Wild Things this week

Sunrise on the magnificent reefs of Kusu Island, with the city skyline in the hazy background. Alvin and Chay Hoon are hard at work in the distance, while Tom stalks stuff off frame.




Eddie and BenBoy cheerfully take the crew to places where no man has gone before.

It's amazing, but ALL of us AND our gear actually can fit into the little boat. As Eddie says, "by the Grace of God" we usually make it back to shore.

BenBoy is often the star attraction. The frisky little thing is really hard to photograph, as Wei Ling obviously discovers.


Here we are on our favourite Fast-Work-Boat-that-costs-a-Bomb-since-the-diesel-shortage: Tom, Darwin and Dr Chua Ee Kiam obviously enjoying the city skyline as we head out for another trip to the Southern Shores.


We take some time out on St John's to explain to a group of curious visitors what the shores were all about.


We also joined the Blue Water Volunteers at their Reefwalk on Kusu Island.


This week ends with Healthy Breakfast Sunday. Alvin can't believe it! Fresh greens, wholemeal bread and other Stuff That's Good for You. Where is the deep-fried, flash-frozen, preservative-laden,16-hour-old stuff that he usually has to eat? He is sure his system can't take all this goodness.

Highlights of the Lows: May 24-29

What a fabulous series of low tide trips we just had! Stingray bite completely healed, I plunged right in. Visiting our shores in the North and South, we encountered lots of our favourite creatures and some that we've never seen before.



"Nemo" or the False clown anemonefishes (Amphiprion ocellaris) are quite common on our Southern shores. These amusing fishes frolic happily among the stinging tentacles of large sea anemones. They're really tricky to photograph as they're very quick and tend to stir up the sediments in the water. But we found these three fishes stranded in a pool while their anemone home was high and dry. They were patiently waiting for the tide to come back in. Anemonefishes can change sex! Usually, the biggest fish is female. The other fishes that share the same sea anemone are smaller males. If the female dies, the biggest male changes into a female!

Another delightful surprise was the Sea robin or Sea moth (Family Pegasidae), so named for its wing-like pectoral fins. This fish is closely related to seahorses and appears to be seasonally common on our Northern shores. When you see one, you will see several. Then none for a long time.




It was nudibranchs galore! Keen eyes of Super Spotters Chay Hoon and Alvin got us a closer look at a wide variety of these snails without shells. The pajama-striped Armina nudibranchs (Armina sp.) were seen on both the Northern and Southern shores. One had a blue flap at the front and another a yellow-banded one. Some nudibranchs look boring, like the flat brown one that I saw. I don't encounter it often though, so it was nice to see one.

The Phyllid nudibranchs look like colourful candies with brightly coloured bumps. The one with blue bumps is probably Phyllidia pustolosa, while the one with orange bumps is probably Phyllidia varicosa. When we got back, Chay Hoon pointed out that the book indicated that Phyllids are highly toxic and thus not suitable for marine tanks. They can kill off the entire tank!

It was the first time I saw the lemon-yellow Glossodoris atromarginata with elegant black edged ruffles, thanks to Chay Hoon's keen eyes. These two cuties constantly rotated their feathery gills like helicopter blades!





But for me, it was Echinoderm Week! The sea star is the most familiar of this group of animals. Echinoderms include sea urchins, heart urchins, sand dollars, sea cucumbers, brittle stars and feather stars.

We saw this pretty Rock sea star (Asterina coronata) under a rock. Usually, this sea star is boring grey and blends right in with the muddy rocks. But this little one was a Real Rock Star in flamboyant orange (cue electric guitar riffs!).

Wai later shared this endearing rendition of the Rock Star...

We saw not one but TWO different kinds of sea urchins. The white one with purple-banded spines is seldom seen (it's yet to be identified), while the black one (Temnopleuris toreumaticus) seems to be seasonal, sometimes seen in large numbers on our Northern shores, then none at all.

These tiny red sea cucumbers carpeted the ground in the thousands, infesting seaweed, sponge, rocks and even larger sea cucumbers like the large orange sea cucumber in the photo. The tiny red sea cucumbers don't grow any bigger, and have branched feeding tentacles and miniscule tube feet just like their bigger cousins. Both kinds of sea cucumbers have yet to be identified. The large Blotchy brown sea cucumber (Actinopyga lecanora) is identified by its white or grey backside. It's only sometimes seen on our Southern shores.



