Mollusks.

The White sea swarms with mollusks! The most of them are bivalves and gastropods.

Mussels Mytilus edulis.

The most tasty thing in the sea!

There are a lot of them on the low litoral. Mussels fasten themselves to stones with the bissus filaments.

This is a strange gastropod with no shell:

A pteropod - sea angel (Clione limacina).

Its foot transformed into two "wings". The sea angel flies through the water slowly and gracefully flapping its wings.

The sea angel is a predator, it has 6 tentacles armed with sharp hooks. All sea angels feed on sea butterflies (Limacina helicina), another species of pteropods.

The sea angels are popular in neurobiology because of their giant neurons wich are about 0.1 mm in diameter!

You can see here its brain including cerebral, pedal (with statocystes), pleural and visceral ganglias.

Other snails:

A whelk - Buccinum undatum - a big snail that mainly feeds on carrion.

Thi is a nudibranch Dendronotus frondosus. This species feeds only on hydroids. It can grow up to 4 cm.

Eubranchus exiguus, the much more smaller nudibranch. On the foto it feeds on Obelia hydroid. You can see here also its eggs.

Cadlina laevis:

This species is very beautiful! A round white thing about 3 cm in diameter with small golden points.

Besides gastropods and bivalves it is possible to meet chitons. They are unusual mollusks with 8 shells.

There are two common species of chitons in the White sea.

Ischnochiton albus. You can see it sometimes on laminarias or dead mussels Modiolus. The lower photo - its radula.

Tonicella marmorea - a colourful species of chitons. It reachs 3 cm in length. There are big numbers of them in Lithothamnion algae.

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