It's been a while since I've seen this
nudi in pajamas. I've only seen this on our Northern shores.
Indeed, I see more different kinds of nudibranchs on Changi than on other shores!
It looks just like a bit of seaweed, but this is the
Leaf slug. Which strangely, I have not recorded for Changi until now.
Also often mistaken for seaweed is this is a
Bushy slug. It has leaf-like things on its body that is sticky and can be dropped off on purpose if the animal is scared. So please don't touch them.
There were some big fat juice
Geographic sea hares, mostly half buried in the soft sand. I also saw several of their tangled pink egg strings. The rest of the team saw other interesting nudibranchs and slugs.
I saw this beautiful shell which I have no idea of its identity. The snail was dead and gone.
Here's what the underside looks like. There was a hermit crab living inside the shell. Thanks to Chim Chee Kong and confirmed by Tan Siong Kiat, it is
Babylonia spirata first recorded in Singapore in 2013. More in this
paper on the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.
I saw a few dead fishes, mostly small ones except for this
Spotted scat.
There are quite a lot of
cerianthids on this soft silty shore. They are also called peacock anemones because they come in such a wide variety of colours, although they are not true sea anemones.
There are also very dark cerianthids. I have no idea if they are different species or just colour variations of the same species.
The seagrasses looked lush, I saw only
Spoon seagrasses. There were
Mini carpet anemones and some small
Haddon's carpet anemones. I also saw one
Swimming anemone and some
Peachia anemones. Kwan Siong found a strange kind of worm that looks like an acorn worm.
The rocky shore was not as colourful as in
July 2013. Although some stretches were coated with
Melted chocolate sponges, some areas dotted with
Button zoanthids and there were many patches of
Zebra corals. But there was not many other kinds of sponges and most were small. I did see one
Crown sea star.
I saw one
Onyx cowrie and many
Ovum cowries.
I only saw 5 small
sea fans in deeper water. Oh dear. I wonder what happened to sea fan garden that I saw here in
July 2013.
Sadly, at sunrise, the team discovered a 50m driftnet laid on the shore.
The placement of the net parallel to the shoreline is worrying because in the past, we have seen dugong feeding trails on the seagrass meadows here.
It takes a lot of patience to untangle the animals from the net. We removed the net and released all the animals trapped in it: 40 Flower crabs, 1 sting ray, 1 horseshoe crab and 1 flounder as well as one decomposed fish. More about the net removal on
Project Driftnet.
Such heartbreaking encounters are the reason why we need to regularly monitor our shores.
Photos and posts by others on this trip
