Niki Hubbard 🐙🦀
LightNews LightNews
banner
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Niki Hubbard 🐙🦀
@nikihubbard.bsky.social
1.1K followers 320 following 170 posts
PhD Candidate at UNSW | cephalopod, crab & nudibranch nerd 🦑🤿📷 | Impacts of artificial light at night on intertidal & subtidal ecosystems 🦀🧐| marine ecology 🌊🐌🪸 | Australia & Wales | He/him
Posts Replies Media Videos
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Back in wonderful Wales for a bit! 🌳
A Welsh landscape. A dirt path winds toward a line of trees. Bright green grass and browning bracken either side. Blue sky above, a low morning sun. And in the distance, a large hill rises above everything.
October 3, 2025 at 6:11 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
I've been slacking on the sea slug skeets.

Enjoy a recent nudibranch from a Sydney tidepool. Jorunna pantherina (I think). From a distance, these tiny 1cm nudis look pale, plain, grey. Up close, they are full of stars! 🐙🦑🧪 #MarineLife #Inverts
A tiny nudibranch, textured white, silver and grey. Bright and sparkling against a dark backdrop of brown algal turf
May 15, 2025 at 10:14 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Sea slug of support for anyone who needs. A nudi in fairytale forest. #Marinelife #inverts 🦑🐙🧪
A Dorisprismatica nudibranch exploring a diverse green and brown algae-scape. The nudi is bright white, with contrasting black margins, butt-gills and rhinophores. It faces toward a dark, shadowy overhang where a glimpse of urchin spines can be seen
April 18, 2025 at 1:00 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
For a brief break from the world, please enjoy a tale of two slugs.

#MarineLife #inverts 🧪🦑🐙

Nudibranch Jorunna pantherina (I think!) and not-nudibranch Elysia coodgeensis in a tidepool, about 1cm and 5mm long respectively. And with a few bonus microscopic epifauna video-bombing.
April 9, 2025 at 12:33 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Couple of anemones from the weekend #marinelife #inverts 🦑🐙
A tiny anemone emerging from a gap in brown algae on a shallow rocky reef. The little squishy has bright white tentacles surrounding a peach-orange coloured core. A larger anemone beside rocks and algae. Bright red tentacles with pale tips, and white inner.
April 7, 2025 at 3:09 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Surveying his crabdom

#MarineLife 🦑🐙🦀
An adult Leptograpsus variegatus crab peeping out from a shadowy crevice in a driftwood tree branch. The branch is wedged on a rocky shore, with water splashing beside it
March 28, 2025 at 5:06 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
For #MolluscMonday, anyone want to play a quick game of spot the small cuttlefish? 👀

Little one hadn't quite perfected the background matching yet, but was doing its best! #MarineLife #inverts 🦑🐙
A photo taken from the surface, looking down on a rocky shelf about 1m depth. The rocks are covered with a mixture of brown algae. Hidden in the photo and doing its best to match the background is an adorable juvenile reaper cuttlefish
March 17, 2025 at 2:18 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
I don't often post fish, but when I do they want to know if you have any games on your phone.

One of Gordons Bay's friendly blue gropers. Divers feed them urchins, so if I'm duck-diving to take photos of a nudibranch, ol' Bluey will be RIGHT THERE beside my face, hoping for snacks #MarineLife
Time for your extreme close-up, sir! Front on and very close with a large blue groper swimming toward the camera and filling most of the image. Brilliant blue, vivid yellow eyes, big smooch lips for chomping.
March 14, 2025 at 1:29 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
A beautiful bubble-snail with stunning speckle galaxies in its skin. Help me ID it!

About 1cm long in tidepool, Sydney, Australia. Have it down to the Haminoeidae family so far, but would love to get it to species if possible! 🧪🦑🐙 🐌 Here's the iNat for it too:

www.inaturalist.org/observations...
A tiny bubblesnail on a background of yellow-brown algae in a tidepool. The bubblesnail is mostly pale, greys and browns, but is absolutely covered in colourful patterns and speckles, with a mass of white speckles in particular making me think of distant galaxies
March 11, 2025 at 11:30 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
They are back and it is full of stars 💫
A slope of deep sea rock and sediment lit up by the lights. It is absolutely covered in hundreds of brittle stars
March 9, 2025 at 10:46 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
For science 🥲 Sea cucumber going into the collection box.

(and just after I posted the link the stream is paused for a few 😅)
Screenshot of the dive. A transparent sea cucumber is held by the remotely-operated collection arm of the deep sea research sub
March 9, 2025 at 9:18 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
It isn't just dogs and men that appreciate a good stick, apparently. This #octopus was keeping an eye on me while holding on to its favourite stick and a couple of rocks as a little defensive barricade to duck behind. 🐙🦑🧪 #inverts
A beautiful Sydney octopus on the edge of a rocky crevice. Bright white eyes with horizontal bar pupil. Orange arms are visible, holding onto a stick and two rocks, positioning them between the octo and the outside world as a little defensive wall
March 7, 2025 at 11:59 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Update: 24 hours later, still holdin' on
Toad clinging on to the head of a gold/orange fish in a garden pond
March 5, 2025 at 8:00 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Woke up to a photo from my parents in Wales... Where it's that time of year again and the toads are riding the fish
A goldfish in a garden pond. A small toad is clinging on top arms around the fish's head
March 4, 2025 at 8:11 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Crab content! A European green crab (Carcinus maenas) (the browny-red phenotype!) thoroughly unimpressed with me diving down to say hi and tell them I love them. Friends made: zero.

