Am cheating a little since this post is coming up a month late... Hehz... Am finally free to sort through the photos and pick some nicer ones out to be posted here. Still need some time to sort out all photos properly to put in my online albums though. Below are some of the things we saw, definitely have a whole bunch more but those are all going into the albums!!! Not surprising that we saw quite a number of nudibranchs since I was with Gina and ChayHoon, expert nudi spotters~~
The echinoderms...tubular feet organisms
First iconic seastar I have seen in Singapore, as well as first seastar I haven seen while diving!! All those knobblies and commons seastars I have come across were all during intertidal walks....
First cushion star while diving in Singapore!!! Color looks off since I had to take it with flash using the IXUS underwater mode... Manual with customised white balance works the best, but when I need to use the flash....
Fishies....Never really felt up to the challenge of taking fish photos in Singapore's murk... Generally end up rather obscure it definitely was a day to "seas the moment"!!
Common copperbanded butterfly fish that we actually have on our stamps.. Usually seen in two and difficult to take since they seemingly disappear with a quick turn.
Butt view of one of the larger gobies around our shores. This fella seemed to be hunting amongst the holes, and it's rather fast, so shots are generally but views....
[EDIT] Checked with K and this goby is known as the barred high fin goby aka beautiful goby.
Anemonefish!! First time I am seeing them outside of Kusu ^^ These are false clowns since they lack the black band between the white and orange bands. The larger one wasn't exactly very welcoming when the 3 of us were just taking shot after shot after shot of them and their host anemone...
And on to corals!!!
Closeup of a mushroom coral. Unlike other hard corals, this group of corals are actually free living, meaning they are MEANT to be loose and "mobile". Love this closeup since you can see pretty colored bandings near the mouth ^^
This one is a super asymmetrical mushroom coral. You can see that the top side is HUGE and the bottom kinda small in comparison. Wonder what happened to make it become this way? Maybe it got broken in half before and the smaller half is some osrt of re-growth?
Real beauty, ain't this? Anchor-head coral, also known as Euphyllia. This hard coral hsa it's tentacles out 24/7, making ID-ing pretty easy, even during the day!!
Not exactly sure which coral this is. Can tell that it's an octocoral, and it's rather pretty since they look like a mini-meadow of flowers on the substrate....
Crabbies~~~
Kinda did a quick collage of the crabs we saw... The bulk of them during the night dive, with some rather shy crabs making a quick appearance from cracks and crevices during the day...
Cuttlefish~~~
Finally managed to catch a full grown cuttlefish in Singapore on my cammie~~~ The super friendly small one we were "playing" with some time back doesn't count!! Bwahaha...Cuttlefish!!!
Buibui!!
Stingrays~~
All of these are our common blue spotted stingrays but to see ray after ray after ray, all so nicely staying on the substrate and posing for us (while eyeballing us carefully) was just amazing!!!
Flatworm~~
Yar, I know this is the super common flatworm that we just keep on seeing both in the sea and in the intertidal areas. But this one was looking at me head-on!! So my photoshooting skills aren't great.. It was looking at me nicely and I still got it a little blurred up~~ Grr... But it took of off and swwam almost immediately leh...
Sluggies~~ ^^
Too many nudibranchs to post individually, so collage time!!! All so
chio!!Some were just a cm in length and I still wonder how I managed to get the blue and green one in focus...
More slugs~~These are sea hares. Tiny and cute and green!!!
Yep. So who says that our seas are devoid of life? Hantu may be heavily dived but it's STILL teeming with life!! And really,
kudos to Debby and her Hantu bloggers team for dutifully showing our reefs to divers every month!! Hope to dive with you guys soon~~
