Saturday, August 30, 2008

Starry Morning at Changi

It was 3+am when we arrived at Changi beach. The weather today is fantastic as it has been raining in the past few morning. There were lots of green sponges growing on the rock surface. We found lots of rock star (Asterina coronata) on the rock surface and also the shore. The rock stars seems doing well here compare to other shore that I've visited. SY found another one in pink. I saw this 6-armed sand star (Luidia penangensis) on the high shore. SY found another in pink colour. Could this be Luidia hardwicki? We saw lots of smaller sized comb (Astropecten sp.) sea stars. Strangely, we didn't see any adult comb sea star!
Biscuit (Goniodiscaster scaber) stars also quite common near the sea grass bed. We also saw another sea star that very similar to biscuit star but with more knob and spiny - Gymnanthenea laevis sharing the same sea grass bed.Not forgetting another biscuit looking star with larger body size - Cake sea star (Anthenea aspera). Wow! Is really a starry morning!
As we walk along the shore line, I saw quite a number of empty horse shoe crab shell or moult, both the mangrove (with round tail on top) and the coastal (triangle tail at the bottom of the photo on top). Ball sea cucumber is another animal that doing quite well over the shore here.
I'm not sure the id of this black sea cucumber.This strange looking 'stick' is actually a sea pen with their tentacles retracted when out of water.
This is my 1st time seeing this branching anemones (Actinostephanus haeckeli) in local water. It seem to be irritated by the fishing line.A close-up look on this weild looking anemones.See something familiar? This anemones is enjoying his breakfast...Oh! Is a hermit crab! I wonder if the anemones take in the shell as well or how the anemones seperate the hermit crab from its shell?There is another crab - elbow crab staying at the side of the anemones. Does the elbow crab immune from the anemones stings???There are lots of tube anemones with different colours.The photo on top showing fan shell with their mantle out from their shell.There are lots of flower crabs roam freely the entire tidal area searching for food.This is the close-up look of the leaf porter crab (Neodorippe callida)This eel-tailed catfish was stranded by the down going tide.This butterfly fish was hardly bigger than a 5 cent coin!!

As always, Changi - always so lifely and with full of suprises!

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