Saturday, April 12, 2008

Green Knobbly Sea Star @ Changi

After the heavy downpour yesterday , we have to cancel our plan for the Changi exploration. I was basically like taking shower with all my clothing on :-)

Well, I'm back at Changi again today with fair sky and I'm the guide for Boon Lay Sec students.
At the begining of the walk, we saw lots of skeleton of white sea urchin on the shore like the one showing on top. Not sure this is normal or due to some other reasons...

Other than this empty skeleton, the shore is very much alive!


There are quite a number of Striped hermit crabs (Clibanarius infraspinatus). They are staying in all the different shells that is available on the shore. As hermit crabs is not true crab and having a long, soft abdomen. They need a shell to protect them from predator and from drying out during low tide. Any empty shell even broken one is potential a home for hermit crab, so do not remove any shell from the shore.

The Spiney Sand Stars (sea stars are not fish, so we don't call them star fish but sea stars instead) is also abundance on the shore. Sand stars are burrowing predatory sea stars that can burrow into sands in seconds.

This tiny sea star probably a busicuit sea star.What excite me the most is this baby knobbly sea star. The usual Knobbly sea star that we see in Semakau is red or in the range of orange and browish. But this one is in GREEN! Is my first time to see a green knobbly sea star! Could this be another different species??This is my second time seeing this slimy sea cucumber. This is probably a Caudinids.As usual, there are lots of thorny red sea cucumber (Colochirus quadrangularis) on the sea grass lagoon.This may look like a sea cucumber but they are not. It is a solitary sea squirt. Sea squirt are filter feeders and has bands of muscles along its body. When constrict, it squirt out waters when disturbed or to get rid of wastes.

This colourful animal is noble volute (Cymbiola nobilis). The paterns on the shell like a Chinese moutain drawings is their distinctive identification.

This crab has a pair of legs with paddle shape use for swimming thus called Swimming crabs.

We also saw different kind of bivalves shell, white clam and green mussel attached to a plastic drum in the 2nd photo.

A group photo on the shore after the walk at Changi. Another excting walk at Changi indeed.

1 comment:

  1. Cool! Excited to see the green juvenile knobbly. Also glad to hear that the sand stars are abundant at Changi :)

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