Friday, May 09, 2008

Feather Star at Changi

I went to Changi Beach on Tuesday, and as the lowest tide was at 5am in the morning, and I had to wake up really early and took a cab there. But well, I've to say it's all worth it, because I found a feather star!!!


And why was I so excited about it? It's because... This was my first time seeing a feather star on our mainland shores! Before this, I had only seen them on our offshore islands. (Afternote: Even more surprisingly, my second encounter with feather stars on our mainland shores was at East Coast on Wednesday, which was the following day.)

Anyway, am really busy these few days, so will just do a quick listing of some of the other interesting things I saw that day.


This is probably a cake sea star. I saw about 4 of them that day.


Wonder if this is a cake sea star too. The arms appeared to be thinner though.


There were lots of sandstars. These critters feed on little snails like the button shells.


Here's another sand star. We have been seeing a lot of the above two types of sand stars which had different colourations, but we've no idea if they are variations of the same species or two different species.


This is probably a biscuit sea star.


There were also several brittlestars.


I was rather glad to find many ball sea cucumbers.


The little black sea urchins appeared to be in season too.


Stuck on the seagrasses and seaweeds were many swimming anemones.


Note sure if the bigger carpet anemones were poached, as I could only find the smaller ones.


This type of jellyfish still appear to be in season. Been seeing them on our various shores.


Found this interesting group of horseshoe worms. I usually found them living near peacock anemones, and this was the first time I saw so many of them together and no where near a peacock anemone.


There were lots of hairy sea hares too.


This is a geographic sea hare. You can see its internal shell in the middle.


Egg capsules of the sea hare were every where.


As I was taking the photo of a sea hare, this little fellow just emerged from the sand next to the sea hare. It's an armina nudibranch! So cute! These nudis supposedly feed on sea pens.

Just imagine, I only had about an hour or so to explore, and I already found so many things. That just shows how rich our shores are.

Went to East Coast, St John's Island, and another part of Changi Beach over the past few days. Hopefully I can find time next week to post some quick entries... :P

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