While the rest explored the shore thoroughly, I plodded slowly to focus on the rocky shore. And came across some creatures that I've not observed closely before. I saw geckoes (two of them) and a centipede on parts of the rocks that would be covered at high tide. I also saw these creatures on Changi last month. Does this mean these two animals are naturally found on the intertidal rocky shore at low tide? Wow! I need to look out for these on our other rocky shores too!
Nerite snails (Family Neritidae), which can look very similar. It's not very easy to tell them apart from the upper side especially since snails of the same species can have many different colours and patterns. So it's best to look at the shape of the shell.
Polished nerite (Nerita polita), Waved nerite (Nerita undata), and the last two are Chameleon nerites (Nerita chamaeleon). Here's a comparison of some common nerites.
Toothed top shell snail (Monodontia labio) has a thin yellow 'door' to seal the shell opening. While the Ribbed turban snail (Turbo intercostalis) has a thick convex 'door'. Here's a comparison of top and turban snails.
Giant top shell snail (Trochus niloticus) that I've ever seen! These snails can grow to an enormous size, with a base of 8-15cm in diameter!
Spotted top shell snail (Trochus maculatus).
Coral ghost shrimp (Glypturus sp.) creates large long smooth sides burrows in solid rubble. I don't know how they manage it. We hardly ever see more than the tips of their orange pincers before they slide away into hiding.
sea slaters (Ligia sp.) as usual. These are not cockroaches! They are not even insects. They are crustaceans like crabs and shrimps, but are very happy scrambling around out of water.
Spoon pincer crabs (Leptodius sp.), four large Spotted belly forceps crabs (Ozius guttatus), many fierce Red-eyed reef crabs (Eriphia ferox) and lots of swimming crabs of all kinds (Family Portunidae). There were also many Purple climber crabs (Metopograpsus sp.).
Long-eyed ghost crab (Ocypode cerathophthalmus) (below), our Sentosa crab doesn't have pointy things on top of its eyes and lacks the dark brown markings on the back.
Sadly, we came across seven of these freshly laid crab traps on the sandy shores.
Posts by others on this trip
- Debby shared on facebook videoclips of an octopus showing amazing colour changes, and a photo of a baby stonefish. With full story on the Pulau Hantu blog.
- Jocelyne with more about octopuses, shrimps, crabs and more!
- Kok Sheng with baby stonefish, a look at the corals and more.