Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Weekend at Our Shores…

I am back after all the trips to Kusu and Tuas over the weekend. This year first morning trips have started out with a bang. We saw a lot of wonderful stuffs (See that why I have said it’s party time and it’s worth the sacrifice of sleeping a couple of hours less).

At Kusu, we were there around 5am and we headed to the area below the jetty. But it was a search for the rest of the crews for me before I finally found them at the jetty. Well…this was due to some communication breakdown when we were deciding where to start. Thus, I ended up (with another crew member) searching for the gangs from one lagoon to another. A great workout though. :O)

As I was approaching the jetty, I felt something sharp poking through my left booty and got me on the tip of my fourth toe. First thought occurred to me was “STONGFISH “! Oh My God! Please don’t let it be a stonefish! So I stopped and looked around but don’t see any moving “stone”. Next…try to sense if my left leg felt any pain. Nope…Ahh….a relief….but still have to be very careful…so lookout…lookout.

We saw two Scorpion fish (think one is a False Scorpion fish). We have mistaken the second one, as a stonefish but was later ID as a Scorpion fish. Phew!!! But it the same danger we are talking about even it was a Scorpion fish. No one would like to step on one of these guys right? I spotted a catfish but it swam away before our cameraman could get to it. We also shoot some footage on NEMO among an anemone before we have to climb the seawall and head back to the hut as the tide was coming in. Later on…we went down to the lagoon and there were huge land hermit crab, moonsnails with spotted foot and a seahare.

Next day at Tuas, we were at Raffles Marina around 6am. We were waiting for our boat ride out to sea at the pontoon and as we shined our torches at the water surface, we saw something flapping. We thought it was a flatworm but upon a closer look…yes it’s a worm…not a flat but fire one. It’s a FIREWORM! It gives you a nasty fire burning sensation if you touch it. Nonetheless, it is beautiful. We shoot some footage of it too.

Upon reaching the beacon, we set out to find stuffs to shoot. And boy! Highlight of the day was a frogfish. We also saw flatworms, the fireworm, carpet eel blenny, blue-spotted stingray etc.

As first day at Tuas turned out to be a good one, I decided to extend my trip to Tuesday and that mean taking half a day leave. And guess what??? Second day was equally great as the first. We saw seahorses (yes…horses not horse), hydroid shrimps, sea spider and an adorable nudibranch.

Wow…I just can’t wait for the next morning trip to start.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home