Sekudu with Beachfleas & Ubin Volunteers

Today, the beachfleas were out exploring Pulau Sekudu!

We had quite a big gang actually, as the Ubin volunteers had also decided to join us and they hired another boat.

Sekudu was certainly recovering from the effects of the great flood early this year, and I saw quite a number of things on this trip.



One of the first things we saw was this sandfish sea cucumber. Quite happy to see it as many of them died during the great flood.



There were lots of flower crabs in the lagoon, and I came across this pair. The male (on top) was fiercely guarding the female, waiting for it to moult so that he can mate with her.



There was a belief that if a thunder crab grab you with its pincer, it will only release when it hears a clap of thunder. Anyway, seeing a thunder crab always reminds me of my Operation Thunder Crab on Sekudu in March this year :P



It nice to see several cowries too. Hopefully the rarer ones will start appearing soon as well...



There were several healthy carpet anemones in the sea grass lagoon and also the coral rubble area. Apart from usual green ones, there were a few purple ones too!



This is also the first time I witnessed butterflyfish feeding on a carpet anemone! Unlike the anemonefish, the kite butterflyfish above is not immune to the carpet anemone's stinging cells. Thus, it had to use what I call a dash-snap-turn-dash technique. Basically it went near the anemone, aimed at a tentacle, dashed towards that tentacle, bit it, made a quick turn and swam away. The whole process happened so quickly, and you will just see the butterflyfish darting to and fro.



I also found several sea pens among the carpet anemones. A sea pen is actually a colony of many animals called polyps! The centre "pillar" is actually the primary polyp, and the little flowery things sticking out from the primary polyp are the secondary polyps.



And today, FINALLY, I saw a cake sea star fro the first time! I have been to Sekudu and Chek Jawa so many times, but some how never got to see it with my own eyes until today! Was really excited about this, though while I was searching for it, I missed seeing the Luidia maculata that the others found on the other side of the island.



Here's the underside of the cake sea star. It's about 17cm wide.



Seems like these small sea cucumber were in season, as I saw lots of them among the seagrasses and seaweeds.



I also found this spiral melongena laying eggs among the seaweeds.

When I was heading back to the sanding area, I decided to try out my camera's macro.



This is a tiny sea anemone on the sand. It's probably less then 5mm wide!



And here's a tiny hermit crab, and its shell was slightly more than 1cm long.



Most fascinating was this nudibranch. It may look big in the photo, but it was probably less than 1cm long!



Taking a closer look at the cerata, I thought they looked like carrots or chilli wrapped in plastic.

On the whole, it's been a great trip. Sekudu is certainly recovering from the effects of the great flood. Many things are coming back, but when will the beautiful knobbly sea stars and pencil sea urchins come back, I wonder? Certainly hope that I'll see them again on another trip!

St. John's in the Evening

Today was the first evening trip for like the past half a year, and I was quite glad that I didn't have to wake up so early for a change :)

Our destination was St John's Island. It was raining rather heavily at my place just before I left home, but fortunately the sky cleared and we had fine weather for the trip!



During the boat ride, we saw this ship in the distance smoking like nobody's business. What's happening? Did something caught fire or what?

We soon reached our destination, and wasted no time in getting to the shores!



On the rocks were lots of limpets clinging tightly to the rocks, which most of us usually neglected. These are actually snails that will move around the rocks are covered with water to graze on algae on the rocks, But as the tide goes down, they will always return to the same "home" spot to settle down, clamping tightly on the rocks avoid predation and drying up.



Kok Sheng found this beautiful spider conch. Was watching this documentary some time ago, and saw you can sometimes find heaps of conches in coral reefs, and they look just like a colony of branching corals with their spines! The documentary mentioned that this is a camouflage technique used by the spider conches, but personally I've never seen this in the wild before. Guess spider conches are just not so common these days in our waters that they can gather for some mass camouflage effort...



We also found a palm-size not-so-gigantic gigantic carpet anemone which has a cute anemone shrimp on it.



While we were exploring at the reef edge, I noticed lots of green and white blobs among the rocks and blue corals. I had initially thought that they are corallimorphs, but looking at the submerged ones make me somewhat doubtful...



They looked more like sea anemones instead! So are they anemones, corallimorphs or whatever, I'm not really sure. But some how they reminded me of the anemones we found at sekudu. We saw 2 types at St John's - one with a greenish column and banded tentacles (top-left), and another with a white column and white-tipped brown tentacles. Not sure if they are just colour variations or different species.



Anyway, the above are the proper corallimorphs that usually wrap around rocks and dead corals.



There were lots of beautiful zoanthids too, forming lovely flowery carpets!

And there were crabs here and there happily feeding among the colourful corals, anemones, zoanthids, and corallimorphs!



There were the aggressive swimming crabs...



...poisonous angbao red egg crabs...



...and even the highly camouflaged velcro crabs too!



And ultra flat flatworms were sliding over rocks and corals...



...while yet another master of camouflage, a little seahorse was quietly resting among the seaweeds.



Moving over to the sandy lagoon, moon snails were lurking just underneath the sand, searching for little shells for supper.



And common sea stars, which sadly are not exactly that common on most of our shores, were lazing on the sand...

And who says there's nothing to see on Singapore shores? :)