It was a pleasant trip with a cool breeze... I found myself looking out for the half valves of giant clams... Over at the coral rubble zone, you are bound to see much dead coral rubbles as well as old 'rusted' shells from bivalves and gastropods... To date, we have only see three types (from top to bottom): Hippopus hippopus, Tridacna crocea and T. squamosa. The study of old shells is called taphonomy, and these types of studies help us understand how the old reefs appear and the substratum types. The 'wholeness' of the shells can also help us understand the environmental conditions of the reefs. I would hope to check out the shells that I have collected so far!
Besides the 'living dead', I saw quite a few interesting animals... First, it would be this annoying little squid that refuse to keep still.. Instead, it kept raising its arms and tentacles at the light spot...
Amongst the grass, I found this unusual shy fish (High Fin Fang Blenny)... Unlike the usual blennies that has a flattened head with eyes on top of the head, this blenny has a elongated mouth region. It still has two long, undisrupting dorsal fins (a blenny trait).
Another unusual suspect, unknown anemone. It was a small one (5cm diameter). One unique feature would be the bubble-like tips on the tentacles. It looked rather squished up...
Two cute little moon snails. But look closely at the mantle mottle... They are quite clearly different! :) I have no idea what species are these ones...
The highlight of the trip was probably the stars....
I found quite a number of young Knobbly seastars... And one with a size of 3 inches across! Tonight, they seemed to have all come out from somewhere... Feeding frenzy?
Next up would be this spiny seastar - more frequently seen on the Northern shores... Wonder if it's the same species?
Finally, after 1.5 years, I got to see the Pentaceraster sp. again.. This time an orange one, but it got chewed!
It does appear to me that the corals and seagrass are doing quite well... Bleaching seemed to be on the recovery path (which is good news!).... However, to all of our dread, the sargassum weed has finally come back to haunt the shores for the next 5 months. Barnacles! I hope that we will have better luck for the rest of the year!
1 comments:
I think I figured out the moon snails you saw: the one the left might be Natica onca, the one on the right is probably Natica zonalis.
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