No Allied Cowrie Sighted.....

On Sunday, I joined The Hantu Bloggers' monthly dive at Pulau Hantu. Before the dives, I was asked to look out for Allied cowries on the Sea Fans/Whips.

But alas, unlike last month's dive, I did not come across any despite searching high and low on every Sea Fans/Whips that I came by.

Nonetheless, it was still a good dive with sightings like these and a turtle coming up to the surface for air when we were doing our surface interval!

Night Dive @ Mainland Singapore.....

On Saturday, we were back to the dive site that we have checkout two weeks ago. This time it was a night dive!

So here are my sightings;


Cave corals are aplenty! I love the pretty yellowish polyps!



Fishes are so much easier to shoot at night!

We were told that Seahorse has been sighted at this site before. We did not get to see one during the day dive but we saw at least 3 of them on the night dive. And here one of them that I have sighted.


This Tigertail Seahorse was hanging upside-down on the sponge when I came across. I only managed to take 3 shots before it swam away. And here's a close-up;

Sea Cucumber can be seen on the wall or tuck away between the encrusting creatures like Sponges and Ascidians.



And some of them were feeding. Trapping food particles in the water using their tentacles.

On the Sea Fans,


Small Decorator crabs can be seen moving about.


And little Shrimpy too!

For more sightings of the dive, see The Hantu Bloggers' post.

Nice Checkout Dive @ Mainland Singapore.....

Was invited by Debby of The Hantu Bloggers to do a checkout dive at a mainland site yesterday. Quite impressed by the stuffs that we saw in this kind of man-made structures environment.

So here what we came across;



Lots of Soft Coral!



Sea Fans are in abundance here!



So are the many types of Sea Squirt and Ascidians!







Hard Corals growing on the structures are mostly the size of a saucer plate if not slightly bigger.


Hmmm...is this a Corallimorph?





Lots of fishes too. Some swimming in the open while some hiding among the crevices. (Top-down : Kite Butterflyfish, Yellow Pipefish, Scorpionfish and False Scorpionfish)




Couple of Sea Cucumbers.


On the seabed, Gong Gong can be spotted.



Palm-sized Flatworms were seen too.



We didn't see any nudibranch during the first dive. But we came across two kinds during the second dive. Top one is the Black-margined nudibranch (Glossodoris atromarginata) and the bottom one is a pair of Many-lined Chromodoris nudibranch (Chromodoris lineolata).

Last but not least, the highlight for me would be this little Basket Star (I think)! It would be my second time seeing one and my first one underwater!