28 Jun St. John's Intertidal Walk

Another backlog dated as stated in my title.

After 4 consecutive days of intertidal walks from Tue to Fri, I was really shag... Thus decided to call off my planned trip to Tanah Merah with KS. If not my low immunity due to the lack of sleep will probably make me an excellent candidate for the flu virus. Sorry for the dropout KS.

But I am back again on Sun for a guided walk at St. John's with the public.

This is the most common star in local waters thus known as the Common Sea Star, Archaster typicus. Many stars, including this one can secrete anti-fouling chemicals to prevent harmful organisms from growing on them. Surprisingly at least for me, cholesterol is one of such chemicals. At least it have some use on the outside rather than as fatty desposits in the body.

Fiddler crabs are a common sight at low tide because it is a time for them to feed on the nutritious sand particles. A study by Dr Dan showed that their long eyestalk are actually organs that give the cue to stop feeding or else they will gorge themselves silly. And thats what happened what he removed the eyes (eww..). The crab above is a Orange Fiddler Crab (Uca vocans).

We found several burrowing Breasted Moon Snails (Polinices mammatus) in this sandy lagoon too. I guess there is no need for any explanations as to how it got it's name.

One of my participants found this weird looking Annelid worm creeping on the sand. This is my first time seeing one in green colour.

Once again, I managed to find one elusive Anemone Shrimp (Periclimenes brevicarpalis) hiding under a Carpet Anemone (Stichodactyla haddoni). These shrimps just like the clownfishes have a layer of mucus coating that prevents the stinging tentacles of the anemone from firing at them.

A rather common sight on rocky shores are the Turban Shells. This species should be Turbo bruneus with its slightly bumpy trapdoor. Apologises for these low quality pictures. Really hard to concentrate on focusing while guiding.

Here is a Land Hermit Crab (Coenobita sp.) fitting snugly inside a nerite shell.

This Flatworm, possibly Pseudobiceros uniarborensis is known to have two penises. This definitely increased the level of difficultly during their art of penis fencing!

Two portions of the rocky cliff were coated with a layer of cement, possibly to stabilise the region from the recent landslide. In fact, most of today's participants had to postponed their earlier bookings in March due to this particular incident.

I forgot to take a group photo of my group, the spider conch hence I will just show this picture of them filling of their feedback form.

Anyway, I got minus a point from one of my participants, Zenn at the category for being a knowledgeable guide as I do not know how to ID a fish. Ha, that is definitely a group that I really have to work on. Anyway, if you are reading this, I managed to find out that fish's ID. It is a Sweetlip Fish (Plectorhinchus gibbosus), named due to it's irresistable thick sexy lips. :)