Shore Behind of Yok Poon Primary School (3)

Finally, i bought a new camera to replace my lost one. And i was lucky enough that, it was low tide when i got back home. So, i dragged my friend to go to the shore with me. :) There were nothing much at the shore though. The tide was not low enough, so we did not see the black sea cucumber. However, we saw a tiny elbow crab and i think my friend now knows that, why we should always visit the shore with a guide! :p

i will be away for another few months, likely until September. So, it is not likely that i will have anything to upload here until then. However, i think i should still be able to do the Q&A or comment stuff. :)



Like usual, we were greeted by the Friddle Crabs near to the Sonneratia mangrove tree. Male Friddle Crab has one big pincer and one small pincer. The big pincer is so huge and heavy that it is bascially no practical function. It is used to attract female, to show that i am mascular! (In the animals world, manhood is equally important. :)



There used to be abandance of oyster around the shore area, but due to over collection, there isn't as many now. Oyster is two-parted shell softbody animals. One of their shell stick firmly on the rock. When the tide comes in, the other half of the shell will open and it started to filter feed. It filters organic particle in the sea water. So if the water is polluted, either by heavy metal such as mercury or human waste, then these toxic is very likely to remain in the body of oyster. When you eat the oyster, these things will transfer to your body!



The things which look like a hat and stick on the rock is a kind of snail called limpet. It can shape its shell to suit to the uneven surface of the rock. This snail can lift up thier shell to move. So it is not stationary.



This volcano looked creature is called barnacle. It is the close relative of crab, so it is a crustacean. Barnacle is a pest in shipping industry as it will stick at the bottom of the vessle and hence causing the additional used of the fuel to drive the now heavier ship.



This is a tube of a tube worm. The tube worm is living in the tube under the ground and the tube is made from both mucus and sand. This species of tube worm like to attach a piece of leaf to its tube. It is believed that, the leaf will help the worm to better sense the vibration and hence, predator. Some fishermen would pull out the tube or dig the worm out as fishing bait.



i flipped over a rock and saw this tiny little crab, around 1cm. It looked like just another ordinary crab to me but when i took a closer look now, it looks like an albow crab to me. Its pincers are obviously longer than other ordinary crab.



Ok, this animals become my favorite in my hometown shore. There are always there and they look beautiful! This is colonial anemone. Anemone is called "sea sunflower" in Chinese. You can see the one opened and the one closed in this picture. The open one does look like a sunflower right? The have stinging cell, so they are cnidirian like jelly fish.



We saw these two stranded jelly fish on the way back. They were likely dead or going to die...
Some jelly fish will swim up-side-down to have their tantacle facing up. This is because there are sometimes symbiotic algae staying at the tantacle. These algae will produce their food from the sun and eventually the jelly fish gets its share too.



This is a simple and basic crane used by the fishermen to upload their catch from their boat to the jetty.



The black color dots that you see were all flies! There were tonnes of them flying and stopping on the fishes left on the ground. When i asked the fisherman were these to sell at the market (i asked in my horror, although i myself don't eat) ? To my relief, he said, no, these were to sell for making pet food.