An explosion of baby
Knobbly sea stars! There were also lots of tiny babies of other marine creatures.
The lush seagrass meadows at Changi appear to be an important nursery for marine life.
There were also many tiny
Biscuit sea stars, some tiny
Plain sand stars hardly bigger than a seagrass blade. Also some larger
Painted sand stars and medium sized Biscuit sea stars. I did not come across any other kinds of sea stars.
Changi is indeed echinoderm heaven. Today, there were many different kinds of sea cucumbers. I saw a lot of floating or unearthed
Ball sea cucumbers. I saw a few
Orange sea cucumbers,
Purple sea cucumbers and
Beige sea cucumbers.
There were also many tiny
Garlic bread sea cucumbers (I did not see any large ones). While there were many large
Thorny sea cucumbers and
Pink warty sea cucumbers, I also saw some that were not much bigger than a seagrass blade. Alas, I didn't see any sea urchins or sand dollars on this trip.
The lush seagrass teems with tiny life. Some I only notice after I got home and took a closer look at the photos. In this photo are a small Thorny sea cucumber,
Smooth sea cucumber, a tiny swimming crab.
In the above photo, there were also a tiny
pipe fish and a small
goby. There were also many
Longspined scorpionfishes, and I also saw a tiny
Kite butterflyfish.
How exciting to come across a tiny little
Estuarine sea horse, hardly bigger than a seagrass blade. I haven't seen seahorses on this shore for many years!
There were many tiny anemone-like animals on some of the seagrass blades. I'm not really sure what they are.
I saw two small
Haddon's carpet anemones. They had
tiny carpet anemone shrimps. I also saw two
Tiny carpet anemones.
There were many
Peachia anemones. I saw one
Tiger anemone, one
Big hermit-hitching anemone. I only saw a few
cerianthids and no sea pens.
There was also a very lively
Spearer mantis shrimp hunting among the seagrasses. I managed this side shot of it which shows its fierce front claws and lots of tiny swimming appendages under its armoured flat broad body. There were also many
Orange striped hermit crabs, small shrimps and
small flower crabs.
There were a few small
Noble volutes and some
Gong-gong snails. Also many small
whelks.
I came across a few
Hammer oysters. Also some
Window pane shells,
Fan clam shells and
Large cockles. I saw many shells of
Big brown mactra clam but no living clams.
It was a drizzly evening and not a very low tide. The seagrass meadows are still lush, mainly
Spoon seagrass (with large leaf blades) and
Needle seagrass. I didn't come across any
Fern seagrass. As first observed during our
Aug 2016 trip, the seagrasses with dotted with
Green gum drop ascidians and clumps of
Beige sheet ascidians. There was also a bloom of Sea lettuce seaweed, covering the mid water mark in a thick carpet of green. Probably why I did not see the clump of
Smooth ribbon seagrass that we saw on our trip in Aug 2016.
There was one person on the shore collecting with a bucket. This shore is affected by regular harvesting as it is easily accessible. And
very long fishing nets are constantly laid in deeper water.
I was glad to meet on the shore, Wayne Tan who has been following our trips online. He has kindly
shared the photos of his trip too.
