Day 1 on the hunt for corallimorphs! A soggy survey at Pulau Ubin's awesome living rocky shores in the rain.
I'm so glad Ren Min is taking up the challenge of working on the corallimorphs of Singapore.
We arrived in the rain. But the tide waits for no one, and since there was no lightning, we're off to find those corallimorphs.
The natural rocky shores of Pulau Ubin are teeming with life.
First, to find the corallimorphs...a bit hard to find them from among the many other blobs on the rocks, especially in the rain.
Hurray, we found lots of corallimorphs. They come in different colours. We don't know if they are the same or different, which is why we are lucky to have Ren Min and the team of scientists helping her take a closer look at it.
Here's what the animal looks like when it is submerged and has its tentacles expanded. It is the
Ball tipped corallimorph. Corallimoprhs are kinda like sea anemone, but more similar to hard corals, but not hard corals. It's complicated.
There were also lots of other colourful corals, anemones, zoanthids, sponges and ascidians.
As well as
Onyx cowries and
Miliaris cowries. I saw two
Spiral babylon snails burrowed into the sand. And there were many coils of eggs on the rocks which look like
limpet eggs.
As usual, many large
Biscuit sea stars and one
Cake sea star. I saw several small
feather stars and colourful sea cucumbers. Also, many sea fans. It was pretty much what I saw on the survey here a few weeks ago in
Dec 2017.
There is also some small patches of Spoon seagrasses here. They seem to be doing well.
Alas, the fish traps were still seen on the shore.
As usual, it stops raining when the tide turns and we have to end the survey.
In a few hours, the Corallimorph Hunt continues at Pulau Hantu!
During low spring tide, lots of other people are also checking up our shores.
Marcus Ng
explored a part of Changi
And Chris Wong explored
another part of Changi
