Location: Sekudu island
My first trip to Sekudu was blessed with good weather and filled with many baby animals! I did much more close-ups for this trip. Many new animal sightings for me - baby Knobbly seastar, pink sand dollar, nudibranch, many anemones and sea pens!
Check out Ria's annual check up post for Sekudu, Chay Hoon's post and Kok Sheng's post to find out what other animals were seen.
To start with, the islet has many carpet anemones like the one below and taking a closer look at each anemone, you will find shrimps like this one (Bottom right).
It was like the swimming anemone season and I managed to spot this smaller one amongst the other big ones. In this photo, you can spot the oral opening in the central disk. The anemone swims by pulsating the body in a spiral motion. Too bad I didn't get to see them swim this time round.
Other anemones that I spotted but not too sure of their identities partially because I did not photograph their columns.
Juvenile carpet anemone?
Another tiny blob beside a hermit crab...
Glass bead anemone?
Unknown?
Unknown?
I spotted one that was fully open but alas, camera died on me... Peacock anemone?
Red shrimp! Almost reminds me of the cooked ones. :)
Echinoderms are littered everywhere! The most common seastar here is probably the Painted Seastar (Below). Check out the tube feet in the second photo! Those tiny translucent appendages are used to translocate the star for locomotion or burrowing.
Crown seastars also affectionately called the rock stars, were surprisingly not found on the rocks but amongst the sand and seaweed. This one below is the uncommon red morphs...
And I also spotted the common brown morphs...
The sandfish sea cucumber was just lying around... :)
Other tiny cuties were the short black spined urchins and the pencil urchins - both almost 1 cm big!
It was also my first time seeing the sea pen! They came in different colours and different features such as one can be more spiky than the other. Check out the feathery appendages. Usually these animals will contain commensals in them, but sadly, only the porcelein crabs were found this time.
This phoronid worms are such a sight! I had seen them before during my dives at hantu... Like most filter-feeders, the feathery structures (Right photo) aids in capturing more feed.
Like any other shores, crabs play a role as one of the top predators. Below here shows the commonly sighted crabs (From top left: Stone crab, right: spoon-pincered crab and bottom left: swimming crab).
One of the more iconic molluscs that I found was this pink moon snail. Their shell range between 1.5 - 2 cm wide. Earlier in the trip, I also found a ball moon snail but no photos were taken.
It was a great trip overall! Can't wait to go Jong...
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