Semakau Hunting Seeking Survey on 30 Jan

Went to semakau yesterday for hunting seeking. First survey of the year! (: Was paired up with a RGS girl. Didnt really see anything very interesting. Just the common stuff and there's a lot a lot of common seastars because i was doing zone 2 and its the ultra left side. Haha. Didnt have any knobbly or sea cucumber luck at all. Quite sad. Haha.Took photos and here are some of them.

This is the Black Lipped Conch (Strombus urcea). It was the first animal that i spotted in my zone because there were so many of them! For every few steps that i took, there's sure to be at least one of around me. They have the black lining around the aperture which makes it easy to spot and ID.

Also, this is another animal that is quite common on Semakau, the Hermit Crab. Hermit crabs are not true crabs because they have a soft abdomen. Thus, they need a shell for protection. As the crab grows bigger, it needs to change its shell. It is actually very smart as it will cling on to the old shell when it is trying out its new shell so that even if the new shell does not fit it, it can go back to the old shell and continue seeking for a more suitable shell. Hence, we should not collect shells from the shores or these hermit crabs will have to run along the shores naked!

This should be an Onch Slug, found by my partner! (: These slugs belong to the same group as the land snails, thus they have simple lungs to help them breathe. Unlike other snails, this does not have a shell, but has tough skin instead to reduce water loss.

I saw two Heart Cockles (Corculum cardissa) and this is one of them. The other one was dead ): Haha. Many people like to collect this because it has the beautiful heart-shape shell. However, little did they know that the 'heart' will 'break' after the Heart Cockle dies. So we should not collect them and let them live in the wild instead so that others can see the 'heart' too! (:

This is one of my favourites, the Polka Dot Nudibranch (Jorunna funebris)! Haha i was so lucky to see both of them at the same place!

Furthur out at the reef area, we saw a few Sand Dollars (Arachnoides placenta) too! These are actually related to the Sea Urchins, but they're like the flattened version of them. The Sand Dollars has tiny spines on their body thus we shouldn't handle them with our bare hands.

This is the Ovum Cowrie (Cypraea ovum). When we spotted it, it was very well camouflaged and I almost couldn't recognise what it was, till i washed off the sediments on it and it started moving around.

I think i saw 2 Moon Snails (Polinices mammilla) in my zone and here's one of them. Although the shell of the Moon Snail may look very pretty, it is actually a fierce predator! They usually come out at night to hunt for food and they commonly feed on bivalves and snails.

Oh i saw this beautiful bivalve hopping on the shore! It was sooooo cuteeee. But i couldn't ID it so i collected it as a specimen ): Felt a bit sad because it looks really prettyyyyy. Haha.

After we finished our survey, we went over to zone 1 to look at the seahorses! (: Lifer! haha my first time seeing living sea horses! :D Was superrrr lucky to be able to see not only one, but two of them! The top one was quite large, about 12 cm? Or even bigger than that. Haha.

This pair of Horseshoe Crab (Tachypleus gigas) is also found at zone 1. They are pairing up but they actually carry out external fertilization. The females will lay its eggs in the water, then the male will lay the sperms on them.

And of course, we have the Star of the day, the Sand-sifting Sea Star (Archaster typicus)! There were loaaads of them around us but many of them buried themselves into the sand as the tide went out.

Had a great day and I hope I can find more interesting stuff during the next survey! :D