Monday, July 6, 2009

Tanah Merah - Cyanobacteria and sea hares

Tanah Merah seems to be a different beach at every visit. This time round, there seemed to be some cyanobacteria around and as I learned from Ria today, it means sea hare day.




Cyanobacteria looks very much like moldy seaweed.Mysterious blue fuzzy stuff.




Three different sea hares found by Ria. They look like extraordinary sea hare (top), spotted sea hare (bottom left) and geographic sea hare (bottom right).


Plenty of shrimps today, some quite large.






The unidentified flatworm again, two sighting of it today.


Swimming crab.


Ghost crab in its trademark squatting position.


I never really noticed until today that some of the hermit crabs are quite interestingly colored.


Unremarkable coral.


But look closer, aren't they beautiful.


As usual Tanah Merah is a rabbit fish nursery.


A tiny dragonet spotted by Ria.


No idea what this is,A chiton (Thanks Kok Sheng and Ria!) clinging on to a live Spiral melongena.


Quite a burdened Zoned horn snail (Batillaria zonalis) with a patch of gumdrop ascidians as well as what looks like a keelworm tube.


Spiral melongena (Pugilina cochlidium) laying eggs. Quite amusing to see the zoned horn snails hitching a ride on it at the same time.

4 comments:

koksheng said...

That is a chiton clinging onto the spiral melongena :-)

ria said...

Wow, that's a great shot of a chiton! I haven't seen one of these yet, would you believe.

Oops, the blue fuzzy stuff I have no idea what it is.

I thought you were referring to the browny-greeny hairy stuff on the shore, which might be cyanobacteria.

But we sure saw a lot of sea hares today!

Siyang said...

Your photos blow me over everytime! fantastic~

James K said...

Thanks Siyang, glad you like them!