The Find of the Week was this feather star or crinoid. It too is an echinoderm. It is the first time I ever saw one onshore. Usually, we only see them on offshore reefs and those are much smaller. This large one was very much alive and seemed quite happy where it was. This creature has many arms that are highly flexible and have lots of branches along the sides.

Of course, we also saw lots of corals, crabs, fishies, an amazing cuttlefish, a pair of gianormous horseshoe crabs and more. But alas, there's no space to put up all the photos...

The weather wasn't very co-operative in the first few days (as Tom's post illustrates). And it's getting really hard to get by with two hours of sleep every 8 hours. But it's exhilarating to be out there and I can't wait for the next series of lows!

How many Elysia can you fit in a pot?

Who knows? But here’s what happened when the crew put 14 together in search of the philosophical answer to the question I was asking the other day on CJ where the shores were literally covered in Elysia…

Sad looking Elysia clumped together…
But then, it starts getting hot and steamy…

After an unpacking flurry, everyone stares into the pot in fascination as the action unfurls!

Elysia, as with all opisthobranchs, are hermaphrodites. They have both male and female sex organs which are located on the right side of the head (see the white things sticking out?). I arrived after my reefwalk on Kusu just in time to watch them stabbing at each other frantically. Before long, they had poked each other everywhere – parapodia (flappy bits), foot, head, etc. Apparently beforehand they had been inadvertently left in the sun for awhile. Whether it was the sun or the close proximity or some other unknown factor, apparently sticking many Elysia in a pot causes them to get into a mating frenzy.

Elysia belong to the order sacoglossa (sap suckers). Retaining the algae components from its diet give it the green colour, and enable it to have a symbiotic relationship with the chloroplasts from the algae.

Can’t wait for the next series of trips to check out if dumping many slugs in a pot will cause them to start mating.

One Trip Home.

On one of our trips home this week, the boatmen offered to show us some of their dinner for the night, caught fresh from the sea as they were waiting for us to finish our work of filming on the shore.

Here’s me shooting the shark that was caught. Looks nice and dry doesn’t it? It WASN’T. This was being filmed in driving rain.

Here’s the rest of the crew, nice and dry and oh-so-comfortable assisting me by providing moral support and eye power.

The boatmen’s dinner. The other fish is a toadfish, which I didn’t bother to shoot because we’ve managed to find it elsewhere, and in more natural surroundings than a blue bucket. Unlike certain cultures, the boatmen who are Malays, told us that they would be eating the whole shark, instead of just the fins. We were told that the shark would be cooked in lemak or in curry. It had not been decided yet at that point.
This illustrates a point: Take what you need from Nature, and use what you take.

Intro to Grandma.

Due to our PD170’s (aka Mama) continuing time in rehab, (see this link) we have been given access to a PD150 (aka Grandma). Here she is, with parts borrowed from some of our other cameras.

Meeting the rest of the family.


Unfortunately, she seems to be suffering from some of the frailties of age. She has an uncomfortable vibration and has managed to transfer some of that onto the footage that was taken in this round.

Mr Sock

Mr Sock was recently retired from duty as our dependable silica bead bag, replaced by newer stockings...

Lost and adrift for awhile, he has finally found a new purpose in life…

Mr Sock now happily keeps our entire bottle of silica beads warm and fuzzy!

He's happily settling in now, even picking up a few quirks from the cats (such as tongue sticking and shedding the odd silica bead).

Opera in Ubin

originally posted as a thread on clubsnap


One of the familiar boatmen bringing us over to the Pulau Ubin jetty.


One of the opera performers putting on the facepaint in preparation for the performance about 15 minutes later.


incandescent light is what all the crew behind the opera have, for them to see.


the elderly percussion players take a short break just before the actual show begins


the two seniorly gentlemen playing the er-hu and the yang chin for the opera


Different generations - the older generation never had electronic devices for amusement, while the children of today are probably growing further away from their cultural heritage.


