What is this site about?

We live and dive in Eilat, Israel, on the shore of the Gulf of Eilat, a long, narrow, deep body of water that extends in a roughly north-northeast direction from the northern end of the main body of the Red Sea.

In August 2002 we bought our first digital camera for underwater use, to help us remember and later identify what we were seeing on our dives. (Inspired by dives in Pemba where we saw 8-10 different nudibranchs but couldn't identify any of them from memory after the dive.) We bought a Sony DSC-P2 camera (a 2-megapixel point-and-shoot) and Sony housing, and started taking photos at the alarming rate of 5,000/year. At some point, we got the idea to build a website that would serve as an online guide to the underwater fauna of Eilat. We'd already finished building the web pages documenting our diving vacation in Hawai'i in 2003.

But meanwhile, the gigabytes continued to pile up, and we didn't know where to begin. Finally, we decided to start with opisthobranchs (nudibranchs and other slugs), and we never really got beyond them because just the opisthobranchs are too much work. And we're up to about 150 species.

About the photos

We're not professional photographers, but we've become serious sea slug enthusaists. If you wish to copy or use our photos, we'll take that as a compliment, and would just ask that we get credit (and a copy of any publication). We don't keep track of who takes which pictures, so all photos should be credited to Binyamin and Shulamit Koretz.

Oh, in November 2004 we upgraded to a Sony DSC-P100, a 5-megapixel improved model. Our first housing had cracked and flooded the camera in October 2004 after about 350 dives, many of them at or below the rated 40m depth limit of the housing. And then in August 2006 we lost that at sea. (Don't ask.) So now we're up to a Sony W100 with 8MP, and in Fabruary 2008 we added 2 Inon 165 macro lenses and an Ikelite AF-35 strobe, so the little tiny slugs are coming out much better...

Species identification

We strive for accuracy, but we're not scientists, so we have to depend on other people who have done the work and read (or written) the scientific papers. In the case of the opistobranchs, we rely on Prof Nathalie Yonow and Dr. Bill Rudman and his Sea Slug Forum, and have also solicited advice from Dr. Jacob Dafni here in Eilat. Dr. Dafni's online guide has been a big help, and we also depend heavily on the photo guides published by Helmet Debelius, Neville Coleman and others. We welcome comments and, in particular, corrections. (E-mail us.)

Species are generally organized by taxonomic groupings such as order, suborder, family, etc., and then alphabetically within each grouping, but we're more interested in providing a guide for finding and identifying the underwater fauna of Eilat than in providing a complete scientific reference. In any case, that information is available on numerous other websites. We have photographed at least 90% of the species seen in Eilat in recent years, and are adding new species as we seen them. Several of the slugs on our site have never been photographed live by anyone else, as far as we know.

*latest update: Numerous our photos are slated to appear in an upcoming scientific publication by Prof. Yonow, and nine photos were published in Nudibranchs of the World by Helmut Debelius and Rudie Kuiter.