At Least No One Will Be Counting Stars.....

in their dream tonight. Hmmm.....what am I talking about?

Haha.....you see, BlueWaterVolunteers' ReefFriends has a reef survey at Kusu island today. And because we are short of volunteers today, have to skip the fish and invertebrate surveys and only concentrate on the benthic survey. And at Kusu, on the Sea Fans, are full of FeatherSTARS clung onto them.


So for volunteer who is doing the invertebrate survey, will have plenty of FeatherSTARS to count. So much so, one will start to count stars in their dream after the survey. :op

Anyway, today we only did the Line-Intercept-Transect (LIT) benthic survey. The visibility in the water was only about 1m but not much currents. The huge pinkish Sea Fan that I have seen last year is still there, haha so are other Sea Fans and Whips and of course, the FeatherSTARS!

So here are other stuffs that I managed to take a pic of while doing the LIT;

Besides the FeatherSTARS, one can find these on the Sea Fans and Sea Whips too.


Looks like some Ascidians on this white Sea Whip.


I only saw Brittle Stars on the Sea Fans.....while Jeff found a small Basket Star on a Sea Fan at the shallow transect!


These, I think could be solitary Tubularian Hydroids (Ralpharia sp.) And they are said to be the preferred foods for adult Blue Dragon nudibranch (Pteraeolidia ianthina).

But I didn't see any Blue Dragon nudibranch today. In fact, this is the only kind of nudibranch that I came across today.


A Phyllidiella nudibranch (Phyllidiella sp.).

But I did saw quite a number of Flatworms.




From finger size to palm size (top-down)!


Did you notice anything special in this photo? Oh by the way, the Flatworm here is the same one in the previous pic.

Nothing special besides some white Sea whips and a Flatworm? Really?

Hehe.....Did you notice that one of the whips looks abit different? No?

Here's a closer look at the "whip" on the right hand side of the pic.


So have you figure it out? No?

Here's a closer look somemore.


Yes, it's a Pipefish!. This is the second time I have seen this kind of white Sea Whip mimic kind of Pipefish in our water. The first time was at Pulau Hantu. And I also noticed that it also mimic the way Sea Whips sway in the currents.

And of course last but not least,






Hard corals!

Oh.....by the way, also saw a Turtle when I was swimming back to transect 4. Suddenly, I was caught by a movement of something taken off below me. It happened very fast but still managed to catch a look of the flippers before it zoom into the deeper end of the reef. Haha.....thus no pic!:op