Blog Log: 17 January 2010

January 29, 2010

Just three weeks into the New Year and volunteers are already on a roll! Volunteer dive guide and underwater photographer Cindy Tan did four dives at Hantu this month and will be plunging into local waters for the fifth time this weekend! Cindy’s got a knack for spotting flatworms, as the one above, and below.



An awesome find was this miniscule nudibranch, Ornate cadlinella (Cadlinella ornatissima)

Cindy managed to witness some cool slug behavior on the reef, like this pair of Serpent pteraeolidia doing their “meet and greet ritual”. Nudibranchs are hermaphroditic, and thus have a set of reproductive organs for both sexes, but they can rarely fertilize themselves.

Swimming crabs are the colour red to warn would-be predators that they are not so tasty. Though they are one of the smaller crabs on the reef, they are extremely skittish, and when cornered, can be very aggressive. Don’t get near their pincers!

I got really jealous when Cindy came back with this picture of a young Winged pipefish. Pipefish get their name from the peculiar form of their snout, which is like a long tube, ending in narrow and small mouth which opens upwards and is toothless.

A relative of the pipefish and the mascot of Hantu’s reef, is the Tigertail seahorse, here in a bight yellow variation.

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