Offshore Southern Island Exploratory

For the past 2 days a few of us been waking up at 2am in order to catch the super low spring tide to walk on the shore area that usually submerge in sea water most of the times. To look at the animal there, diving is the only way. However, certain times of the year, when the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon are in a line. The gravitational forces of the Moon and the Sun both contribute to the tides. When this happen the high tide is very high and so as the low tide is super low. Only during this super low spring tide, walk at these area is possible.

For this time round, we visit an south island on Thursday & Friday. Below are some of the marine creature that we saw: An Arabic cowry (Cyprea arabica)Ovum cowrySea hare (probably Aplysia parvula)
Beautiful flatworm

And this is the only nudi that we found. . . a polka dot nudibranch (Jorunna funebris)

This snapping shrimt is having a very hairy pincers!
These 2 octopus having a good times!
This rival is too late so can only patiently wait for his turn. . .
There are lot of reef fisher include this butterfly fishmore butterfly fishScorpion fish of different colour variationI saw this at Hantu too. It looks like a leaf just floating on the surface of the water.

I'm not sure the id of this red reef crab. Probably a member of Family Xanthidae.
These two crabs are from Family GrapsidaeIs my first time to see a very beautiful giant reef worm (Eunice sp.) in such a close distance. a very long ribbon worm
These bunch of sea grape looks really fresh.
Apparently, the jelly fish season is still open. We still see jelly fish every now and then.
We saw 4 different species of feather star (also called Crinoids)

A stonefish sea cucumber (Actinopyga lecanora)A sypnatic sea cucumberI have no idea what star is this!
The close up photo of their undersideAn anemones shrimp on the rather rare anemone - Pizza anemones (Cryptodendrum adhaesivum )This is probably a sea cockroach (this one only about 2mm)
Another anemones whith shrimp and as well asthe anemones clownfish

Despite all the hassle to wake up early, the things that we see show that is worth it. We will be visiting another 2 different area for the next two days. I can't wait to go for another trip. :-)