What you find along the wrackline...

Hello!

WAH!!! After a long period of hibernation, I am back! However, it may not be for long... :( Yea... End of Years is coming and I have lots of work to do. In any case, the holidays follow afterwards so more blogging will follow. :)

SO, for today I will like to share a new shelf on my cabinet dedicated to Shore Weirdos! Yup, they're basically stuff that are not seashells. :)

Yea... Thats a pufferfish that you see. Got that from ShenZhen, China. It was the last one on the rack so I immediately snagged it! The Knobbly Starfish accompanies it as well! :) There are 3 different types of sand dollars too! Theer is a Cake Sand Dollar from Changi Coast Walk. There are tons of them there but DO TAKE ONLY THE DEAD ONES PLEASE! There are also Laganum Sand Dollars too. All of which from Bintan, Mayang Sari. The funny thing is that you can never find any live ones there but there are like hudreds of them littering the coast. The final one is have not identified. Found them on a trip to Cebu 3 years ago on some island, 忘忧岛 in Chinese. I actually got some heart urchins but they were crushed ont eh plane flight back. :(

The Flower crabs there are from Punggol Park. Do you see the Seahorse and Pipefish at the back? :) Also, there are some dried mangrove seeds from all parts of Singapore (Hey, we have half of the world's species of mangroves on this small island! :) ) The funny blue thing at the back is actually a coral piece. My parents found it in Lombok, Indonesia and I have never figured out where it comes from. Any guesses? :) Finally, you have our lovely horseshoe crab! Yup, found it along the Changi Coast. We have 2 species over here although just forther up the peninsular you may find a third species. Sadly, I have not found the moulted shell of the Coastal Horseshoe Crab... Maybe someday. :) You have our cuttlefish bones and a sea bean pod. And finally right in the centre, you have the purest form of seashell, Calcium Carbonate. Isn't it amazing that all 80,000 mollusc species actually derive their shells/bones from this dull, boring looking rock? (By the way, this rock comes from the School Science lab. I could not fit the rock into the flask so the teacher allowed me to take it home on my request. :P )

Bintan Shelling expedition 2

Hello!

    So as promised, I will be sharing with you the stuff from the third shelling trip. Err...i also made a mistake on the previous post. I have made 5 major shelling trips not 4. :) So, this time the trip spanned the Left wing of the Mayang Sari Bay (Yup, time constraints was the problem and thus not the whole coast). In any case, I did manage to get a substantial number of shells and even some which were seriously unexpected! The waters were much more wild over here but since it was a bay, it isn't as strong as those at the headlands. This trip took me about 2 hrs and I decided to pay more attention to the rocky area at the ends of the beach and it was worthwhile! So without further a do, here are the photos of the shells from the trip!

 So befor this, we had lunch at the kelong there and we stumbled upon this... a huge pile of fluted giant clam shells! They are from the Tridacna genus, along with the giant clam (see last post! :) )

 The relaxing view from the kelong... The whole place is so quite and calm... And having a family of 4 has its great benefits! Just enough for a mahjong game!!! so we took out the mahjong cards while waiting for the food to arrive.

 Brittle stars, there were many at the rocky area. had to flip over the rocks to catch them and photograph it... :)

 A brittle star itching to get out of the pail...

 And sea cucumbers! I feel really guilty when I picked them up... They actually excreted their intenstines when I collected them! SORRY!

 Low tide is the best time for shelling. The beach is covered with millions of sand balls created by the sand bubbler crabs! They live in similar habitats as the soldier crabs but the sand balls they create are smaller.

 And POOF! Two Burnt Murexes!!! This was my favourite shell before I got it from Thailand and I guess I was lucky. Found 8 of them! Well... I could have collected more but the others were occupied by hermit crabs so I had to let them go...

 The sand balls...

 This is the first find while combing the sandy shore, a Keyhole Limpet. Surprisingly, I only found one here... Hmm... probably due to the lack of sponges in the area. Btw, they feed on sponges.

 The sand bar extends so much during low tide! Sigh...I had a hard time shelling considering the fact that the shore has become so huge!

 These guys were littered all over the wrackline. The scaled nerite is a very common snail on their shores. I actually managed to collect a whole box filled with them!

 Assortment of shells... Sadly, the cowrie has been badly eroded. The Common Button Shell and Cerith shells were also littered along the shore by the thousands!

 The tide seems to be rising...

 And a whole load of coral bits! I managed to bring some back. Apparently, we are allowed to bring coral bits back to Singapore. (In any case, Singapore also has corals)

 Thankfully, I am still young or else i may have missed this guy! An Asselus Cowrie. It isn't very big...about 2 to 3 cm long but I still collected it anyway. :)

 And another assortmentof shells. Do you see the Moon Snail at the bottom?

 Another Burnt Murex! Wow...I guess it was my lucky day!

 Callista erycina, or Red Callusta. I never find these in Singapore. Or probably just at the wrong place at the wrong time. :P

 A shell pile! I actually managed to find a great mini-shell in here! Can you identify it? :)

 A smelly Moon Crab. This one's dead but my sis and I managed to catch 19 of them back at Trikora Beach. They were so easy to catch! Don't worry... we returned them once we had finished the shelling trip. :)

 And  a mini Burnt Murex! So Cute!

 Oh! I suddenly realised that this looks like some animal! haha! And there were Yellow Pacific Cockles, Trachycardium flavum, too!

 Look what we have here! Rostrate Tellin! I love the Pink hue of the shell!

 The sand bar that extends inshore. I realised that the sand bar is created due to the 2 low tides...

 I'm rich! Pink Sand Dollars are everywhere! I collected one box full of it. Surprisingly, I did not find any live ones along the shore or in fact, the whole trip! Hmm...

 relaxation at last...

 My apologies for providing only one photo for the 4th shelling trip. There were more Yellow Pacific Cockles, Burnt Murexes (Haha! :D ) Moon Snails, Nerites among others. One thing to note though, the Black Mouthed Conches here are longer and larger! Btw, if you have been to Bintan, you would recognise that the building at the back looks familiar... Hmm :P

Ok, so this is the end of the shelling trips. I will be showing you the last trip soon and also, the gems that Mum, Dad and I had collected so "akan datang"! they are really worth looking at!
In the mean time, maybe you could guess what shells I collected! :)