What I like best about Tuas was the many soft corals and zoanthids. They were everywhere, just like flowers in a garden!
Some of the soft corals look really cute, like little puff balls.
Others look like a bunch of little flowers.
Apart from the softies, we have hard corals there too. The above was quite a huge colony - about 80m wide.
Many sea anemones, yet another kind flower-like animals, were spotted. The above unidentified sea anemone looks just like a glass flower! We saw several huge carpet anemones too.
There were a few red sea pens too, adding more colours to the already very colourful "underwater garden".
Just as brilliantly coloured were the sea fans, and Tuas has many of them.
Some of the sea fan colonies were really huge - almost a metre wide and tall!
The closely related sea whips we saw were not that colourful though.
These branch-like stuff were no sea fans but hydroids. They can give really painful stings, leaving scars that take a long time to heal.
Another animal which gives painful stings is this jellyfish.
We noticed a shrimp scampering around it, even among its tentacles!
Another shrimp-like animal is this one. Looks like a ghost shrimp to me, though the colour is not as bright as the ones I have seen before.
LK found this very pretty blue shrimp, my first time seeing it!
We found lots of these Laganum Sand Dollars (Laganum depressum), with many of them just below the sand surface.
This Rock Star (Asterina coronata) was the only sea star we found.
The Pink Thorny Sea Cucumber (Colochirus quadrangularis) can be found among the seaweed.
There were lots of Glassy Bubble Shells (Haminoea sp.) on the muddy-sandy substrate.
The Tiger Moon Snail (Natica tigrina) is supposed to be a fierce predator of other shells. Wonder if it feeds on bubble shell?
There were lots of Sea Squirts (Polycarpa sp.) at Tuas too.
Special thanks to Sheryl and Helen from Schering Plough for helping with the coordination work :)
Hey, how do u get there? I was at Raffles Marina and the nearby area but the entire coast was fenced up. Do I require a special permit in order to get in? If so, how do I get it? Thanks so much for ur help.
ReplyDeleteHi, we had to get permission to pass through the factory compound to get to the shore. They will only allow people to go through their compound there for research reasons.
ReplyDeleteI was planning to go there for an assignment for my module at NUS (Marine Biology). Does that count as a research reason? Haha..is there a specific protocol to follow? Documents required? Thanks again!
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