Taking Stuff After Stuff @ Pulau Sekudu.....

And by that I meant taking photos not the animals home. :p Cos they belong to their natural habitat!

We paid a visit to this small island just off Chek Jawa this morning. Access to the island has been restricted and a permit is needed to land on it.

And boy, it was a fruitful trip as we saw plenty of stuffs like;

Seastars!


A little Rock Seastar or Crown Seastar



Various sizes of the Cake Seastar.


The shore is also littered with plenty of the Sand stars.


Came across a CUTE little Pinkish Scaly Seastar.....


and another slightly bigger one with a different colouration.


Haha.....in fact they were both found just next to each other!

Besides the Seastars, also saw some of its relatives.....like;



A few recently dead Heart Urchins.....


and the pink one was slightly bigger than a tennis ball!


Another kind of Urchin, Pencil Sea Urchin.


EO found the rare Pink Sand Dollar.


Managed to see quite a few Fan shells with their shell open apart filter feeding.


A couple of the Pinky-red Moon Snail were seen. It has such delicated pattern on its foot!


There were also the Miliaris coweries. Here's two of them.

There were quite a number of Nudibranch sighted too!


This maybe a Beaded nudibranch (Hoplodoris sp.).


This is probably a juvenile Rose nudibranch (Dendrodoris fumata).


Looks like a small Asian Cerberilla nudibranch (Cerberilla asamusiensis).


A Denison's nudibranch (Dendrodoris denisoni) with its brilliant electric blue spots.


One tiny black Gymnodoris nudibranch (Gymnodoris sp.).

Besides the nudibranch, there were also other Sea slugs;


This looks like the Geographic Sea hare (Syphonota geographica).



Two kinds of Sap sucking slug. The top one is a Ornate leaf slug (Elysia ornata) whereas I have no idea about the ID of the bottom one.

On the large patches of seaweed, you can see strange creatures such as these.....



but all to0 soon.....


the sun rises and it was time to leave the island.

Stripy Says.....

Happy Earth Day !!!!!
*Meow*

Partially Wet @ Pulau Hantu.....

The visibility at Pulau Hantu still looks good at the North Jetty this morning since my previous dive 2 weeks ago.


But today.....I was not there to dive into that blue instead I was there for an intertidal trip. So I got myself only submerged in water that was only up to my knee level. That's why only partially wet lor.



So what sightings were encountered?


Saw pretty lots of the Red Crinoid/Featherstar. I had lost counts after seeing about 10.


Arghhh!!!....This kind of Jellyfish is back in season (saw them yesterday at Pulau Semakau too)! To those divers who are going for any dive trip in local water in recent weeks, please remember to wear your long wetsuit unless your threshold for pain and itch is very high. Gosh.....I can still remember the pain.




Pretty Anemones.....Looks like a (Top) Branched-tentacle Anemone (Phymanthus sp.), (Middle) A Bubble-tip Anemone (Entacmaea quadricolor) and (Bottom) A Magnificant Anemone (Heteractis magnifica). But did not see any Anemonefish in the latter two.

Sam found one black Anemone in the lagoon.


It's looks like a Haeckel's Anemone (Actinostephanus haeckeli). And it was this big;


See the size of it compared to the tip of my bootie?





Nudibranch! (Top-down): A Bohol nudibranch (Discodoris boholiensis), A Black-margined nudibranch (Glossodoris atromarginata), A couple of Polka-dot nudibranch (Jorunna funebris) and the last one looks like a Varicose Phyllid nudibranch (Phyllidia varicosa).

And talking about Molluscs, Alicia found this in the lagoon;


Hmmmm.....what is it?!?!

Hur? Hur? Hur?

Here's a photo of the animal in full view;
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.
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.
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It's a Sundial snail!!! My first sighting of a live one!!! Wow!!!

And here's a video of it.

Music credit : 《太陽》by 陳綺貞(Cheer Chen)

It's a good trip indeed even though I was only half-submerged in water.....:op

The Okenia Nudibranch With 3 Gills Is.....

Photos courtesy of Ivan Choong

The ID for the Okenia nudibranch with 3 gills has been answered. It is a juvenile Purple Okenia (Okenia purpurata) according to Dr Bill of The Sea Slug Forum.

See his reply HERE. Apparently, the number of gills will increase as the nudibranch grows in size till maturity.

Also from Ivan's photo, he was interested to know the mass that the above nudibranch was on. If the silt-covered mass turn out to be the Okenia's bryozoan food, Amathia tortuosa, then it would be the first record of this bryozoan outside Australia. Cool.....so this mean a new record of this bryozoan for Singapore?

Let's hope Ivan had a clearer picture of that mass. :o)

Updates On Okenia Nudibranch.....

I have sent a message on the sighting of the Okenia nudibranch (with 5 gills) during The Hantu Bloggers 5th Anniversay dive to Dr Bill of The Sea Slug Forum for advice.

Dr Bill replied that it is almost certainly that the nudibranch in the above photo is Okenia purpurata.

After reading Dr Bill's reply, I have realised that I had made a mistake (which I have already corrected) in my last post about the Okenia nudibranch stating that the forum said that Okenia purpurata is Australia endemic. Which, of course now is not as per Dr Bill's reply.

And also with our discovery of this nudibranch from Singapore, it now suggests a wider Indo-West Pacific range distribution of this critter. And the possible reason for it to end up in Singapore is that this species, like some other species of Okenia, is a 'tramp' species travelling the world on the bottom of boats in association with its food bryozoan. Ahhhh.....now that's not a surprise considering that we have so many ships visiting Singapore port each day.

And so the ID for the Okenia with 5 gills is solved. The mystery remains for the one with 3 gills.