Thursday, June 7, 2007

Day 3 with the hermit crabs @ Sentosa

Its Day 3 and the final stretch of intertidals with the Naked Hermit Crabs! Today is the day for the friends of NHC to come and explore this amazing little known cliffy shores at Sentosa.

We start off in the burning sun at the adventure trail with my two diving friends Nick and Crys (below) who came to support me. Thanx!

Here are they..



We came pass this cotton tree (kapok tree as ID by July) near underwater world. Take a look at his marvellous blog for more info :)



The beautiful thing about this place from other intertidal areas is the naturally formed reddish cliffs and small caves. The color is due to oxidation of iron present in the rocks.



And how about pitcher plants hanging down from the cliff? It is also named after our founder, Sir Stamford Raffles! More info on pitchers pls refer to my earlier post.

Cute little onchs are hard to spot about the rocks cos they camouflage so damn well! But if u just focus abit, there are actually hundreds of them crawling all over the rocks! So be careful when stepping on the rocks! Rem Ley Kun or Crystal called them as Mr Ong :p

Heres Mr Ong, flipped over, showing its muscular foot. Mr Ong is actually a kind of slug that breathe air on their backside! Gee...gross...

As I told KS before, if theres just one thing new that I see at the intertidals I will be very happy lao. But theres many first times today so... :D

#1 A branched tentacle anemone feeding on a crab. I wonder how long it will take to ingest the crab.


#2 One of the most posionous mosiac crab (Lophozozymus pictor) around this region. People have died eating them as the toxins cannot be remove through cooking. Another interesting thing is that the red intensity of their shells seems to reflect their level of toxicity.


#3 Phyllodesmium briareum nudibranch as ID by KS. Apparently this nudibranch doesnt sting, and it has symbiotic algae which it acquired from the soft corals which it feeds on.


#4 Normally I won't bat an eye to fishes, especially small ones. But this tiny creature has an amazing ability, it can change its skin tone! from a dull grey color to a fiery electric blue! Amazing right?

A fine day at Sentosa again. That comes to the end of this stretch of Naked Hermit Crabs trips, so happy to get those cute pins! Looking forward to my next collectable pin at Semakau next week. ;p

Group and Onch photos are taken from Crys album, thanx!

4 comments:

DreamerJuly said...

Wow,
I've never seen an anemone feeding 'live'. Great find~

Also, Thanks again the gift of the metal sticks. =)

Cheers,
July

TS said...

Np dude :)

Kok Sheng said...

yay...another holder of the metal chopsticks with compliments from siyang

Ivan said...

I was locked in battle for dunno how long with that %$#^@ mosaic crab; it was hiding in a coral and nearly stole both my chopsticks. Luckily I was wearing gloves and ended up sticking my hand in and just grabbing the crab. *grumble*

The little baby damselfish (I think they're damselfish) are so cute!

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