Ecology

Tired. Had school from 10am to 9plus and 8pm consecutively for the past 2 days. >.> But I shall blog while the memory of the field trip is still fresh.

The spell of biology modules shall start next semester, when I finally start specialising in my major. I can't wait! (YES! NO MORE CORE MODULES THAT ARE USELESS AND COMPULSORY !) Meanwhile, I'm doing one biology module this semester. ECOLOGY!

Ecology's really fun and interesting! Too bad Singapore's probably not as interesting as other countries such as Australia, which are much bigger countries and probably have a much bigger pool of biodiversity. Nonetheless, there are a few places in Singapore with interesting biodiversity and one of the places is the rocky shore at Labrador Park. Went there for a field trip on Monday!

It's seriously damn cool there! The rocky shore's not open to the public, so I reckon that it's quite an opportunity to be able to walk along the shore. ;)

When I first reached the park, I was sweating buckets due to the hot evening sun and was kinda freaked out by the sea cockroaches scurrying along in the sand. But as soon as the tide went down and I started surveying the surroundings, time started flying and I found myself enjoying myself tremendously. I saw so many animals up close and personal, it's so damn cool! Seriously up close and personal! Yay! (:

Here's some pictures of the animals I saw. Damn cool! I didn't bring my camera, so all pictures are from other websites. Credit to http://labradorpark.wordpress.com and google.com!

Labrador Park when it's high tide...

When it's low tide...

We worked in these muddy, murking looking shoreline.



This is the quadret we used to mark the area we wanted to work on i.e. find the animals, just that the one we used was without the netting!

Some coral I saw.... Reminds me of the brain...

Ribbon seaweed which looked kinda gross in real life cos it looked like stubby fingers pointing out of the ground.

Hairy crab....
My favourite rocky shore organism! It's really gentle and cute and duh, hairy! When you hold it on your hand and close your palm, the crab will snuggle in the crevasse of your closed hand. So cute!

Another crab... This one is the flower crab! I think I ate its kind before :( Sorry :((((

This is a snapping shrimp!
Generally, the snapping shrimp has one pincher which is bigger than the other, and it uses the bigger pincher to snap when its prey is near it! This creates a sonic boom (physics stuff, don't ask me about it) and the prey will be paralysed and then devoured :( Cool but ewww.

Spot the crab!
This is a velcro-crab, which carries seaweed on its back for camouflage. LOL. Like an army boy in the forest with the helmet with grass attached !


This is one disgusting organism! It's call the drill. It looks innocent, but acts like a drill to drill a hole in oyster shells, then secretes acid to dissolve the oyster's flesh in the shell and sucks up its dissolved prey. Yucks right :(

A damn disgusting, neon orange worm I saw! I dunno its name but it sure dug into the sand very quickly!

I also spotted a baby cuttlefish which was floating around my feet. It was smaller than my thumb and was so adorable!

Saw hermit crabs! They are plentiful at the rocky shore. I caught like 14 of them in one quadret. :O

A brown flatworm on dry land!


We also saw a real live octopus!
It was slightly bigger than my hand, and was swimming very very near our feet! It's really cool! Then it swam towards us and we freaked out. Did you know octopus-es love to eat crabs? Scary! So that's what their arms are for!

And now... Onwards to the poisonous, even venomous creatures I saw...


The spider cone-shell.
It was damn big! Bigger than my hand. This creature is damn slimy and lives inside a very pretty shell. It's a ferocious predator. Think it has a harpoon which shoots out of the shell, spears the prey (usually fish), and drags the prey to the shell to feed on.
All cone shells are venomous organisms, athough the severity of the venom depend on the species.


The fire worm.
This is damn disgusting in real life. Very slimy and red and gross. Anyway, it's dangerous because of the sillica/ glass spikes on its body. Ouch if you touch it.


I saw a young scorpion fish!
It was damn pretty but it's very venomous cos of the poison on its spines. Very pretty!



The stone fish.
It looks very stoned right? Like some grumpy old man. Anyway, this is very venomous if you accidentally step on it, thinking it's a stone. This fish has poisonous dorsal spines on its body which inject poison into your bloodstream. We saw and caught a baby stone fish!
Anyway, an interesting fact about the fish is that its eyes are at the top. The bottom holes that look like eyes ain't eyes. Those holes are just dents.

Ok I'm gonna go and sleep. Hope you enjoyed looking at the animals too!
DRAINED.
Anyway, cos of the field trip which ended at 9plus at night, I only reached home at 11pm. Had late dinner :(
FAT!