Seaweed hell... and tidal-flat critters

Date: March 5, 2016

Trip #14
Weather: Fair, sunny at times, with passing sprinkles 
Waters: Fairly calm all the way to Pulau Hantu Besar, very low tide in island's lagoon 
On board: C, A, J2 and R  
New gear in use on the island: A pair of Helinox camping tables  

We were looking forward to this trip, our first in a month! Chinese New Year and assorted family obligations in February had kept us on terra firma. A check with the winds and tides in the days preceding told us one thing for this trip -- that we had to be on Pulau Hantu by 1pm, because the tide would be at its lowest by 2.15pm or so. 

The water was low as we approached the lagoon, and the seaweed forest at the mouth of the lagoon of Pulau Hantu Besar was clearly visible, nearer the surface of the water than usual.  Though we raised the propeller part way, a lot of the brown stuff, Sargassum seaweed, still got tangled in it. We made it into the lagoon and J2 and C spent about 10 minutes cutting away the seaweed to free the prop. J2 said he felt like he had cleared "100 pounds of seaweed", estimation unverified! I regret I didn't take photos of this.

Hantu was ours, all ours, this sunny Saturday. For once, it wasn't crawling with undergraduates or teenagers camping overnight and playing team-building games. 

C fried up some sausages, meatballs and broccolini and we broke open beers. A lone macaque walked by, looking studiously nonchalant about our presence, quite unlike its no-good, aggressive, thieving brother on Sister's Island on our last trip out. (See post here.) 

We set up what we thought were Helinox chairs, a gift from N when we got the boat, but they were the brand's camping tables instead. C and A had to ditch plans to settle down for a comfortable beach-side read!  

Meanwhile, the water retreated, and by 3pm, Little Wanderer was pretty much marooned, sitting on the wet sand. This is the first time we've been out and seen the tidal flats. 

Nothing like some photos of the critters out on the sand:  

The porcelain fiddler crab. Tons of them on the wet sand, each of them
wandering not more than a couple of centimetres from its burrow. Measuring
1 to 2 cm across, they were very shy, ducking back into their holes upon my
moving towards them. But I froze, and waited, till this little guy came out.
 There were roughly equal numbers of right- and left-clawed ones!
Pic above: Taken from much farther away, a clutch of five. 

The common sea star was seen in abundant numbers in the

shallows as we made our way from the boat to shore. Most had

 five arms...

 ... but this one just had to be different.  We also saw a four-armed one.

In the geographical centre of this pic are two sand-coloured fish, well
camouflaged.  They have a dark band on their backs. They were only
1.5cm long, and were practically invisible - until they darted away. 
I haven't managed to find out what kind they are. Are they some 
kind of goby? Or the young of some other fish? Can anglers out there help? 

A convention of hermit crabs - which is quite funny if you think about it.

At around 5pm, the tide had come back in, though it was still low. It took quite a bit of pulling and pushing by the two guys to get the boat afloat again. (They gallantly told us girls that we could stay on the boat while they did this.)  And though we proceeded really slowly through the seaweed forest again, we had to stop for a while outside the lagoon to pull off another tangled mess. We were alerted to this by the boat, actually - Little Wanderer's whistling alarm went off!  

Considering the trouble, I don't think we'll time another boat trip with the lowest tide. 

Happy campers