shrimps, bugs and other molluscs, but these here were what I was really looking for. They are an adult and a juvenile of Gibberula miliaria Linnaeus, 1758 (sorry, no common name). The shells are approx. 5mm long and the animal is beautifully marked with orange spots. The head is divided into two halves and there is a small black eye at the base of each tentacle.. The shell has four bands but is otherwise translucent – the mottling you can see is the mantle showing through it.
A colleague of mine is going to be pleased with this photo. He is writing a large scientific paper on this genus and he didn’t have a photo of the living animal of the type species (this one) to illustrate it with, until now.