Melibe! Melibe! Melibe!
"Hey Ron, there's a nudibranch here!"
One of the visitors shouted to me, and I walked towards him.
"Eh... this is actually a flatworm," I said.
I was guiding a group of 11 people at Semakau. Despite the wrong identification by the visitor, it's still a good start. We had not even gone into the seagrass lagoon, and we already found a flatworm! And it's not the usual brown one with white spots, but one with stripes.
And half way across the seagrass lagoon, I saw something long and big creeping among the seagrass...
It's a huge synaptid sea cucumber! Probably between 1 - 2 metres long, and I actually had a problem trying to find its front and end.
Call me sua ku. I've seen synaptid sea cucmber before, and do know that they can get really long, but have never seen one so big myself before.
Now, today certainly looked like a day of surprises!
We get the usual jorunna, discodoris, chromodoris, the spotted brown flatworm, noble volutes, sandfish etc etc... but no knobbly seastar (apparently some of the other guides found two on the left side of the coral reef, and we managed to see them in the end.)
My eyes were tuned to looking for knobbly seastars when..
"Ron, can you come over to see what's this?"
I walked towards the visitor. There was some translucent reddish brown thing trapped in a pool of water hardly bigger than itself, just beside a rock.
Using my chopsticks, I picked it up and put it into my container. It's about 10cm long, I think.
As I pour some water into the container, 2 lumps detached from the "thing" and floated in the water...
"This is definitely a sea slug, the 2 lumps that it has shed are called cerata..."
"And hey, you can see it has a hood in front..."
(I could hardly contain my excitement at this moment as I explained to the visitors...)
"... like a melibe! This is not something I've seen before. Let me check with another guide."
"Chay Hoon, I found something. Need you to identify for me!"
I rushed towards Chay Hoon, who was like at least 50 metres away when I yelled at her. Probably Chay Hoon could sense from my voice that it must be something special, and also rushed towards me.
Looking into my container...
"Ron!" She exclaimed. "You have found a melibe!"
This was certainly a moment that simply couldn't be described in words...
YES!!! After all these years (ok, kind of exaggerated, it more like the past 2-3 years?), WE HAVE FOUND A MELIBE!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, it's found by my visitor, not a wildfilm crew, but hey! Whatever it is, finally, we have found a melibe!!!
Ever since I joined Wildfilms, we have been talking about finding the melibe. Ria was always teasing us that we'll probably find a tiny slug on the melibe, but miss the melibe all together!
The previous record of a melibe was found at Changi, and I had assumed that eventually we will probably find it there or some where in the northern islands.
But ironically, just sometime back, I remember telling someone that we have been finding all kinds of new things in Semakau, and since we also have lots of seagrass and seaweeds in Semakau, perhaps for all you know we can find a melibe here as well. And how true this turned out!
The melibes I've seen in photos are usually greenish in colour, while this one is kind of reddish brown.
Unfortunately, it shed its cerata when I picked it up. Did some research on the web, and it says that some melibes shed their cerata when they are disturbed, some what like the polybranchia. Just to satisfy myself, I've cheated here and done some photoshop work and "attached" the cerata back. Probably this could be how it looked like before I disturbed it :P
Will be going to Semakau again on Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully this time round, I can find another melibe - a more complete one this time round with all its cerata in place :)
One of the visitors shouted to me, and I walked towards him.
"Eh... this is actually a flatworm," I said.
I was guiding a group of 11 people at Semakau. Despite the wrong identification by the visitor, it's still a good start. We had not even gone into the seagrass lagoon, and we already found a flatworm! And it's not the usual brown one with white spots, but one with stripes.
And half way across the seagrass lagoon, I saw something long and big creeping among the seagrass...
It's a huge synaptid sea cucumber! Probably between 1 - 2 metres long, and I actually had a problem trying to find its front and end.
Call me sua ku. I've seen synaptid sea cucmber before, and do know that they can get really long, but have never seen one so big myself before.
Now, today certainly looked like a day of surprises!
We get the usual jorunna, discodoris, chromodoris, the spotted brown flatworm, noble volutes, sandfish etc etc... but no knobbly seastar (apparently some of the other guides found two on the left side of the coral reef, and we managed to see them in the end.)
My eyes were tuned to looking for knobbly seastars when..
"Ron, can you come over to see what's this?"
I walked towards the visitor. There was some translucent reddish brown thing trapped in a pool of water hardly bigger than itself, just beside a rock.
Using my chopsticks, I picked it up and put it into my container. It's about 10cm long, I think.
As I pour some water into the container, 2 lumps detached from the "thing" and floated in the water...
"This is definitely a sea slug, the 2 lumps that it has shed are called cerata..."
"And hey, you can see it has a hood in front..."
(I could hardly contain my excitement at this moment as I explained to the visitors...)
"... like a melibe! This is not something I've seen before. Let me check with another guide."
"Chay Hoon, I found something. Need you to identify for me!"
I rushed towards Chay Hoon, who was like at least 50 metres away when I yelled at her. Probably Chay Hoon could sense from my voice that it must be something special, and also rushed towards me.
Looking into my container...
"Ron!" She exclaimed. "You have found a melibe!"
This was certainly a moment that simply couldn't be described in words...
YES!!! After all these years (ok, kind of exaggerated, it more like the past 2-3 years?), WE HAVE FOUND A MELIBE!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, it's found by my visitor, not a wildfilm crew, but hey! Whatever it is, finally, we have found a melibe!!!
Ever since I joined Wildfilms, we have been talking about finding the melibe. Ria was always teasing us that we'll probably find a tiny slug on the melibe, but miss the melibe all together!
The previous record of a melibe was found at Changi, and I had assumed that eventually we will probably find it there or some where in the northern islands.
But ironically, just sometime back, I remember telling someone that we have been finding all kinds of new things in Semakau, and since we also have lots of seagrass and seaweeds in Semakau, perhaps for all you know we can find a melibe here as well. And how true this turned out!
The melibes I've seen in photos are usually greenish in colour, while this one is kind of reddish brown.
Unfortunately, it shed its cerata when I picked it up. Did some research on the web, and it says that some melibes shed their cerata when they are disturbed, some what like the polybranchia. Just to satisfy myself, I've cheated here and done some photoshop work and "attached" the cerata back. Probably this could be how it looked like before I disturbed it :P
Will be going to Semakau again on Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully this time round, I can find another melibe - a more complete one this time round with all its cerata in place :)
2 Comments:
Wow! How cool is that? Wish I could have seen it..but there will be other opportunities.. I hope. ;) Freedom countdown: 19 hours more to go...
Hi Ron,
The last pic really look like the "yucky" looking creature that I first saw in the pool of water. I was staring at it and wondering this what is this weird thing and the visitor was asking me what it was. I simply could not answer and told them I do not know. Luckily I yelled for you to identify it. : ) Hope you will get to find more in the future trips!
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