台湾，野柳/九份 Taiwan trip, Ye Liu/Jiu Fen

November 20th to 29th:

    Hello, went to Taiwan during the last holiday. Went with my Taiwanese buddies to 九份 and 野柳. Firstly went to see the rock formations at Ye Liu with by TAIWANESE BUDDIES! :D Haha, mainly fossils and perculiar rock formations around... cool. had lunch there as well and the whole stretch was filled with tons of different live seafood. Got a free seashell from there as well from a nice man. :) Also went to Jiu Fen where I found a shop that sold cool seashells at a cool price! had to bargain abit although... altogether 400 台币.

 Port hloes in the rocks...

 From the top of the rock there. Clear waters belows...

 Shells and rocks litter the beach. But most of it are broken so i took just a few for a momento. :)

 Fossilised Sand Dollars.

 Ye Liu again..

 The way to eternal life.. haha :P No, this is a road that leads to the top of Ye Liu. Lookd like some scene from an ancient Chinese movie show.

 Edible Sea Urchins

 La La and lobsters. La La (Meretrix meretrix)

 Jiu Fen Street. Used to be a Japanese Quarters during the Gold Rush but eventually, the gold ran out and the place abandoned by the Japanese. The Taiwanese tehm came to re-populate the street and boom! Jiu Fen street :) actually situated on a mountain so had to climb a REALLY steep slope before getting there..

 The outside of the store. Sign = Please put the shells back in their original compartments as they all command a different price. This man also had a HUGE collection of other rare seashells but refused to let me take a picture... T_T... So sad that I was only left with 500NT and could only buy 2 shells

The orchid murex, firebrand murex and miyoko murex were purchased from the store while the other shell was given free :)

East Coast Park

Hello again!
Somewhere duing the december holidays, the school organised a beach training and since I arrived early, and the beach was empty, I decided to take a walk along the beach... Found a few shells along the shoreline with quite a number of them at the mouth of the drain... Somewhere the food centre :)

Here are the shells that were collected. Much different from those at Punggol Point due to the different wave strength and absence of rocks. Majority of them are bivalves living along the surf zone and the gastropods are mainly found near the breakwaters...

Surf clams, half heart cockles, blood clams, barnacles, venus clams, jingle shells, mussels etc... :)

Punggol Point Trip

Hello again! :)

Went to Punggol Point in Sunday, 19th Feb 2012 somewhere around 6p.m. there were loads of people there but only spotted and spoke to one couple who collects seashells. She explains that there is nothing much to collect there but guess what? 老天不负有心人, did manage to find two more uncommon shells but i had to sacrifice my back...walked along the whole beach to the "ulu-ulu" (less populated) part ofteh beach to find them though.

There was a pond with tilapias and guppies in it. rought a piece of bread to feed them but they did not want to eat it due to the sugar caked in it...

 Punggol park, high tide. one thing that i have learnt is that regardless of teh tides, you will stull be able to collect something at the beach... haha yeah. So many people at the beach, i was worried that it would all have been collected before i arrived! The stone that you see there are normally also seen during the usual high tides. Many coral fragments found there as well... is there a coral reef somewhere near? Opposite you can see johor, it think thats the port...

 Haha, the first shell i spotted. See haam or Blood cockle (Anadara granosa)...really common there either due to the presence of a mud-flat like seabed and weak waves or from the mangroves over at malaysia.

A Perna viridis and possibly a Meretrix over there. Did not pick up the Meretrix because it was cracked.. so sad, it had a nice purple hue :)

 HAHA!!! Found a Sea Urchin stranded along the shore. It was still alive and its spines were moving. One of the only few sealife found at the visit. Took a quick picture and immdiately placed it back into the sea.

 Surprisingly, the waters are relatively clean (for local standards) and due to the weak waves, you could actually see the sand beneath and there were many shells there :)

 Something started to move and lo and behold... a Pugilina cochlidium!!! Live! Usually you can find them along Changi and our Northern coast. Behind is also a blue sponge :)

 Sunset at Punggol... Somewhat reminds me of Bintan and really wished i could spend 3 days collecting shells, relaxing and playing!!!

 This is the eastern wing of the beach... not many seashells were found here but found one uncommon one along the shoreline. Also, this stretch is shorter than the West end and is characterised by more sandy coast so  shells usually do not het stranded here.

 What i collected!!! Not a bad haul with green Mussels, Venus clams, A sea urchin's test, keyhole limpets, barnacles, jingle shells, corals, "tua tow", Limpets, Barbatias and MOST IMPORTANTLY, A SUNDIAL AND THORNY OYSTER!!! haha, Sundial was found along the western end while the latter on the eastern end...

 Also found 3 Flower crab moults and now drying them. :)

 Another pic... :)

The 2 uncommon shells :) YAY

My Collection :)

Hello!
here are the pictures of my collection! most of them come from around the region...

 First column: the nautiluses, cowries, murexes, figs, vases, sundials and one small ischnochiton. :) Probably the fav here is the orchid murex at the bottom-right corner. orange coloured shell from taiwan and cost me abt 7 SGD (NT $150), the guy who sold me the shell's really nice, all in all cost 400NT with some other seashells. Second fave, the miyoko's murex also from taiwan, 200NT :) the nautilus at the back was a bomb, $40 from mauritius...

 Second column: cones, turban, conches, melo, volutes, bonnets, tuns and a fan shell. The silver-coloured turban is the south-african turban, got it from my trip last year.. the majority of the cones come from philippines and a shop at shoemart, cebu.

 third column: abalones, tibias, fox conch, geoduck, tops, heart cockle, mitre/marlinspike, lister's conch and a babylon whelk. the other abalone (the grey one) is also from SA. the geoduck actually came from a restaurant in Singapore, Jumbo, hee hee... :) the blueish abalone is from NZ. Also red-mouthed frog shell :)

 Fourth column: spider conch, bivalves, frog shell , random crabs and mantis shrimps, spiny oysters and lazarus jewel boxetc. there is also a large meretrix (we also call it lala here :P) at the bottom-right... from kuching, sarawak...hee hee, for those singaporeans, imagine having it for dinner :P Do you see the common spider conch at the left side of the photo with a blue dot on it? It is the oldest seashell i ever have, 8 years so far (now i'm 15). Was the shell that sparked of the collection. Cool story behind it, the shell was buried in the sand and only the top was shown. However, got some GUT FEELING that something was there and YEAH!!! From Bintan, Mayang Sari beach... :)

 Fifth column: sebas spider conch, pacific broad-mouthed conch, helmet shells, bubble shell, philippines cockle... most of tehm come from China, Shenzhen 小梅沙. Oh, also got imperial volute. Haha, really good priced, the sebas spider conch from Hạ long...15000 dong, cool rite?

 Sixth column: pufferfish, giant frog shell, mangrove horseshoe crab, sand dollars, giant clam, knobbly seastar and guess what, a LION'S PAW!!! Ya, got it from SA, when the lady there sold it to me. My first ever carribean shell...hee hee, ultimate goal is to go there and spend 5 full days collecting seashells in Sanible or Captiva and other places... Giant clams all from our neighbour, Sabah. the Horseshoe crab is a local species. found the moult and dried it. has been with me for about 5 years now :)

hello!

Hi ppl, I'm Eng Oon from Singapore. A shell enthusiast, I enjoy collecting seashells from all over the world, with most of them coming from the Indo-Pacific region. Here are some pictures of seashells that I have taken. Enjoy! :)