Brittle Stars, Basket Stars, and Noble Snails

April 11, 2014

Underwater macro enthusiast Chay Hoon made a trip to Pulau Hantu over the weekend and returned with some amazing finds! She writes, “Joined a Hantu Bloggers dive trip that was private chartered by Cedric Sahetapy and Petrus Sahetapy‘s family. We had two good dives at the North jetty! The visibility was about 3-4m and with no current! Lots of stuff! Nudibranch, Flatworms, Octopus, Stingray etc! The Sahetapy’s saw a Mantis shrimp and Seahorse too!” Thanks to her, we get a glimpse of some of her extraordinary finds! Above: Nembrotha livingstonei, a recent new record in Singapore waters!

Favorinus mirabilis: Chay Hoon shares that species in this genus feed on egg mass of other sea slugs! And that’s what they are doing in the above photo! Can you see the egg masses?

Doto sp. on Giant hydroid

Basket star on a Whip coral

Pteraeolidia ianthina

Colpodaspis sp.

Flabellina rubrolineata

Chromodoris fidelis, which was recently reclassified into Goniobranchus fidelis. Commonly known as Reliable chromodoris, though we’re not sure what led to it earning that common name!

A tiny shrimp on a sea whip

Another tiny shrimp on a whip coral. Notice how each shrimp matches the colour of the coral on which it lives?

Orange-spotted pipefish

A tiny baby Kuiter’s Dragonet, another recent new record for Singapore! Check out the video put together by Chay Hoon below!

A curious octopus peeps out at the world outside, but keeps the rest of its body safely hidden!

A very robust-looking Slender ceratosoma

A Blue-spotted fantail ray and it’s sneaky little crab friend at the back

Pretty flatworm

Allied cowie

Noble volute

Bornella stellifer, commonly known as Starry bornella

Dendrodoris tuberculosa. Chay Hoon thinks this might be a juvenile. Thank you, Chay Hoon, for sharing these wonderful photos!

Posted in Blog Log