Hantu & CFT

Before I start this entry, let me say that I assume no responsibility for the accuracy of my account, being my perspective in the half-delirious state caused by sleep deprivation. Not unusual for me to see things that others might say weren't there.

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Two wonderful new places in 3 days! First was Pulau Hantu on Monday and then it was CFT this morning.

HANTU
Hantu has a lovely sandy lagoon that had pools and pools of feeshies and shrimpies and stuff (sorry, not very scientific) at low tide. Utterly amazing.

The Story about the Frogfish(es)
Someone found a little frogfish (about a couple of cm in length) and we were quite excited by it. Chay Hoon carried it around in a bottle like a semi-precious gem in a leather drawstring pouch (pardon the indulgent D&D imagery here) while we scouted for a suitable location to shoot it.

Sidetrack: We waded through a submerged patch of particularly fine silt. Alvin was point man. There was a bit of splashing a metre or so behind him, and I saw the distinct shape of The-Thing-That-Took-Out-Ria's-Foot (TTTTORF) on Sekudu (30/04/05). My mind and tongue got stuck: I thought "Ray!" (note: I couldn't even find the word "sting" then; excited lah) but could only call out "Look!". Someone said "Stingray!" and at that moment, I swear I saw the image of Ria's stinging in a thought-bubble above everyone's heads. We immediately kept still, funnily (to me) reminiscent of the Bugblatter Beast of Kraal in Douglas Adam's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", which thinks that if you can't see it, it can't see you. After a few moments, when it felt safe to switch on our torches again, the critter had disappeared in the stirred-up murkiness.

(Back to the frogfish)
At an appropriate spot, the frogfish (with its little paw-like pectoral fins when they are pressed against the side of the bottle) was released for the lights-action-camera routine. This next part, I didn't see first-hand (someone please supplement!), but apparently it was next to a humongous (relatively) frogfish of 10- to 15-cm in length. Everyone got excited about *that* and left the little pisser alone, I think. The big one cast its lusty eyes at a tasty morsel (was that a shrimp? fish?) and were (not so) silently chanting "Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!" a la the bloodthirsty audience at a Roman gladiatorial fight. (end of frogfish story)

Sometime later, when it was light, there was a loud thumping and we spotted a large monitor lizard (1- to 1.5-m in length?) scampering across the beach about 50m away. Awesome.

CFT
The beach at CFT resembles my first (vague) memory of Changi beach when I was a kid.

One of the most amazing things I saw (haven't seen that much, that's why) was bioluminescence, in the form of blue stuff spewed out by transparent shrimps (by now you'd have guessed that I don't know scientific names :P) and, I suspect, some other creatures that were not shrimp. There were a few of them at a spot, and when disturbed (e.g. when you move your foot off), glowed prettily like Obi-Wan's lightsaber (I'll acquiesce to the American spelling just this once).

Ria found a gigantic horseshoe crab (20-cm in length excluding tail?) on top of another Doing the Deed. Absolutely amazing. When flipped upside down, reminded me of the Face Huggers in the Alien/s movies, its wriggly legs... wriggling. It moved pretty quickly through the water. I created little waves to see how it would react, because I thought it followed me a bit when I walked away. No conclusive evidence. Got bored and ambled off after that.

I'll leave someone else to talk about the big-ocky-at-the-oil-drum-with-a-few-coloured-shrimps-and-a-baby-catfish.