Singapore Celebrate Our Reefs

It was 10am on a national holiday and the carpark leading to Botany Centre already form a long que, so I detour to enter by Nassim Gate and walk few mnutes back to Botany Centre for the launch of IYOR Singapore.
The function room was packed with volunteers, reef friends & enthusiast.

Booth set up by TeamSeagrass
Want to know more about coral nursery in Singapore? Make sure you pay a visit there.
Hantu Blogger will be more than happy to share with you anything about Pulau Hantu especially those beautiful marine animals that stay under sea. You will be surprised what you can find there!
Star Trackers & Naked Hermit Crabs
Want to adopt a beautiful sea star?
The most popular station is this Colouring station.
All the beautiful drawings for colouring are drawn by CH(centre in black t-shirt)
"Life and Death at Chek Jawa" - talk by Loh Kok Sheng“Wishing upon a Star” on Knobbly sea stars talk by Tan Sijie.

Pay a visit to Singapore Celebrates our Reefs if you have not done so.

Beautiful Snails at Semakau

With a average shell length of about 0.4cm, this beautiful and fascinated snails are easily overlooked. While on our exploratory trip this morning, the number of varations keep increasing until I loose count of them as I walk along the rock wall.
This beautiful snails are called Clithon oualaniensis usually found at brackish-water environment.
This polymorphic snails comes in many different colours and patterns.

According to 'A Guide To Seashore Life', no two shells are identical!
I really don't know how many variations are there in just Semakau alone.

It seems that the predominant colour here is black & white, follow by yellow, red & pink.

Heart shape patterns is the more common patterns follow by tounge shape, bar & lines.More of the different pattern shellsIsn't it interesting?

Shore of Manado Island

I was away last week to Manado for my long awaited dive trip. However, this posting is not on my dive experience but rather on the things I saw while not diving. All the photos below are taken out of water without getting wet.

I walk to the jetty after dinner to see any interesting critters after sun set. When I shine my tourch at the water, all kinds of plankton attracted by light and soon gather around the area under my torch.

First is the very tiny insects like plankton and follow by larger tranlucent shrimp like critters.

Soon, the ribbon worm were also attracted not sure by the plankton or my light.

There are lots of climber crabs on the side of the wall.

Cowry and cone snails also can be seen every where.

Hermit crabs and some even carry two large anemones on their back for protection.

I'm shock to see this juvenile mooray eel here.

Juvenile cat fish gather in big school to confuse their predators to increase the chances of surviving.

Not to mention sea urchin and juvenile scorpion fish. I also found lots of juvenile sole fish, lion fish and even stone fish. What interest me the most is able to see the banded boxer shrimp (cleaner shrimps) in actions.

I dip my satay stick (from my dinner earlier) in the water and almost immediately the shrimp came forward to offer me his service.

The shrimp start to clean my satay stick that I offered.

It only took less than a minute to clean up my satay stick.

Well, after the cleanng service, I was offer a free show perform by this pair of boxer shrimps. The larger shrimp (with blue colour, female) take the lead start to stroke the male...

They than move closer to their home... and here's the clip showing their courtship...

After the courtship, they move to their home sweet home to continue the unfinished business...

So the next time when you go to any holiday resort that near the beach, check it out at night. You might something interesting!