Even at night, a family of devotees make a stopover at the Tua Pek Kong temple in the main Ubin village to pay respects, on Vesak Day night of 22nd May 2005.


The opera did not get more than a crowd of 10 watching the performance.


After nightfall, eateries are still open for business in Ubin.

focusubin forum thread
grayowl's report from 21st may 2005

Another Way to Die, Part 1

Short post today, something that occured to me a while back, and haven't bothered to put down till today.

How can WildThings die? Or at least, end up in excruciating pain?

For this chapter:

1. Find a pile of sand, and baptise it to find a Stargazer.
   
2. In order to see how big the guy actually is, use your boots to dig it out. Ensure that pectoral fins are kicked as well. For good measure, get the stargazer to flick a couple of times to get away from you.
   
3. If you are really daring, stick fingers, toes or other appendages near the stargazer to tempt it.
   

We have footage of Alvin and Ria doing precisely as above, and thank heavens nothing untoward came out of it. Hopefully Murphy and his Law will avoid us like the plague. Stupoks is bad enough.

Weather Man II

Before any trip with Kok Leong’s presence, we will always ask him to say something nice to his mum (in this case, Mother Nature) and promise that he will be a good boy in his best behaviours. This is to ensure that we can have a nice weather ahead.

It all started after one of our trips to Kusu last year……

As we were heading towards Kusu, we noticed that there was a storm building up nearby.
Somehow, we still to go ahead with the shooting and look out for the approaching bad weather.

When we felt that the storm was getting nearer, we decided to stop. As we were packing up, there was a flash of lighting follow by a loud thunder immediately. Then, our dear Kok Leong, of all things to say, mouthed this to Mother Nature; “ Is this the best that you can do?”

What happened next was dramatic. As if Mother Nature answered Kok Leong’s challenge, strong gust of wind started to blow and more lighting were given. And all we could do were to run as fast as we could to nearby shelters (the huts, jetty, and lifeguard tower). For the next hour(s), we experienced cold, horizontal rain and tree fell on one of the huts.

After that incident at Kusu, most trips with Kok Leong will always ended up on the wet side. Sometimes, these situations can be exaggerated if there is someone in the group whose name begins with “AL” like Albert or Alan (Alvin???). Wonder why??? Even if he was not with us at the shores, his presence at Base camp within 24 hours before a trip would also bring R.A.I.N.

Well, despite these unpleasant situations, we always enjoy Kok Leong's company for his way of telling jokes and his nice and sweet nature. :o)

Weather Man

Our much beloved Kok Leong is in a pensive mood under cloudy skies...

He promised not to say anything to aggravate Mother* for the trip...
But what thoughts is he thinking?...

*the Main Mother that matters to us on our trips=Mother Nature

More Wild Things...

Introducing some of the crew who weren't able to make it the last time round.

Second from right: the much-photographed-and-filmed Wai 'what happens if we poke it?' (aka Onch-Freak).

Second from left: Xinghua, who is also the reluctant winner of Casualty of the Week for a spectacular coral cut on his leg as we did the amphibious Tuas landing (this is the "Before" picture).



At Tuas, while everyone else is working hard, Wai is making friends with her favourite slugs. Chay Hoon no doubt had, at that moment, an highly appropriate pair of words for this situation, but didn't share it with us (yet?).



On Changi, as the tide comes in and we run out of things to shoot; everyone is documenting everyone else. I get shot as I shot the crew with Sneaky Cam. And I think Dr Chua was somewhere off camera shooting all of us.

We sure are a trigger happy lot!


From left: Wai, Jo, Xinghua, Tom, Kok Leong, Priscilla.

Highlights of the Lows: May 7-13

The Wild Things were back in force! Exams over, work commitments eased up and off we went to explore some of our favourite shores! Our travels this time brought us from the North to Tuas to the South.

Unfortunately for me, the stingray bite acted up badly just before the trips. So I had to be a good girl and try to keep at least that one foot dry. This meant I lurched Quasimodo-like: putting good foot into deeper pools while stepping withbad foot on higher ground. I also couldn't go where the rest of the crew were happily splashing around....sigh...

But I took it as an opportunity to thoroughly explore the higher shores that I usually hurry past. And was delighted by what I saw ...


