ReefFriends @ Sisters Islands NOT.....

We were supposed to do a reef survey at Sisters Islands last Saturday, but it was called off. The visibility of the water, according to Jeff, was impossible to do the survey. It was practically 0m vis!

Thus, we made a detour to Pulau Semakau,


and hoped that the vis would be better there. The water indeed looked much better from the surface at Semakau. But, we did not do any reef survey here either because one had been conducted earlier this year. So it turned out to be a practical session for us to practice our LIT (Line-Intercept-Transect) codes.

And off we went to practice our LIT codes with the two transect tapes that Jeff had laid. I was about half way through the first transect tape when someone tapped on my shoulder. It was Jeff and he asked to borrow my camera. Turned out that he wanted to take a shot of this which he had spotted.


It’s an Ocellated Sea Cucumber (Stichopus ocellatus). One of the distinctive feature for this Sea Cucumber is the 'eyespots' on its body wall. The 'eyespots' are actually dark papillae surrounded by a white ring.

While waiting for my buddy to finish her LIT at the end of Transect Tape 1, I decided to take some pic and close-up of corals.


There was a Long-Spined Sea Urchin too.


It feeds on algae that grow on dead corals and is active at night.


Here I was trying to take a shot of a False Clown Anemonefish but somehow the fish was very camera-shy lor.

Towards the end of the dive, also came across these two:


Polka-dotted Nudibranch(jorunna funebris). There’s two of them here. One big and one tiny weeny one.


Sap-sucking Sea Slug(Thurdilla sp)

This concluded the last RF Reef Survey for this year. Looking forward to another new year of Reef survey ahead!