Seahorses and other spineless wonders!

January 16, 2014

Did you know that you can organize your own dive trips to Pulau Hantu with our Hantu Blog guides? Over the weekend, a small group of family and friends got themselves together and arranged a private charter to our reefs! 19-year old Caitlin Sahetapy was also kind enough to share the photos from the dive so we can all get a glimpse of the wonderful critters they encountered! Above: Tigertail seahorse. All photographs © Caitlin Sahetapy

A master of disguise, and understandably so! Many a reef predator would fancy a shrimp for a snack!

Many Ceratosoma nudibranches were out and about! Some appeared as their common name suggests, Slender ceratosoma.

Others were not-so-slender, and quite plump in fact!

A Snakey bornella (Bornella anguilla) seems to “smell” the water while perched on the edge of the reef before it makes a bold “leap” to swim or wriggle its way to a new location.

Snakey bornellas are so-called because, like snakes, they swim by moving their body in lateral, wave-like movements, more or less appearing to shape their body in an S pattern. These undulations start from their head and continuing down their body. Using the S-shape movement propagating down their body, snakes (and Snakey bornellas) can exert a force backwards against the water, thus enabling them to move forward.

Unlike Snakey bornellas, Phyllidia nudibranches are completely useless at swimming. Here are a pair of them trying to make like pieces of encrusting sponge!