Corals of the Great Reef part one

Here's the continuation of the sightings from my previous Terumbu Raya trip. The short two hours out on the field was well occupied because I took so many photos that processing them required a lot of time. Nevertheless, here are the corals section, which I had also split into part one and two. :-)


As said in my previous post, Terumbu Raya or also known as the Great Reef lives up to its name. There's indeed many different types and high number of corals at the reef edge. Not to say at the reef slope which will have more.


Some of them can be quite gigantic in size, I wonder how old are these corals?


On land, there are also colourful hard corals like the Small o-ring favid coral (Family Faviidae) that is green in colour and the brownish Jigsaw maze favid corals (Family Faviidae).


The waters at the tide pool are clear and we can see the Ladder maze favid coral (Family Faviidae) quite vividly.


This is yet another view from the faviid coral from underwater.


Family Faviidae is really a huge family and here is another coral of the same family: the Big o-ring favid coral.


Could this also be the Big o-ring favid coral (Family Faviidae)? Sigh, faviid corals are quite hard to tell apart :P


This colony of maze looking coral looks similar to the Brain corals (Family Mussidae) but other than that, I'm rather clueless too... There's just some many species of corals in Singapore so I'm not complaining either.


Finally some familiar looking corals. The starry looking polyps led to it being named as the Galaxy corals (Galaxea sp.).


The Euphyllid coral (Family Euphyllidae) is a fascinating coral with tentacles that end off with a U-shape. I do not usually encounter them though.


Here is the Lettuce coral (Pavona sp.) which has leafy looking shapes that give them their common name. These structures are great hiding places for all kinds of animals!


Now it's time to really get brainy. I kind of gave up trying to distinguish their species so for the next few photos, they are simply Brain corals from the Family Mussidae.


The "brainy" is quite different, it has a neon-green colour.


This probably the Lobed brain coral (Lobophyllia sp.).


And here's the last brainy coral to share with you all.


Last but not least, here's the anemone coral (Goniopora sp.) swaying its long polyp with the waves. It has a very cute Banded fan worm on it!

Look forward to the 2nd part of the coral posts on Terumbu Raya. There's a small little "surprise" in that upcoming post. So keep your eyes glued to the updates of this blog while I continue to slog on for my thesis.