Scurrying among the rocks at low tide are Marine spiders (Desis sp.). These amazing creatures are Real Spiders just like the ones we find in dark corners of our homes. Marine spiders hide in crevices when the rocks are submerged at high tide. At low tide, they emerge to hunt. This feisty little spider had caught a shrimp bigger than itself! Among the common snails on rocks are Top shell snails like Trochus maculatus, which has a most endearing face and strange tentacles sticking out the sides of its body. There was also a special Moon crab: so bright and colourful and very different from the usual ones that we see. Could it be another kind of Moon crab? Our books suggest it could be Matuta planipes...got to badger the Crab Experts for an id...


These tiny shells (Clithon oualaneinsis) are washed up high ashore, while the live animals are found further seaward. Their shells are delicately patterned with fine black lines that look like they've been drawn by a very patient artist! No two shells are alike!


Other amazing molluscs include the burrowing Armina nudibranch (Armina sp.) that looks like it's wearing pajamas! These slugs are rarely encountered as they burrow and are only active at night. It is believed that they eat sea pens. The Hairy seahare (Bursatella leachii) were in season and found everywhere. Often mistaken for seaweed, these slugs release a purple dye when they are disturbed. My First-Time Find this trip was this cone-shaped snail. Is it the deadly Cone shell? Another Way to Die, and quite manly, but I didn't really want to add to the casualty statistics. A check with the books suggests it's an Olive shell (Family Olividae), quite rarely encountered on our shores these days...wow!


I even got to see fishes! This Rainbow wrasse (Halichores nigrescens) burrows in the sand and is sometimes exposed at super low tides. Poor thing. But don't touch these fishes. They bite hard enough to draw blood. Another Way To Die: Septic Blood Poisoning from Bite of Tiny Fish...not very manly. Kok Leong spotted a beautiful Feathery filefish (Chaetodoerma penicilligera). It's only the second time I've ever seen it! And Chay Hoon spotted Mr and Mrs Seahorse, while the rest of us were distracted by what we thought was a nudibranch on a seapen (but turned out to be just algae). The black Mr Seahorse looked very pregnant. A male seahorse is usually constantly pregnant, the female being ready with a new batch of eggs when he finishes delivering his babies.


The Southern shores are thick with wondrous living corals. Even in my 'paikah' state, I managed to see the strange bumpy Merulina coral (Merulina sp.), Staghorn coral (Acropora sp.) and my all time favourite, Galaxy coral (Glaxea sp.) with star-shaped corallites.

But the Find of the Week for me was this pair of shrimp and goby, quite high on the shore. Wai spotted them, she has super eyes! Although I've been told the partnership between snapping shrimp and goby is only found in deeper waters, this pair sure looked like they had something going on between them!


It was hard to take a nice photo of them. The snapping shrimp constantly stirred up the sediments as it tirelessly excavated the burrow. While the tiny black-and-white goby hovered near the burrow entrance. The snapping shrimp had cute beady eyes, blue legs with yellow knees and a bright orange band around its body. It always had one of its long antennae touching the goby whenever it bulldozed another load of mud out of the burrow.

Hope the stingray wound heals properly so next series of trips I can go out and play properly...

Casualty Lists for Latest Series of Trips

The Stupoks Index of this intrepid group of explorers and documentarians seems to be pretty high this series of trips.

Here is the List of:

Casualties Of Stupoks:

XingHua:
Stepped on a sharp rock/coral, which cut right through his bootie and ripped up his foot.
Chance of Recovery: 100%.

Chay Hoon:
Got frozen in rain and cold wind on Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. Down with fever at end of trip.
Chance of Recovery: 100%.

Various limbs of crew members at Base Camp:
Interminable bites by mozquitoes, despite the huge amount of offerings being burnt to appease the Master Mosquito. I wonder who and how we displeased it.


Fatalities Of Stupoks:
Light Canon:
No idea why it stopped working, it just did. Kok "Let me see it" Leong has got the Canon in his care now. We are still waiting for news.
Chance of resurrection: 75%
Chance of replacement: 100%

LCD on PD170 (which we lovingly call Mama):
At Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal, while filming a pile of poo in the rain, a drop fell in, and no matter how fast we could have been with a towel, it seeped in. Next thing we know, white screen. Now in the care of Alvin "Soooo Cuuuuuuuuteeee!!!!" Lee, we shall see what the manufacturer says about it.
Chance of resurrection: 0%
Chance of replacement: 100% and a price will have to be extracted.


