Sea slug video gets worldwide attention
WHAKATANE: If you want more followers on Tik Tok, film a coollooking sea slug.
That wasn't the reason Gisborne Herald photographer Liam Clayton took a video of a blue dragon sea slug but it has gone viral on the social media platform.
Last Thursday he posted a video of the blue dragon sea slug, or Glaucus atlanticus, doing a forward roll in a container of seawater at Ohope Beach, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.
In less than a week, it has had 6.5 million views from around the world.
Mr Clayton's fan base on Tik Tok grew from fewer than 100 followers to more than 11,000.
A few of these sea slugs have been spotted at Gisborne and East Coast beaches, too. Anyone coming across one, should not pick it up. Their sting is reputedly worse than a sting from a bluebottle jellyfish, on which these sea slugs prey.
Mr Clayton's viral post started with a spontaneous road trip last Sunday. He saw a photographer friend of his, Wayne Feisst, post a picture on Facebook of blue sea slugs at Ohope Beach, near Whakatane.
``He let me know the general area he saw them.''
Mr Clayton had a few hours to spare, and is always up for an adventure, so he jumped in his truck with his brothers and a mate in Gisborne and headed to Eastern Bay of Plenty.
He saw quite a few of the blue dragon sea slugs washed up on the tideline among hundreds, if not thousands, of bluebottles.
He bought a plastic tub so he could observe them better through his ``makeshift portable aquarium''.
Mr Clayton said he was very careful not to touch the slug and scooped it in and out with a shell.
A casual post on Facebook clocked up just over 10,000 views but it was when Mr Clayton posted it to Tik Tok that he and the blue sea slug went viral.
``I hadn't used the Tik Tok app in like a year. A friend of mine shared her travel vid with me and it got me thinking, I should see how the wicked little creature would go on that platform.'' He added a Pokemon soundtrack.
``After a few hours it didn't look like it was going to go well as it only had four likes.''
Now his video has more than 900,000 likes, and climbing. — Gisborne Herald