New Zealand’s toxic sea slug

Dr Susie Wood introduces what may be New Zealand’s most toxic animal – the grey side-gilled sea slug.

Transcript

Dr Susie Wood

The grey side-gilled sea slug or Pleurobranchaea maculata, they’re found all around New Zealand, Australia and South-East Asia. The slugs live for about a year. We find them usually at about 6–10 metres depth. Typically, we find them on rocky reefs. They’ll eat pretty much anything and they’ll also eat themselves, and that’s possibly one reason that we see such a huge variation in the levels in TTX between slugs. We like to say that the sea slug is New Zealand’s most toxic animal – we know that there’s enough TTX in one slug to kill four adult humans.

Acknowledgements Dr Susie Wood Cawthron Institute Footage of sea slug on ocean floor, Jarrod Walker