Mating season on Cyrene

On the last lap of low tide, Siti's seagrass project was at Cyrene. I decided that I haven't visited Cyrene since last May and to lend her a hand on her setup. It was a good sunny day! (Too hot for my liking)

Everyone was hard at work scrubbing and 'exterminating' barnacles. They can be dangerous to work as we get scratched and cuts while examining the frames, therefore, we need to clear them. Similar to the work on Chek Jawa, maintenance of set ups are important to ensure that other factors do not affect the experiments. Here's a picture of the shading frames - still looking good!


Nor Aishah found this baby Knobbly seastar under one of the shading frames... Did you know that Cyrene is one of the only reefs that is home to hundreds of Knobbly seastars with regular sightings of juvenile seastars? It is rather amazing since Cyrene is located between the high shipping traffic and ports.

I saw many of this Pleurobranchus sp. slugs! We called it Forskal's sidegill slugs... Everyone was amazed at the size of the slug! Imagine what it eats! hmm....

Apparently it's the mating season of the slugs, and many of them were either laying egg ribbons...

Or clustered together - threesome mating?? haha...

Not to forget a few photos of our famous seastar... In the water...

And drying out on the sand while waiting for the tides to turn in... I wonder why they twist their bodies this way. hmm...

That wraps up this week of low tides... :)