Sentosa!

I never knew the cliffs at Sentosa were so beautiful.

I went with a few volunteers and beachfleas to Sentosa last Saturday to check out the intertidal area. While I've visit the area before, this was the first time I went via what I called the longer "adventure" trail. And good thing that we decided to recce this trail, as I finally got to see the beautiful pink cliffs with my own eyes! England may have its White Cliffs of Dover, but we have our very own Pink Cliffs of Sentosa!

The trail, though much longer than the usual one we took, was certainly more interesting.



The above was a collapsed stairway leading to a broken jetty. Wonder if this jetty harbours any interesting stories, waiting to be uncovered...

There are lots of caves along the cliff. And here's one with a "stranded" beach volleyball.



There were also hundreds and thousands of cute little onch slugs (Onchidium sp.).



These slugs often blend in very well with the rocks. So do remember to keep a look out for them to avoid stepping onto them when you are out on rocky shores. Onchs graze on algae on the rocks at low tide. They have gills on their backsides to breathe air.

We also found some pitcher plants creeping over a tree.



And there was a lovely tidal pool among the rocks with carpets of beautiful zoanthids (aka colonial anemones) and fanworms.



Some zoanthids are known to contain toxins to protect themselves from predators, so avoid touching them, especially if you have wounds on your hand. And if you accidentally touched them, don't touch your eyes and mouth after that.

There were lots of barnacles on the rocks too. The ones below are star barnacles (Chthamalus sp.).



Although many people thought that they were shells, barnacles are actually crustaceans like prawns and crabs.

Finally, we reached the intertidal area that we usually visit. Below is the so-called 断魂崖 (i.e. Broken Soul Cliff).



Someone painted these words on the cliff.



On reaching the lagoon, we had a pleasant surprise waiting for us. It's tape seagrass (Enhalus acoroides) flowering season!



The picture on the left shows an "exploded" fruit, and the one on the left is the female flower with the male pollen floating around like styrofoam bits. Check out the Wildfilms blog and the annotated budak for more details.

We also found a few cute polka dot nudibranchs (Jorunna funebris).



Nudibranchs are slugs - snails without shells. These polka dot nudibranchs feed on sponges.

We also saw lot's of beautiful corals and anemones.



The top two were hard corals (not sure about the species though), while the bottom left is a soft coral (Sacrophyton sp.) and the bottom right is a branched anemone (Phymanthus sp.).

And while the Chinese New Year was already over for a while, Andy found a plastic container full of kueh balu! The strange things you can find on our shores sometimes...



We also saw several crabs. Below is a brown egg crab (Atergatis floridus).



Egg crabs are poisonous, so don't eat them! And that also include the red egg crab (Atergatis integerrimus) below.



Some how, the red egg crab always reminds me of the crab-like invid scouts from the Mospeada series of the anime Robotech. Those of you from my generation will know what I mean. Just compare the photo above with the one below...



Brings back good old memories... Don't you think so?

:)