Sunny & Nice Dive @ Pulau Hantu.....

Unlike the two previous wet wet dives at Pulau Satumu and at Pulau Hantu last month, today's Hantu Bloggers dive was done with Mr Sun smiling over us! It was warm and the vis was a good one of 3-4m!

My volunteer guide was Jimmy and he found couple of creatures that are first sightings for me!

Here's the first one;


It's a Xeno Crab(Xenocarcinus sp.) on a Sea Whip!


Lots of Icon Seastars litter on the seabed.


With a few of them having parasitic Sea Snails on them.


And came across two such tiny tiny little stars! Here's one for the scale of size with my finger (the black thingy).


There were lots of Filefish too!


A small and thin Ocellate Pipefish.


At the shallow end, Acropora crab (Looks like Tetralia nigrolineata) hiding among the branching Stag Horn coral(Acropora sp.).


And on the deeper end, a Sea Pen rooted itself into the soft silty seabed.




Only small Flatworms were seen today.


I was on a lookout for Allied Cowries and was happy to see two such cowries on Sea Whips

And of course, Nudibranch too!


Lots of the Blue Dragon nudibranch (Pteraeolidia ianthina)!



The common sightings of Phyllid nudibranch (Phyllidia elegans-Top, Phyllidiella pustulosa-Bottom)


A grain size Dermatobranchus nudibranch (Dermatobranchus sp.)


Many-lined Chromodoris nudibranch (Chromodoris lineolata).


Saw two Bornella nudibranch (Bornella sp.). This one was crawling on the rubbles and while.....


the other one was hiding among the Hydroids.


The Cuthona nudibranch (Cuthona Sibogae) is another kind of nudibranch that you can find on Hydroids too.



Couple of Gymnodoris nudibranch (Gymnodoris sp.) were spotted. Hmmm....wonder if the bottom one had just lay the egg ribbons (orange stuffs on the top left corner)?


This gotta be the biggest Tritonia nudibranch (Tritonia bollandi) that I have came across at Hantu so far. This individual was about 5cm long. Not very well camouflaged in an orange Sea Fan!


Not far away, a second one was spotted by Jimmy on a Sea Whip. It was as big as the first one.

And lastly, here's the second "first sighting" for me found by Jimmy;


Looks like a Spotted Hypselodoris nudibranch (Hypselodoris maculosa).