Lazarus trekking with giant clam find

Though Lazarus Island has been joined with St John's Island and Seringat, much of the island remains untouched. The side facing St John's Island is real rocky. In fact it is a natural form of foot reflexology. Haha! We went around the entire island during low tide to see how's the shores of Lazarus doing.

The top find of the day would definitely be this pretty boring giant clam in blue and green. Not that it is really pretty boring but it is indeed a giant clam that bores itself into the rock.

This giant clam is also known as the Burrowing Giant Clam (Tridacna crocea). Many thanks to Rene for sharing the location.

Can you spot the clam in this photo? To be honest, it's not that easy to find it.

Later on, we also found this Fluted giant clam (Tridacna squamosa) which is different in terms of species as compared to the previous one. The two-part shell of the Fluted giant clam has 5-6 rows of deep open flutes on the valves.

As compared to my previous trip, there seems to be a good growth of seagrass colonizing the shore near Kusu Island.

Among the seagrasses, I came across this sea anemone that looks a bit like the Very long anemone (Actinoporus elongatus). If this is indeed elongatus, the body column may be as long as 50cm!

There are also several Haddon's carpet anemones (Stichodactyla haddoni) and Garlic bread sea cucumbers (Holothuria scabra).

I didn't really see any sea slug except for this Ornate leaf slug (Elysia ornata) that is believed to feed on the Hairy green seaweed (Bryopsis sp.).

By the side of the huge boulder, the Long-spined black sea urchins (Diadema setosum are still there! 

These Red feather stars (Himerometra robustipinna) are often hidden from our sight at Lazarus but they are abundant at the deeper ends where we don't usually look.

And after much walking and baking under the sun, I completed one whole round of trekking around Lazarus Island.

Since there was still some time, I went down the rocky shore again to check if the Cryptic sea stars (Cryptasterina sp.) are still there. I'm glad they are. These sea stars are not commonly found on our rocky shores

While flipping rocks, I found this beige / brown-looking flatworm. Not too sure about its identity though.

It's nice to know that there's also a small clump of the Tape seagrass (Enhalus acoroides) near the bridge connecting Lazarus and St John's.

More photos of the trip can be found here:https://www.flickr.com/photos/koksheng/shares/D7156y