Melibe viridis

Widespread in Indo-west Pacific, Red Sea and via the Suez Canal has migrated into the Mediterranean.

A very large and unusual nudibranch. It has a huge, expandable oral hood (head) that sucks up sand to extract crustaceans. The cerata are large paddle shaped lobes in pairs on either side of the body. The whole animal is mottled with tubercles. Despite being called 'green' it is often more brown or grey in colour.

Always found on a sandy bottom where the oral hood acts much like a throw fisherman. They are quite active and flap their paddle-like cerata. Fascinating to watch.

Melibe viridis has a lot of previous names. Originally Meliboea viridis. The genus then changed to Melibe and under that genus had five different species names.