Baby stonefish at Sentosa

Chay Hoon spotted a juvenile Hollow-cheeked stonefish (Synanceia horrida) on our trip to Sentosa shore last Saturday!

Though stonefish are scary looking and horrible to be stepped on (since they can inject venom into you with their sharp spines), this young fish looks quite cute on the contrary. Haha!

This trip to Sentosa shore was actually our first evening trip after the morning lows are over. At night, the reef octopuses are very active on the reefs! I saw at least four!

This octopus is a different one from the one found in the previous photo. See, it is rather uniform in colours and patterns here.

And the same fellow changed its appearance very quickly after a short while.

Not too soon, the patterns and colours reverted back again. Quite interesting to look at I must say!

Here is yet another octopus, this one was found among the branching sponges.

There were quite a number of crabs that one can find on this shore such as the several Spoon pincer crabs (Leptodius sp.).

This fierce looking crab is aptly named as the Red-eyed reef crab (Eriphia ferox). They are usually found on the rocky areas at the high shore.

This bright red crab with white spots on its carapace is actually the most poisonous crab in Singapore! Red signifies warning, so do not mistaken this Mosaic reef crab (Lophozozymus pictor) as a yummy red chilli crab.

We also saw a rare ghost crab, the Ocypode cordimanus. Unfortunately, I did not manage to snap a photo of this fellow. See more in Ria's wildshores post.

Near many burrows, you can easily spot Snapping shrimps (Family Alpheidae) lurking around. They may be out in the dark to try and forage for food.

Looking nearly transparent, these tiny Red nose shrimps (Periclimenes sp.) are plentiful. You just have to look closely on the ground for them.

This more colourful shrimp in orange is the Coral ghost shrimp (Glypturus sp.). Like a ghost, it will only show you itself for a while before it slide back into its burrow once it has detected your presence.

Marcus found a special shrimp! This is the Saron shrimp (Family Hippolytidae) which is probably as shy as the ghost shrimp.

On the sandy bar, it is good to still be able to find the large Cake sand dollars (Arachnoides placenta). However I only saw three. I have not seen any Common sea star (Archaster typicus) on this shore for some time already... oh dear.

On the reefs, the encrusting sponges seem to be doing very well! They are quite abundant and come in different colours. We also came across some hard and soft corals.

This plate like hard coral is the Disk coral (Turbinaria sp.). I remember these corals are quite common at the deeper ends of the Sentosa shore. The tide wasn't low enough that evening for me to check them out. This particular colony was found higher up along the zonation.

This huge snail is the Spotted top shell snail (Trochus maculatus). We also saw a very small one earlier near the start of the trip.

It was my first time seeing this Pink moon snail on the Sentosa shore!

And just right near the pink moon snail is also yet another first time find on this shore- the Swimming anemone (Boloceroides mcmurrichi)!

This was a rare moment where I could properly photograph the entire length of the Giant reef worm (Eunice aphroditois). Usually one end of this super long and huge worm would be found in the burrow while the part with its head and mouth will extend outwards to look for seaweed to snatch for food.

Ending this blog post, here is yet another worm, the Blue-lined flatworm (Pseudoceros sp.), which is much prettier!

More photos of the trip here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/koksheng/archives/date-taken/2011/09/03/