Back to Beting Bronok

The original plan was to visit Raffles Lighthouse, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, we had to change the location to Beting Bronok instead. To be frank, I wasn't really disappointed with the last minute change, but was in fact rather happy as I had not visited Beting Bronok for the past 3 years.


We found at least 6 brown-spotted morays (Gymnothorax reevesii), most of them stranded in shallow tidal pools, and two of them were even stranded on dry land due to the low spring tide.


Pencil sea urchins (Prionocidaris sp.) were quite abundant here.


There is also a good population of knobbly Sea Stars (Protorester nodosus). I saw at least 20 of them.


The most delightful star find must be this red cake sea star (Anthenea aspera). While we found several cake sea stars here, this was the prettiest!


We also found a few Gymnanthenea laevis sea stars.


Like most of our northern shores, the biscuit sea star (Goniodiscaster scaber) can be found in large numbers.


At the sandy areas, many sand stars (Astropecten sp.) were spotted.


We have seen this sea cucumber many times on our northern shores, but still has not confirm its ID.


The sandfish sea cucumber (Holothuria scabra) is another sea cucumber commonly found here. It is also the sea cucumber that you can often find in Chinese restaurants. However, it is actually toxic, and need to be properly processed before they can be consumed.


I spotted a Haeckeli sea anemone (Actinostephanus haeckeli). A member of the hell's fire anemone family (Actinodendronidae), this anemone can give very painful stings. I have seen this previously at Changi beach and Semakau, though the one at Changi was green in colour.


One really nice thing about Beting Bronok is that there are lots of pretty soft corals.


The sandy substrate with lots of seagrass and seaweed also means there are lots of sea pens too.


Here's another sea pen. Sea pens are colonial animals with a primary polyp (the middle stalk) and secondary polyps (the feathery bits by the sides of the primary polyp).


Huge flatworms (Acanthozoon sp.) were easily found here, many of which were about the length of my palm, and several were stranded on dry land due to the low tide.


Also stranded on dry land were many octopuses.


The onyx cowrie (Cypraea onyx) is very common on this shore too. The shell of this snail is very smooth and pretty, and it is usually covered by the mantle, protecting it from being scratched. The mantle also repairs and helps build the shell.


Siyang spotted this frog shell (Bufonaria rana).


It took me a while to find this huge melon shell (Melo melo). This shell is often collect for food by fishermen, and the empty shell used to bale water. It is able to produce non-nacreous pearls valued by some collectors.


Several nudibranchs can be found here, including the blue dragon (Pteraeolidia ianthina).


Agnes found this pretty Cuthona sibogae nudibranch.


A nudibranch which I have not seen for quite a while - Thordisa villosa.


This huge Atagema spongiosa was about more than 10cm long.


The Polybranchia orientalis is a sap-sucking slug which can be really well-camouflaged if it's among seaweed or seagrass.


The hairy sea hare (Bursatella leachii) seemed to be in season, and we saw a number of them.


Noticed that I hardly post photos of clams, so I shall end this series of photos with a Venus clam (Marcia sp.).

All in all, it was great to be back on Beting Bronok!