at pulau semakau again…

was actually quite excited abt a near night survey… anyway, when we went there, sun was still up…

 

there’re 2 kites in the background, if you can see…

 we layed the line and started doing out transects… S came over to show us flowers of seagrasses…! yep, seagrasses are flowering plants, just like the normal grasses we see commonly…

 

since these things cant pollinate in water, the male flowers actually break off and float around until they find a female flower to pollinate… talk abt sexual reproduction!

after our transects, we walked…. and saw usual corals…

 

 

and we saw nice anemonies…

and sponges….

 

this is a conch snail… when i was holding it, at some point, tiny eyes on a narrow ‘pole’ started sticking out. that was when i knew it wasnt a hermit crab… cute snail…

and many gobies…….. but of course, we couldnt take a photo of any cos they are just too hyper.

i did get this one photo though… maybe the fish was old and dying, maybe it was just in too dry a patch of sand.

and this is why i still love my camera…

this didnt look like a normal goby, but someone said it probably is. check out the reflective spots… cool isnt it!

i actually spotted a red egg crab, but i wasnt quiet enough… scared away that big crab. though this small crab wasnt afraid of me.. 

this is a flower crab

star sightings of the day for me were the knobbly sea stars……… there were 2 of them… my first knobbly sighting… was so happy… its a heavy sea star…

check out the tube feet it uses to move…

 

i would gladly consider this my best photo of the day, cos i think its simply beautiful!

and when stressed, it pees on me!!!!!

 

haha… Iv said, its not pee. its just that sea stars are 60-70% water, so when they are stressed (like ppl excitedly holding and passing it around), its cells constrict and that squeezes out the water in its body..

 the back of it..

and another knobbly we saw……….

 

sun was setting, and tide started to come in.

as we were heading back, M rolled out this humungous sea cucumber… its huge i tell you!!!! relative to an average guy’s hand, this sea cucumber was huge! haha……

 by the time we cleared the waters, it was dark. the 2 navy guys walked through the jungle trail without any torch, and i considered offering them my extra torch. but then i realised that would be dumb cos they probably went through jungle warfare before and could survive under the moonlight… duh!

while waiting for the vans to bring us back to the main dock, the mozzies there were happy to feed on warm human blood for abt 20 min….. even i got bitten, and i usually dont. darn those brats!

well, anyway……… other ppl got to see more exciting stuff… like horseshoe crab moults (im sure the HSC R & R ppl will be happy to note). and they saw octopus. didnt see any this time round….

here’s an account on seagrass blog. and more photos and accounts of it here.

 (when the posts are up on the other 2 sites, i’ll link them)

~ by misspegasus on October 18, 2009.