Absent On Leave

XingHua:
Assuming his leg heals up, he will be going to France for a holiday.
YuChen:
Will be going to The States for a holiday.

These two will be back to rejoin the muletrain in about 3 months, which coincides with the end of the low tide trips for this year.

Melissa, Yandi, Carol:
All have separate lives to take care of, exams to take, and degrees to earn. We wish them the best of luck in their endeavours.

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.

-----
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.

Onch.

I made a new friend at Merawang yesterday, and decided to write something about it before someone else picks up the incriminating photos of me playing with it and writes something unflattering - and not to mention probably untrue. ;) After a rather unexciting trip (everything was hiding, so I ended up shooting stationary things for most of the day), we were packing up and about ready to leave when Pris spotted 2 onchs on the rock beside the tarp. I have a thing for slugs, you see. Not in the kinky sense or anything, but don't you think slugs are so cute? Especially the onchs which are brown, bumpy, round and cuddly-looking, and they have their eye stalks waving around too. They are just too adorable for words. Everyone should have an onchy friend. :)

Onchidoris bilamellata(?), or affectionately called "onks", are sea slugs commonly found on our sea shores. (NB: Not sure if this is the correct species, but it's the closest in terms of coloration. See Sea Slug Forum. The bumps are slightly different in colour. Could it be colour variations within the species?) I've only ever spotted it quite high up the shore, usually on rocks. This makes sense because this dorid does not eat sponges but preys on barnacles, ripping one of the barnacle's valves and feasting on the animal within. Like all nudibranchs (or sea slugs), it does not have a shell. And it breathes air through modified gills on its backside! What a cool animal. :D

OBITUARY

" I have fought the fight to the good end; I have run the race to the finish" –2 Tim 4:7

In Loving Memory of

Light Cannon I
Age: 4 months 3 days

Departed 9th May 2005 in the line of duty, leaving behind loved ones.

Survived by:
(pictured below)

Age 6 weeks:
Charlie
Coco
Christine
Christopher
Corinne
Carla
Carl
Cheese

Age 2 weeks:

Catherine

Cathy

Christy

Camilla

Cindy

Charles

Chatt

Clay

Now purposeless and without meaning in life, awaiting adoption:

~~~
Said our last goodbye,
In a most tragic way.
Bravely fought your last battle,
In your heyday.
Shone your brightest,
Illuminating every inch of the bay.

~~~

Light Cannon I is resting peacefully at base camp.
No wreaths please. Cash donations welcome.

Stupokses babblensis

It's been an eventful two days for me with the Wild Things.

The boredom of not finding stuff at the Merawang beacon today was compensated with the experience of catching the great 'horde' of swimming fireworms in the water at the pontoons' edge at Raffles Marina. There were plenty of leaf-porter crabs and also a cute lil' bob-tail squid!! In any case, it's always a fantastic time out there with the Wild Things.

Yesterday at Hantu, we got frogfish, one of which was quite a big fella, we got a small lil' octopus crawling out of water.. actually a few of those and handsome Mr. blue-tailed shrimp, who was happily burrowing...our very own prawnstar!! Well, less happily, we were all feasted on alive by swarms of sandflies and the literally inhaling the swarms of the flies, all attracted to us because of the lighting we were carrying.

