Hantu Blog's 3rd Anniversary Dive Part THREE

25 March 2007

Dive No. 2 - Operation Rescue
Dive Site: Southern Jetty
Location: Pulau Hantu Besar
Visibilty: 3 m
Temperature: 29°C
Maximum Depth: 13.7 m
Actual Bottom Time: 53 mins
Time In: 1335 hrs

We headed out in different groups and this dive turned out to be more than just fruitful. In fact, it was meaningful for most of us who rendered the release of trapped animals. There were bubus around the shallows laid down by fishermen. Most were discarded but some were still functional as traps for marine creatures. Those of us, who happened to come across enmeshed fishes, tried our best to extricate them unharmed. We yielded successful outcome.

I was surprised at first, when I noticed a Spanish Flag Snapper (Lutjanus carponotatus) laying perfectly motionless and head down in an unconventional position. Then I saw a hook in its jaw. I thought it was dead but as I approached, it put up a bit of futile struggle to break free from its painful entanglement. Before I set to release it, I checked the line... It was slacked. Debby came to my aid and together, we unhooked and disengaged the animal. It swam free... turning back again glancing at us as if with some sort of gratitude.

Afterwards onboard the boat, Geraldine told us they've encountered a strange shark trapped in a bubu but was also released unharmed. Chayhoon, Gina and some others also set free trapped fishes along their dive path. It was collectively a conservation effort by all who have a heart for the marine lives of Singapore.


The strange epaulette shark turned out to be a White-spotted Bamboo Shark (Chiloscyllium plagiosum) which is listed on IUCN Red List of Threatened species. See info here
The above shark photo is copyrighted and taken by Geraldine

Here are the other fantastic encounters:

The crawling jewels of the sea...

Black-margined Glossodoris (Glossodoris atromarginata)

Another purplish-orange colour variant of the Bullock's Hypselodoris (Hypselodoris bullockii).

My first sighting of The Emma's Hypselodoris (Hypselodoris emmae). Guess what? Take a closer look... It's laying its orange-red egg ribbon!!!

A Gold Speckled Flatworm (Thysanozoan nigropapillosum)

Then it was the little stuffs on the sea whips...

Allied Cowries

Left: An allied cowry extending its mantle to feed and digest part of the sea whip.

Right: A White-lined Whip Goby (Bryaninops amplus) living on its sea whip host.

Other interesting finds....
An almost perfectly camouflaged Crocodile Fish (Cymbacephalus beauforti) lying in the sandy bed. One way to differentiate Flatheads from Crocodilefish is to look into their eyes. Crocodilefish will interest most Macro aficionados. Close up shots of their jewel like eyes with their frilled eye lids or the details of the complex carpet-like decorations on their body are surefire winners.

A Carpet Eel-Blenny (Congrogadus subducens) is also called a Wolf Eel but it is neither an Eel nor a Blenny. In fact it's a Dottyback. It has a long body that's shaped like an eel's and is capable of changing its colour. The fish is sexually dimorphic - the female is pinkish brown while the male is green.

A school of Yellow-tail Barracudas swam pass as Debby and I prepared to ascend.

Hantu Blog's 3rd Anniversary Dive Part TWO

25 March 2007

Dive No. 1 - Sexy Sea Slugs
Dive Site: Northern Jetty
Location: Pulau Hantu Kechil
Visibilty: 2 m
Temperature: 29°C
Maximum Depth: 12.5 m
Actual Bottom Time: 66 mins
Time in: 1050 hrs

The waters in this narrow channel on the nothern side of P. Hantu was seemingly calm from the surface. The nearby reclaimation works on Pulau Bukom transmitted amplified sound waves underwater. Luckily, the head throbbing vibrations ceased a few minutes after we descended.
I buddied Debby and Jimmy and we worked west really slowly towards the Northern Jetty. As with any other muck habitats, the critter encounters were overwhelming. The following are some of the fauna I managed to photograph on just a single dive and amazingly, they were found in the highly discriminated waters of Pulau Hantu!

A Rosy Spindle Cowry (Phenacovolva rosea) that Jimmy pointed out to me on a gorgonian just under the jetty.

