Glorious morning trip to Little Sisters

It's the low tide season again! Though it's always a drag to wake up at 3am plus, the wonders of God's creation is always worth the sacrifice.

Indeed, we were pleasantly surprised to witness such a pretty sunrise over the horizon! The momentary spectacular glow in the sky that looked like magma simply left us awe-struck.

Of course everyone paused from looking at the marine life and went on a trigger-happy mode to capture the short moment of glorious skyscape.

The shores are as awesome as the sunrise. Lots of colours and crowded with life!

At night, the creatures are happier and roam about the reef looking for food, such as this psychedelic Blue-spined swimming crab (Thalamita sp.).

Chay Hoon pointed out to us a False clown anemonefish (Amphiprion ocellaris) frolicking among the tentacles of the Giant carpet anemone (Stichodactyla gigantea).

This brightly coloured Red egg crab (Atergatis integerrimus) was foraging for food and seemed to be in the process of feeding on something.

The Orange-edged black flatworm (Pseudobiceros uniarborensis) seems to be in season recently as we have been seeing it quite often on our southern shores.

James found this tiny Gymnodoris nudibranch (Gymnodoris sp.) on the high shores of the lagoon. We waited a long time for it to show off its gills but we didn't get to witness it.

The tide was very low when we arrived and I could even take a closeup and clear shot of the Cave corals (Tubastrea sp.).

One of the highlights of any Little Sisters Island trip will be the numerous Feather stars (Order Comatulida) that can be found on this reef. The most common would be the red version.

Here is another of the red feather star found among the black cave corals and soft corals.

Right at the edge of the reef, I found this family of two red feather stars and one white and maroon feather star huddling together on a colony of zoanthids. I did not notice the small sea fan on the right until I processed the photo back at home.

There seems to be quite a number of these juvenile maroon / brown with white feather star on the shore today! Which is fantastic for an echinoderm fan like me. :) This one was clinging onto a branching sponge.

This is another one clinging onto the soft coral.

When relaxed in a nice and clear tide pool, they really look stunning! Can't resist admiring the beauty of these creatures over and over again.

There was a good variety of the different types and colours of feather stars sighted today. Maybe because the tide was quite low and we could walk quite far out to explore the reef.

The special find for me today will be this long Yellow-lipped sea krait (Laticauda colubrina)! I have not seen it for more than a year already.

I later stumbled yet a smaller individual of the same species of snake. This type of snake is rather shy but please do not disturb it as you may antagonise it to bite you. Let's treat all organisms with respect. :)

What a wonderful trip we had this morning at Little Sisters. Looking forward to explore a special part of Sentosa's reef tomorrow!