Well, this blog post will be reasonably short, a summary of the past two days... soon I'll be back at base camp logging stuff and packing for tomorrow's trip to CFT... where we'll all accumulate another round of sandfly bites. *itch*

Like on any trip, we wonder if we'd get a stupoks relapse/attack, or a casualty... today, it was Xinghua, who got cut real bad by rocks and coral... Sigh.. it is ZERO trips without casualty!! The counter has been reset. Let's hope we can hit another ten trips before something else happens *touch wood*

I'll end my post with this:
Every trip out, we learn new stuff about something or someone or even ourselves.. for e.g., Stargazers have venomous spines near their pectoral fins and you SHOULD NOT kick them on their sides. Or that I talk a heck of a lot. *LOL* *babble babble* and sometimes I don't make much sense... I think it's the variant of stupoks I've got.. Stupokses babblensis.
Speaking of which, I need to do a study on the different variants of the virus..and their symptoms. Different WildFilms Crew have different strains and hence different symptoms... *oooooh....*

The 'all-new' MPV

Tired of the old MPV (Messy Production Vehicle)? Too filthy? Back seat too squeezy? Ill from the weird smells of decaying wet ponchos and mud from all corners of Singapore caked into every crevice? Too annoying to always have to use advanced logistics skills to pack all our gear into the miniscule boot?

Ever since the project started, I've been under serious pressure from the crew to junk the old car, Get a Van Already!!

But she's a good girl, the old MPV. And manages to get us there and back in more or less good condition, certainly in good time.

However, she has been suffering serious gear box problems for some months now.

Taking advantage of the breather in-between low tides, I sent her to the Car Doctor, who pronounced her Critically Ill. Shortly, I get an emergency phonecall. Ala organ transplant..."We've got a possible matching recon gear-box. Send her in NOW before we lose the deal."

After 3 days of intensive care hospitalisation (during which I got very well acquainted with our excellent taxi service), she's BACK!!

She's squeaky clean. Outside AND Inside. Not a speck of sand or mud. All those lovely green slogans the crew have been writing in the dusty back windows....GONE! She even smells like a new car.

And the little oopsie we had with the sidewalk has been nicely repaired with manly bolts so she looks like some cyber warrior that survived Bad Driving. Makes me want to ding the other side to make it even ...

New gear box, new clutch, new brakes, new windshield wipers. Now she can go zero-to-hundred-in-six again ... not that I know for sure, of course, being the law-abiding driver that I am.

While nothing has changed for the rest of the crew (too bad), it sure is an all new MPV to me! I'm soo very very happy!

(M to stand for Manly for now. In a week, it will just be Messy as usual...with enough sand and mud tracked into her carpeting to start a new beach)

CJ Guides Only - 2nd May

ria and tom spotted a dolphin fishing raptor (corrected by tom and ria) as we were on the bumboat ride over to ubin. and of highlight, we had new guide trainees with us - shirley, ashley and zul.

err. and my reebok shorts gave a resounding split as i squatted down to put down a trolley laden with 44 copies of the chek jawa guidebook.

i posted my photos on another clubsnap thread, do take a look if you're free.


an unidentified bird (heron?) looking for food at the chek jawa sandbar

Wild Things (aka Wild Stings)

As nature takes its course, and more of us attain the status, the name may eventually be changed to Wild Stings or Wild Stung, as suggested by Seh Suan. On hot days and when we visit particularly muddy shores, we are also Wild Stinks.

Sekudu was the first trip most of the crew could make. So it's time for the first group photo for this year's super low tide season ...

From left to right: Tom 'let's go clubbing'; Marie; Chay Hoon 'two words' (aka Super Seeker); Priscilla 'Godiva' (aka MisAdventure, oops I mean Miss Adventure); Jo; Alvin 'C47' and Robin 'let's zap it'.


The Wild Things never tire of taking footage, even if it means taking footage of each other!

Highlights of the Lows: Apr 26-29

T'was exam season, plus busy work period for many Wild Things. So with a lean crew, we decided to recce some new shores.



Tanah Merah appeared to be a barren sandy shore when we first arrived with the tide still rather high. There were lovely bouquets of seaweed, and hints of buttons snails and sand dollars. "Where are all the sand dollars?" we wondered.

When the tide receeded, we realised the shore was literally solid sand dollars and buttons snails! It is said that no two button snails are exactly alike. Vast tracts of these beautiful snails is truly a sight to behold.




Ploughing just beneath the sand surface, were enormous moon snails. With their broad foot, they were hunting button snail snacks. Button snails frantically leapt out of the way using their long leaf-like foot to flip away from the monster moon. I saw one tiny Clithon. A beautiful little snail with a wide a variety of delicate patterns.



