'Weather can't decide to be sunny or rainy' day on Cyrene

It's been a while since I joined on Team Seagrass for monitoring activities. One of our last monitoring of the year 2011, a small team headed out to Cyrene reefs. Upon arrival, the waters were still rather high so most of us explored a bit of the shore and making our way to the sites.

The weather was really cranky... It can't seem to decide whether to be sunny or rainy, and turned out that it was raining while the sun was shining upon us. -_-||| By looking at this next photo, half of the side is storming while the other half remaining bright and dainty. Marcus, Jocelyn and I were in charge of Site 1, and decided to team up for all three transects. Woot! Jocelyn blogged about her monitoring experience.


Leaving some time with no rain in sight, we went off to check out Cyrene... Both Jason and Ria had wonderful sightings of the Geographic Seahare, Knobblies, Grey Bonnet snails, Pentaceraster seastar and even Brahminy kites on the reefs!

Marcus spotted this uncommon shrimp - body patterns resemble tiger stripes with very long bristle antenna. Not too sure what species is that... Unfortunately specimen escaped before we could have a closer look at it.


The only nudibranch I saw was the Discodoris boholiensis. Jason and others also spotted one of their own.


My favourite slugs - Strawberry slugs (Costesiella sp.). They tend to hang around the same type of juicy seaweed. Ever so cute...


Right next to the seaweed, I spotted two burrows consisting of the same goby-shrimp - Saddled shrimp goby (Cryptocentrus maudae). This goby can grow up 10cm long! The juveniles appear to have more distinct bandings and the adults lose this banding pattern (look at website). It was quite fascinating to watch the interaction between shrimp and goby and I shall post the video sometime later. The shrimp appears to not only maintain the burrow, but comes out occasionally to cut algae - for the burrow and the goby opportunistically grabs some of these cut algae! Interesting stuff! So the regular 'clipping' sound you heard on the shores, is the snapping shrimp cutting stuff!


Another awesome fish sighting - Feathery filefish (Chaetodermis penicilligerus). Most of our sightings body length range between 3cm - 10cm. These individuals here were at least 20cm long! Their body colorations appear to be different as well... These ones below, possess a base dark green body colour. When I startled one of it, it changed colours - to shiny blue and pale green! In fact, the fish is able to camouflage and blend in with the algae background. In the state of flight, the fish morphed into the pale version while in motionless state, it morphed to different shades of green... Amazing! I couldn't video it as that would entail me running towards the fish and that may startle and stress the fish.


Here, you can see the paler green with distinct blue and black striations. Compared to the photo above, the body is mostly dark green (similar shade to the algae).


Gosh! I should pay more attention to the ecology and interactions. Fascinating! The shores sure do teach me more about these critters... Until next trip...