Semakau Island, Singapore: 29 Sept 07

This is a nice sunny day, a good weather for nature walk at the shore. This is my first intertidal nature walk after my 5 months holiday and i am really looking forward. i was assigned to be a hunter seeker for the day. Initally, i am rather reluctant as i think i am not a good "things spotter" and i think it could be stressful to find things that the visiotrs wanted to see. But in the end, i ended up enjoying the task as i could take MY OWN SWEET TIME to take pictures of the animals and this is a privilege that i would never have as a guide (a guide could take picture but not on your own sweet time. :). As i always said, i grown up by the sea and there is no place i feel more home than the sea. The sun, the salty and fishy smell of the shore and the breeze were the big welcome to me. The rich and colorful lives of the shore is too temptating to keep me in door. So never asked me why am i this tan again!



This was the first time for me to go to Marina South Pier. I took the train until Marina Bay and transfered to bus 402 to get there. The bus is not frequent, so i think it is good for me to take a picture of the bus timetable for future used.



i like building. This new Marina South Pier building is beautiful. It even has a lawn at the third floor, overlooking the sea.



The sea is blueist and quite clear.



Telescopium, big snail normally find in mangroves. i found them when i was looking for horse shoe crab (They are abundant and just lying there!). It normally coats with a layer of mud but in fact it has beautiful brightly colored shell.



This tiny whelk has an anemone on its shell. It looks so cute and delicate! (So please consider to stop eating snails! :)



Sand collar. It is the egg mass of a kind of snail called Moon Snail. The eggs are laid in mucus that combines with sand and hardens.



Thorny sea cucumber. The sea cucumber breathes through its backside. :)



Moon crab. I found this crab and i shouted to Luan Keng, "i found a cute crab but i couldn't remember its name!" Then while waiting for Luan Keng to come, instead of trying to catch it, i was just standing there and trying to recall its name. It ended up this burrower burrowed into and sand and we had to dig it out beneath the sand.



i thought these two slugs were nudibranchs but they are flat worms. Flat worms are much flatter than nudibranch and they tend to move faster. The most significant different should be, flat worms don't have flowery-like external gills on their back.



Green sunflower mushroom coral. It is a kind of hard coral which unattached to the substrate and able to move about on the reef.



This is my second favorite of the day except for the moon crab, a blue spotted sting ray. Luan Keng and me played a little trick to catch it and we had fun!
Remember how that famous crocodile man died? The venomous spine is at the base of the tail.



The visitors. We had 'good' visitors for the day. How we (or may be me) defined "good visitors":
1.) They are interested with the shore and the stories of marine lives. At least they don't scream and said "it is so gross!" when the guide show them the CUTE and BEAUTIFUL slug!
2.) They stay in the group and don't try to explore the aras themselves hence stepping and cause the death of more corals and other animals.
3.) They never complaint that it is so muddy and so hot. (What can you expect when you come to the shore?)



The beautiful sunset. Especially in this metropolitan Singapore, sometimes we spend so much time trying to get more money and we forgot what has been provided by our mother nature. You don't have to change the nature to make it more beautiful ...



The nearby petro-chemical plant, Bukom Island. Those chimneys look like christmas trees at night time.

The trip ended at around 7.30pm and of course we saw far more creatures than what i put here. Unfortunately, i am not a good photograher, so i would prefer to put only a few better phographs. Other animals that we saw: Seahorse, gymnodoris nudbranch, octopus, egg mass of octopus/squid, sandfish sea cucumber, stonefish sea cucumber, hairy crab, knobby star, common sea star, fan worm ...