Langkawi - Coastal Stuff

Here's Part 2 of my Langkawi trip. Rather unfortunately, I think the shore near my resort was probably not the richest in terms of biodiversity, and so we only saw a few interesting stuff. If I ever go back to Langkawi again, I will probably choose to stay around Pantai Cenang instead of Pantai Kok - the former seemed more promising for marine life during our short visit there during mid tide.


This looks like an Arabian cowrie (Cypraea arabica) to me, though hard to say for sure since there are a few cowries with similar patterns.


Have no idea what sea snail this is. It has a very long and muscular foot, and moves around rather quickly.


This huge jellyfish was found stranded and dead on the sand.


There are lots of tiny little brittle stars on it. Wonder if they could be commensal brittle stars?


We saw many of the usual black sea cucumber (Holothuria leucospilota).


And one little black long-spined sea urchin (Diadema setosum).


We only saw one sea star - this sand star (Astropecten sp.). Guess the beach near our resort was just not the right place for sea stars, so I was really a little disappointed.


We found a heart cockle (Corculum cardissa) though. I was quite glad to see it, since I had not seen one for quite some time already.


The moon crab (Ashtoret lunaris) is more commonly seen at night, so we were rather surprised to find one in shallow water on such a hot and sunny day.


We found many of these crabs at the upper shore. They live in burrows which resemble those of the ghost crabs. Not exactly sure what species they are though.


At the rocky shore, we also saw a few red stone crabs (could be Menippe rumphi), and lots of Sally-light-foot crabs (Grapsus albolineatus).


We also saw a pacific reef rgret (Egretta sacra) in the dark morph. Some pacific reef egrets are white in colour.


We also found time to visit the mangroves. This is the Ceriops tagal which can also be found in Singapore.


I also finally get to see Bruguiera parviflora in the wild. While it is rather rare in Singapore, it appears to be quite common here on Langkawi.


And on our way back to the hotel, we saw this huge cement factory.