I flipped over a large piece of brown rotting Mangrove Apple leaf with my rod and guess what was clinging to it on the underside? A large and well camouflaged Dorippid Crab (Dorippe sp.)! The Brachyuran Crab pictured above belonged to the subfamily Dorippinae, family Dorippidae MacLeay, 1838. It is adapted to carry bivalve shells, leaves, jellyfishes, anemones, urchins or other objects on their backs by using the hooked dactyli of their last two pairs of pereiopods, which are dorsally located and mobile. The rare find of this Dorippid Crab in shallow waters of about 8m and its large carapace length of about 10 cm, narrowed its genera to the Dorippinae subfamily. This specific subfamily of the Brachyuran is only found in the Indo-pacific region and in shallow waters. They are larger in size as compared to their other Dorippid (Ethusinae) cousins which inhibits deep waters (>1000m). This subfamily consists of the following clades: Dorippe, Medorippe, Dorippoides, Neodorippe, Heikea, Paradorippe and Philippidorippe. Little information is known about the affinities and distinctions between the clades. Judging from the length of its eye peduncles, pereiopods and the shape of its carapace, I would deduce it to be from the Dorippe species and it sure looks uncannily alike to Dorippe quadridens. It has numerous bristle-like hairs over its surface to enable it to trap silt and sand particles for camouflage. The puzzling feature of this crab though is its missing chelipeds(the frontal pair of clawed limbs).

A vicious blood red Swimming Crab (Thalamita spinimana) holding out its pair of pincers, ready to strike!

After I lost Debby and Jimmy nearing the end of my dive, I was surprised to have had found at least 4 different individuals of the Orange-spotted Pipefish (Corythoichtys ocellatus) swim-wriggling around the sponge and algae covered pillars of the jetty.

A Bristle-tail Filefish (Acreichtys tomentosum) hovering near discarded metal pipes now overgrown with hydroids, algae and sponges. This species can sometimes be easily confused with its Strapweed cousin. Look for the characteristic elongated white patch which extends behind the gills.

Orange-edged Black Flatworm (Pseudobiceros hancockanus)

Unidentified Polyclad Flatworm... Need a little help on ID here..thanks

Undescribed Flatworm (Pseudoceros sp.)

Gold Speckled Flatworm (Thysanozoan nigropapillosum)

Left: A cuttle fish egg sac was laid down in the mud waiting to be hatched.

Right: The Pustulose Phyllidiella (Phyllidiella Pustulosa) is a Nudibranch commonly found in Singapore's waters.

Left: Managed to get the backside shot of the Reliable Chromodoris (Chromodoris fidelis) as it was wriggling into a muddy crevice.

Right: A Cake-icing Chromodoris (Chromodoris tumulifera) with its gills retracted into its branchial pockets.

The beautiful Bullock's Hypselodoris (Hypselodoris bullockii) seems to thrive well in muck environment like the waters of Singapore.

Intricately patterned Painted Hypselodoris (Hypselodoris infucata) raced across the silty bottom in search of food sources.

The Blue Dragon (Pteraeolidia ianthina) farm zooxanthellae in its cerata as a supplement to its basic diet of hydroids.

The Red-lined Flabellina (Flabellina rubrolineata) stores stinging nematocysts in the tips of its cerata as a defense mechanism. It obtains the stinging cells from its dietary hydroids and discharge them when harrassed.

Sex in the Sea

As functional simultaneous Hermaprodites, Ophisthobranchs maintain active male and female sex organs on every individual with reproductive pores generally postioned on the right side of their necks. The same species recognise each other by chemo-reception. Contact of body and rhinopores is made and there is a certain amount of courtship. They crawl around each other, lining up their genital openings. Copulation may continue for several hours or even days. Mating is performed by injecting sperm into one another simultaneously. Reciprocal receipt of sperm is through everted genital organs.

A little sketch in my logbook

Colour variations in Hypselodoris Bullockii is fairly common. They ranged from full purple forms, to pink, or even white specimens. Mating of the differnt colour forms are evidence of them being the same species as to what was previously debated in ID and anatomy.

Pulau Lang Tengah, Terrenganu Malaysia

Pulau Lang Tengah - Eagles resting in the middle Island

30th March - 3rd April 2007



It happened almost a fortnight ago. It was a trip full of good and bad experiences for some of us. Honestly, my personal review of the overall is a mere disappointment - save for the wonderful company of friends which I had the privilege of diving with.


