When You Are Down On Your Luck... Keep a Lookout for Stonefish!
It was a hot and lazy afternoon. I was having a nap on the bus on my way to West Coast Pier, when I suddenly woke up as I realised that the bus hadn't really been moving much for quite a while.
Alamak! Traffic jam. On a Sunday afternoon some more???
10 min crawled by...
Well, this jam couldn't last forever... I still had a bit of time...
20 min... and I felt like I'd spent 20 years on the bus.
As the snail bus finally reached the next bus stop, I decided it's either now or never, and jumped down the bus before I had to spend the rest of my life on it.
I had to walk all the way from Beach Road to Funan Centre before I could find a taxi stand without too many people. I guessed many of the bus passengers did what I did - alighted from the bus to take cab instead.
I finally reached West Coast Pier and found Chay Hoon there already, and I started complaining to her about the taffic jam. After a while, Ria and Alvin also reached, and we found out that Alvin had left his monopod on the bus!
Ok. Seems like 2 of the members here were experiencing bad luck. I jokingly told Chay Hoon and Ria that with the bad luck we were having, we better kept our eyes open for stonefish. Darwin also arrived in a while and we set off for Hantu.
It was a good day, clear and bright. Chay Hoon saw a batfish, but it got away. Perhaps because of the heat, we didn't really managed find much things, only a little chromodoris which Chay Hoon found. But little did we know that nature has its own little ways of saving the best for the last...
When the tide was coming in, we decided to call it a day, and I had totally forgotten about the stonefish joke I made earlier. We started heading back to the beach, and suddenly, I heard Alvin shouting something that sounded like gibberish to me. Wind a bit strong, so I can't really hear what he shouted despite the fact that he was only like 10m in front of me.
I walked towards him, and he said it again. This time round, I caught the word "stonefish".
And yes indeed, lying down there right in front of Alvin on the mudflat was a stonefish! How close! Good thing he managed to spot it, and didn't step onto it!
It's really kind of hard to spot the stonefish (Synanceia horrida) when it was just sitting there on the mudflat. I'll run a little test here.
Which of the below picture shows a stonefish?
If you have guessed the first or the third one, please check this out to find out how to differentiate between a stone and a stonefish. If you've guessed the one in the middle, then you've got the right one!
And here's a close up of the business end of the stonefish...
The stonefish was so lazy that it didn't even bother to flip over when it was placed in the pool of water underside up!
Anyway, it seems like we've used up all our bad luck, and no one got hurt during this close encounter :)
However, not everyone who encountered the stonefish got off lucky. Read what happened to Robin a few years back here.
Ria also had a bad encounter with another fish, the stingray, last year. Read about it here.
I guess all these again remind us to be extra carefull when we are out there exploring!
Alamak! Traffic jam. On a Sunday afternoon some more???
10 min crawled by...
Well, this jam couldn't last forever... I still had a bit of time...
20 min... and I felt like I'd spent 20 years on the bus.
As the snail bus finally reached the next bus stop, I decided it's either now or never, and jumped down the bus before I had to spend the rest of my life on it.
I had to walk all the way from Beach Road to Funan Centre before I could find a taxi stand without too many people. I guessed many of the bus passengers did what I did - alighted from the bus to take cab instead.
I finally reached West Coast Pier and found Chay Hoon there already, and I started complaining to her about the taffic jam. After a while, Ria and Alvin also reached, and we found out that Alvin had left his monopod on the bus!
Ok. Seems like 2 of the members here were experiencing bad luck. I jokingly told Chay Hoon and Ria that with the bad luck we were having, we better kept our eyes open for stonefish. Darwin also arrived in a while and we set off for Hantu.
It was a good day, clear and bright. Chay Hoon saw a batfish, but it got away. Perhaps because of the heat, we didn't really managed find much things, only a little chromodoris which Chay Hoon found. But little did we know that nature has its own little ways of saving the best for the last...
When the tide was coming in, we decided to call it a day, and I had totally forgotten about the stonefish joke I made earlier. We started heading back to the beach, and suddenly, I heard Alvin shouting something that sounded like gibberish to me. Wind a bit strong, so I can't really hear what he shouted despite the fact that he was only like 10m in front of me.
I walked towards him, and he said it again. This time round, I caught the word "stonefish".
And yes indeed, lying down there right in front of Alvin on the mudflat was a stonefish! How close! Good thing he managed to spot it, and didn't step onto it!
It's really kind of hard to spot the stonefish (Synanceia horrida) when it was just sitting there on the mudflat. I'll run a little test here.
Which of the below picture shows a stonefish?
If you have guessed the first or the third one, please check this out to find out how to differentiate between a stone and a stonefish. If you've guessed the one in the middle, then you've got the right one!
And here's a close up of the business end of the stonefish...
The stonefish was so lazy that it didn't even bother to flip over when it was placed in the pool of water underside up!
Anyway, it seems like we've used up all our bad luck, and no one got hurt during this close encounter :)
However, not everyone who encountered the stonefish got off lucky. Read what happened to Robin a few years back here.
Ria also had a bad encounter with another fish, the stingray, last year. Read about it here.
I guess all these again remind us to be extra carefull when we are out there exploring!
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