The shore near the Changi Ferry Terminal was a lush seagrass meadow teeming with life. It was crawling with hundreds of crabs, uncountable numbers of button snails and lots of amazing creatures!



The dominant seagrass (Halophila ovalis) appeared to be flowering! The flowers are tiny, with three threadlike bits from the base of the leaf stalk. Among the seagrasses were hundreds of busy hermit crabs. Some were tiny and made their homes out of dead button shells. Others larger, and had sea anemones stuck on their shells.



The sand was teeming with crabs of all sizes. Tiny swimming crabs zipped off frantically at every footstep. Moon crabs, some as big as 10cm across, use their paddle shaped legs to bury rapidly into the sand. Tom found this large box crab with attractive spots on its massive claws, which are adapted to grip and peel open a snail shell like a can-opener!



Sand stars were everywhere, in different sizes and patterns. There appeared to be tiny snails that live on these sand stars!




The pipefishes were in season! Almost every pool would shelter one or more pipefishes. These tiny long fishes are superbly camouflaged among the seaweeds. They come in a wide variety of patterns and colours! Their faces look very much like their cousin, the seahorse. With long tube-like mouths to suck up little titbits, they also have tube-like nostrils!



There were not as many carpet anemones as on Chek Jawa. Most were tiny, about the size of a 10cent coin! Despite their small size, even tinier transparent shrimps live among their tentacles!



The highlights of the trips were molluscs! Jac spotted a rapidly colour-changing cuttlefish. It inked then made a getaway. Luan Keng discovered an octopus hiding in a large shell of a dead volute. Kok Leong's keen eye spotted a delightful nudibranch among the ascidians growing on a discarded oil drum.



Jellyfishes large and small were also seen. Most were in a sorry state, stranded on the sand. But Colin spotted this large one still unharmed in a deep pool of water. Hurrah! Alvin spotted a seahorse! And there were lots of beautifully marked flatfishes that rapidly burrowed into the sand.



For me, the most amazing find was this gianormous Stargazer. It must have been at least 30cm long. It was very much alive! This fish buries itself in the sand with its huge upturned mouth and hideous eyes just above the surface of the sand. It must have gulped down countless crabs and other creatures to have grown to its size. When we got home, Alvin and I searched the fish books to find out its identity. It was only then that we discovered that the fish has venomous spines near its pectoral fins. And there we were happily rearranging the fish as if it was harmless... another near-death experience that we escaped.

There were lots of other creatures that we encountered, but there's just no space to put them all up on the blog. And we have barely scratched the surface of these newly visited shores. Can't wait for the next low tides to start!

Mankind Loves Death

just randomly thought of that, while i saw this star cruises flyer on my dad's computer desktop. a simple montage, a couple of shells here and there, suggesting to people to go on a cruise where they wouldn't see any live shells. ok, i don't know, i'm guessing.

but in reality, mankind loves death more than life. why do i say so? purty advertisements all the time, have white sandy beaches which are to inviting to probably over 90% of the world's population, while maybe 9% hate getting sand anywhere near them, and it takes jokers like divers and the WildThings (TM, R, P, C) to love the alternative beaches with LIVE shells.

the general human population wouldn't enjoy going barefoot to the beaches with life, because they would go, "walk walk walk OUCH walk walk OUCH OUCH OUCH". on the other hand, divers and WildThings don't even go to beaches barefoot. heck, the beaches we visit, would be, "walk walk CRUNCH CRUNCH" variety...

couple of differences, let's see if i can come up with a top 10 list...

How DWTs (divers and WildThings) are different from Regular Human Beans...

10. DWTs rather NOT walk obscene distances on beaches.
9. DWTs come across "coarse sand grains" more often than the rest of the human population.
8. DWTs come across crunchy sand practically all the time, by choice. coral rubble!
7. DWTs would be happy to come across shells with living specimens in them.
6. DWTs would not be tempted to eat live shells of ANY type, in the name of science.
5. DWTs have less injury because they don't go barefoot.
4. DWTs would get injured more often walking around.
3. DWTs would be far less likely to die from stupoks-induced gastronomical ingestion of the stuff living in shells than regular human beans.
2. DWTs know that shellfish aren't fish.
1. DWTs do actual work, instead of talk, talk, talk...