It had been 5 years since I returned to visit this small island off the coast of Terengganu in Peninsular Malaysia. Alot has changed. The pristine reefs were much reduced to mostly dead corals in the western bay of the island where we resided. The fond memories of numerous colourful thriving reef fishes and swarming blacktip reef sharks swimming in close proximity to the Blue Coral beach was significantly circumcised. Pulau Lang Tengah is a very small island located between Pulau Perhentian and Pulau Redang. This little island is accessible by a 45-minute boat ride from the Merang jetty. According to locals, Lang Tengah takes its name from 'Lang' which comes from 'helang', literally translated as 'eagle' in the Malay language, and 'tengah', meaning 'middle'. Thus, Lang Tengah means eagles resting on the middle island.


Although the resorts have reopened their doors after the passing of the North-east monsoon, the season was not in its full fledging state. The peak usually occurs in the months of June to August annually. There have been significant thwarting effects caused by the El~nino. We generally enjoyed sunny weather and calm seas but ocassional storms whipped up crashing waves, spewing rains and gusting winds. The visibility of the waters at most divesites was bad and there was not much marine diversity.

The Dive Guide and my Khakis - From left: Lingjun, Yijie, Me, Aung('DM'), Alex, Jingwei, Xiangyi and Daphne.

We put up at Redang Lang Resort. It is situated in the middle of a long stretch of white powdery sand beach. At the south-western shore of this beach is the now defunct Blue Coral Resort where I used to stay 5 years ago. There is a wide range of amentities and services at Redang Lang Resort, including the Delang Dive centre, Karaoke Bar, Minimart, TV hut, massage services, Mahjong, pool table, volleyball courts and etc. Although I would not term the resort as very good, it is definitely comfortable. Rooms were well furnished with air-conditioning, double beds and attached private restrooms with hot showers. The food was an overall acceptable but not fantastic. Resort staffs are subjectively exclusive. We had a few minior hiccups with some of them but most were accomodating - except for some patronising individuals...

On the day of arrival, we were already greeted with disorganised and uninformed system of operation. There was no proper information about the time of the 1st dive, equipment rental, person in-charge and etc. Check-in was at own time own target. There was no introduction to resort amenities and urshering to our rooms was done by ourselves. Basic resort management and customer service seemed to be lacking. To our further dismay, the dive centre did not prepare enough equipment for rental despite us confirming our trip details months ahead of arrival. Planning for equipment sharing was done at the last minute. The most horrible part was that one of the resort employees mentioned that our diveguide was a non certified 'divemaster' because the dive centre deemed it is cheaper to pay a guide rather than employing a DM. What was worse is when our 'DM' told us he had never been on a night dive before throughout his 3 years of diving experience. That was abit hard for us to swallow. He insisted that he did not have any divelight for that matter and implicitly tried to dissuade us from going on a night dive. Throughout our stay, we sort of discovered more unpleasant details such as the dive centre allowed their customers to use our own personal equipment, restricting the night dive to only at the house reef and our dear guide's lame excuses to avoid working overtime on our arrival day- that and all resulted in his tips slashed half the initially agreed amount.

Evening sumptous BBQ Dinner and Early morning Shark watching were some of the good times we had...

I logged my 100th dive this trip but sadly it was a far cry from anything spectacular. There are only a hand full of divesites around Lang Tengah. Our bromidic diving was further limited to divesites running along the western coast of the small island only. Out of the 8 dives, only 1 dive was considered satisfactory.

Diving and Snorkeling Fun!

Nonetheless, I enjoyed great companionship with fun-loving friends. Lingjun had done a good job organising this trip although deplorable incidences happened unexpectedly along the way. It was unfortunate for Daphne and Jingwei for their monetary loss at the Malaysian customs even before fun commenced. We were glad that somehow, they managed and even decided to continue with the trip. We shared many good times at diving, snorkelling, sun-tanning, mahjong, photo taking, beach volleyball, dive logging, meal times and other social communion where laughter seemed perennial.

The Eagles leaving the middle island.... but not before a group Photo (Yijie running in the background)