Sleepless in Sembawang

Shall we go to Kranji or Sembawang?

Sembawang! Because YC didn't want to add to his count of exotic internal parasites, and we didn't really want to get eaten up by crocodiles. Besides which it's the Seventh Month and it's rather spooky in the mangroves at 4am.

It's been years since I last checked out Sembawang. But I recalled that it had a lot of anemones.

And wow, Sembawang shores were really carpeted with them 'nems.
Some were large, but most were very tiny.But there were lots of them. And in all kinds of patterns.We are particularly intrigued by these ones with a 'moustache' of a pair of longer more opaque tentacles.They look very similar to the one Mervin found at East Coast, so we kept calling them Mervin's nem.

There were others that were rather plain but still pretty when you take a closer look.Of course we have no idea whether they are different or the same or what. We gathered a few so that Swee Hee and Dr Daphne can have a look at them.

Besides 'nems, there were also lots of brittle stars out and about.
These delicate animals are indeed rather 'brittle' and will drop off an arm if it is alarmed.It is a cousin of the sea star, you can see the five-part central disk.The mouth is on the underside. This particular one was happily moving about upside down.

YC found a Flower crab...oops, turned out to be two crabs mating.On the seawall was a very pretty Climbing crab, with green eyes.We stopped early today, to pace ourselves for the upcoming trips this week. Let's see what we can find in some of our other neglected shores tomorrow.