Under the full moon, a small team checks out Sentosa's natural shores at Tanjung Rimau. It's the last few days of predawn low spring tide for the year!
We check the impact of the security barrier on the shore, look out for coral bleaching and did the usual health check of the shore. Sentosa is still very much an octopus' garden!
There is still a bloom of
Bryopsis seaweed. This is not normal. Usually, around this time of the year, the
Sargassum seaweed bloom replaces the Bryopsis seaweed. I wonder what is going on. But as usual, this bloom is teeming with life. There were lots of little
Reef octopuses slitthering through the Hairy green seaweed.
And of course, an explosion of
Bryopsis sea slugs. These slugs suck the sap of the seaweeds and eventually look like the seaweeds in shape and colour!
There are all kinds of crabs of all shapes and sizes.
This
Arrow-head crab had stuck
Sea grape seaweeds on its head!
Also
amphipods (body flattened sideways) and
isopods (body flattened downwards).
Countless
Little red-nose shrimps, as well as small
snapping shrimps and little
hermit crabs.
Two kinds of flatworms: the
Blue-lined flatworm and
Blue-spotted flatworm.
Also lots of
bristleworms of all sizes, squirming through the seaweeds.
Octopuses can instantly change their body colour and texture to match their surroundings!
There was also a small clump of
Ridged corallimorphs.
Tucked under a purple coral was this brightly coloured
Mosaic crab, the most poisonous crab in Singapore! I also spotted one
Red egg crab.
Animals in the rubbly area are very well camouflaged. Like this
swimming crab and a
False scorpionfish (top right corner).
As usual, the
Haddon's carpet anemone has a pair of
Five-spot anemone shrimps, the mama shrimp is bigger and more boldly patterned than the papa shrimp.
For the first time, I saw this
Tiny carpet anemone shrimp in the same anemone as the Five-spot anemone shrimp!
On the rocky shore, Victor spotted this gecko. Nick Baker's awesome
EcologyAsia website has
lots of info about lizards and geckos of all kinds. But I'm not too sure what this is. Thanks to Marcus Chua who confirmed that it is the
Maritime gecko!
I finally find a
Toothed top shell snail with its body showing. It also has fine lines, somewhat like the Nerite snails.
The corals on this shore suffered badly during the
mass coral bleaching event in 2010. So I was glad to see that there wasn't much bleaching today, and that there were many small coral and leathery soft coral colonies in the short stretch of shore that I checked. I saw many small colonies of
Pore corals and they were all nice and brown. I only saw one small colony of
Disk coral and while it was not bleaching, it didn't look very healthy either.
Most of the corals on the shore were small colonies of
Favid corals. And I only came across two that were partially bleaching.
There were a few small colonies of
Leathery soft corals of various kinds. Only one was somewhat bleaching.
I saw several kinds of
sponges too.
I was very excited to see a nice small patch of
Sickle seagrass! Although Siti reported seeing this species on Sentosa in
Apr 2012, this is the first time I'm seeing them for myself. The
Tape seagrasses are all long and lush and not thickly covered in epiphytes.
A closer look at the Sickle seagrass, with tiny octopus.
I saw many female Tape seagrass flowers but only one had petals, which usually only last one day. Perhaps they all just bloomed yesterday? I didn't see any tiny white male flowers floating on the water though.
There were also patches of small
Spoon seagrasses. Seagrasses provide shelter for small and young animals and are thus an important nursery in the sea.
The tide turned before sunrise, so we also checked out the shore behind Underwater World Singapore. Alas, we had to leave well before sunrise.
I didn't come across any
Frilly sea anemones which are usually abundant on this shore. One animal we are glad NOT to see is the Stonefish. We have had a
Stonefish incident one this shore before, so we are very careful when exploring this shore.
The long line of blue drums are still there. These are part of a
floating 'security barrier' installed in 2012. I only managed to look at a few of those nearer the shore. Compared to
Pei Yan's last check in Aug 2013, none of the drums are broken, and it appears they have been rearranged so that the drums no longer bash against the rocks. The line of drums are also straighter. Pei Yan has been documenting the changes and impact of these drums.