Llandanwg, Wales last summer. #MarineLife #Inverts 🧪🦀
Front on with a crab on sandy substrate in shallow water. The crab has claws raised and spread wide to warn me off in case I wasn't just an admirer.
March 1, 2025 at 10:18 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Met Cthulhu. We hung out. Nearly died of hypothermia cos I didn't want to leave my new bestie.

In all seriousness, though, THE DREAM. Ambition ✅ I'd seen one giant cuttlefish for about 2 seconds in Sydney before. Finally got to hang out properly while snorking. Emotional. 🧪🦑🐙 #MarineLife #inverts
Up close with a majestic giant cuttlefish at about 2metre depth on a rocky reef. Slightly side-on. Textured, patterned body currently orange in colour, making it stand out slightly from the mostly brown algae around it.
February 26, 2025 at 10:57 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Count me in! 😊 🧪🦑🐙🦀
Front-on and close-up with a Davusia crab wedged firmly into its crevice and staring out at the camera. Speckled pale green and yellow contrast with the pinky-purple of the layers on the rock above and below. A tiny and cute bobtail squid resting on gravelly substrate in shallow water. It is lit by a headlamp and otherwise surrounded by darkness. Beautifully speckled and a wide array of colours across its entire surface. Up close and side-on with an octopus in shallow water, focused on its eye with horizontal bar pupil. A tiny tiny amphipod in a tidepool. Perched on a strand of thin algae and stretching out into the water, long antennae spread wide. The amphipod has wide stripes of white and brown/orange along its back, and big blue compound eyes.
February 24, 2025 at 12:34 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Works on most sites too! It'll block news stories and images about certain people, and as they dominate news cycles most of the time everywhere tends to look like this 😅

Not sure if that's what you want or need, but just in case useful!
A screengrab of The Guardian frontpage. Beside "Headlines" is a huge blank space where a couple of blocked images for news stories would be. The blocked headline text has been replaced with silly emojis
February 23, 2025 at 10:42 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
When you are just trying to chill but the winds of chaos be a-blowin'

Couldn't help but chuckle at this little nudibranch feeling the gusts, rhinophores (bunny ears!) getting swept flat side to side in the surge 🧪🦑🐙 #MarineLife #inverts

How would you caption this? 😄
An image split into three panels in sequence. They feature the same black and white nudibranch, front-on, as its rhinophores (bunny ears!) get comically swept flat side-to-side in the water surge.
February 22, 2025 at 1:23 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Lookin' like they're about to drop the hottest album of 2025 so far.

#MarineLife #inverts 🦑
4 small reef squid in shallow water. Sun filtering down into the aqua-blue bay behind them, the browns of algae and rocky reef below. The 4 squid are arranged almost like a band photo, all close to each other, facing outwards in several directions.
February 17, 2025 at 2:51 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
If you see this, quote post with a beach photo from your gallery
View from a rocky shore. A single large rock dominating the foreground, beautiful blue waters mid view. And about 200 metres distant the far shore with greenery-topped cliffs. Beneath sunshine and blue sky!
February 13, 2025 at 2:10 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
A week or so ago I posted a "spot the slugs!" silliness. Was rummaging through my photos for something else and realised I should share a close-up of one of these tiny friends too.

Elysia coodgeensis, from Sydney's rocky intertidal. This was ~1cm long. #inverts #MarineLife 🧪🐙🦑
A tiny sea slug in a tidepool. The slug is green with white spots, black lines around the edge of its mantle, and has cute purple pointy "ears". It is chomping on a tiny strand of green algae
February 12, 2025 at 9:39 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Beaut of a morning for fieldwork at Parsley Bay. Helping @lenaholtmanns.bsky.social with her experiments on ALAN and habitat complexity in the shallow subtidal. @seacs.bsky.social 🧪
Beautiful blue! Parsley Bay on a gorgeous sunny morning. Calm water, cloudless sky. A few trees and houses in the distance along the shore
February 7, 2025 at 4:10 AM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
Finally caught up with some friends yesterday! 🦀 @jopabinia.bsky.social #invertebrate #crab #marinelife
A Leptograpsus crab perched on a rock. Mottled green with purple and white claws. Behind it is the brilliant blue of the ocean
February 5, 2025 at 11:45 PM
nikihubbard.bsky.social
I know right! Happens so often too, haha. Here's another one where I was admiring and snapping the sea hare without realise it was being photo-bombed in the foreground by a whole herd of Elysia 😄
A huge Dolabrifera sea hare in a tidepool. mottled brown with bright green edging. In the foreground photobombing there are several more tiny sea slugs. Think like a mouse standing next to a horse for size difference.
February 1, 2025 at 2:27 AM