It's a 'small small' world! - Punggol

My quest on the shores brings me back to Punggol. My last trip in mid-January 2011 was filled with various kinds of people - mostly fishers and collectors. This time the shore was rather plain and empty - fewer sponges and almost no Perna viridis on the huge boulders! Have the people been going to Punggol so often to collect almost everything on the shore? :(

Kok Sheng and I explored Punggol, this time, he showed me the seagrass beds! We had a lot of various sightings and here are the special ones... As we know that Dr. Daphne Fautin, the anemone expert is in town to conduct a workshop and fieldtrips, the others are busy with searching for anemones. We too, caught the 'anemone' bug and started to look for them on Punggol.

While poring through the sandy surface, this tiny animal caught my eye. At first glance, I thought it was a crinoid! I hurriedly got Kok Sheng over to verify and he said it wasn't a crinoid, but a tiny feather worm! It was only 1cm across... hee...


Moving on, here are some of the anemones I found. This resembles the striped bead anemones commonly found on most of the northern shores.

Unknown anemone attached to a loose rubble. Spot the amphipods on it! :)

Unknown anemone 2 - white oral disk with bright orange tentacles!

Unknown anemone 3 - Black-lined orange disk anemone. lol... I've seen this one at Sekudu recently! :)

The shore has very little echinoderms... I spotted the purple sea cucumber and the crown seastar. The most common ones are the brittle stars family.

The shore is consisted of mostly rocks and rubbles, hiding a myriad of crustaceans. Some patience and looking under or in the rock holes will have a pair of eyes looking back at you. :)

I found a porcelain crab moving across the surface. I found this one particularly pretty because of the reddish-blue colours on the mouth parts. Usually, they are found underneath rocks.

An uncommon shrimp on the shores, this is a cleaner shrimp (Lysmata sp.).

These banded hermit crabs are believed to be really rare! I found two variations of these hermit crabs today. The first one with blue-yellow features on the face, and the pinkish-spotted one (below).

Now I think about it, these are the only two hermit crabs I found today! :)

Kok Sheng was laughing how I used to catch these thunder crabs for my experiments. These crabs are littered upon the shores, easily accessible in their shallow hole burrows, unlike those found at Changi. It was definitely an experience of catching these strong crabs. Previously known to be distributed only at the Northern shores, ongoing surveys show that they can be found on the Southern shores. A formidable predator!

Slugs were few but we found two special ones... The first was this beaded nudibranch (Hoplodoris nodulosa). An uncommon nudibranch species, they have been sighted mostly on the Northern shores.

Kok Sheng finally pointed out this Volvatella slug (Volvatella sp.). A unique slug that has a thin external shell protecting its soft body. They can be found associated with this seaweed, Caulerpa sp.

The shore was also full of stranded three-spined toadfishes, croaking non-stop throughout the morning. Also, surprisingly, we found FOUR estuarine seahorses (Hippocampus kuda). To differentiate between the tiger-tailed seahorses, one distinct feature would be the striped tail, while H. kuda does not have stripes on the tail.

One of them has a hitch-hiker, a shrimp on the face!

Tides turn quickly and it's time to say goodbye to the shores... :)