Saturday, January 10, 2009

A 2009 good start for Chek Jawa

How is Chek Jawa two years after the massive freshwater flooding event in 2007?


There are many tubeworms that have colonized most part of the northern sand bar. Alas, button snails were missing. Could it be that both tubeworms and the button snails cannot co-exist or that the button snails have migrated to the subtidal area?


How about the southern sand bar? There are parts where you can find balls of sand left over by sand bubbler crabs.


What is most heartening is the return of juvenile and mid-sized carpet anemones on the sandbar, this time in more numbers.


Let's hope that their return will continue and we look forward to them crowding the sand bar like land mines though that might take many years though.


Today I couldn't find any peacock anemones that are showing much of their tentacles. Could it mean anything?


As usual, there are many sand stars out on the shore.


And we are all very happy to see the common sea stars back, we counted eight today in one tide pool.


These are adults that most probably escaped the flooding death toll by burrowing very deep or going deep into the subtidal area.


The biggest surprise is this rare six-armed sea star (Luidia penangensis). Read more about this special sea star and other fantastic finds on my God's Wonderful Creation blog.

Looks like Chek Jawa has a good start for 2009! Let's hope that there will be no massive rainfall event or flood for this month.