Fantasy Lost?

Chay Hoon and I were back at East Coast Park early this morning to get a closer look at the sea fans and the little Ovulid snails that live on them.

We went to the bigger lagoon where bigger sea fans were seen. There were lots of little ovulids!

These tiny snail cover their shells with a part of their body (called the mantle) that has colours, patterns that resemble the sea fan. There are even little white projections from the mantle that look like the sea fan's white polyps. Each sea fan had at least one if not more of these little snails.

What was disturbing though, was that we also saw a lot of sea fans reduced to wiry skeletons. Some like the one below and a few others, had little bits of living tissues with white polyps at the tips. Others were completely gone!

We worried about the other lagoon where lots of little sea fans were seen and rushed off there as the tide started coming in.

More 'dead' sea fans! There were a few live ones, but most of those we saw were reduced to wiry branches. This was most troubling.

Ovulids DO eat the sea fans that they live on. But did the ovulids eat up all the sea fans? Are the sea fans now permanently dead? If it wasn't the ovulids, what did this to the sea fans?

We really don't know.

We hope to visit again in two weeks' time when the tides allow and see if there is a recovery.