The year's first low tides brought the Beachfleas and Wildfilms crew back to Sisters' Island, where we combed the shallow lagoon for countless marine creatures before somebody decides to clean up all the living coral rock and beds of seaweed to put in a place a pristine, uncluttered sandy shore fit only for millionaire tourists.
My duck found the above foot-long fish lying on the sand and was told this is a species of flathead (Cymbacephalus nematophthalmus). It does nothing but lie motionless on the seabed waiting to be caught in the talons of fishing ducks for small prey. I think it's called flathead because it's so resistant to moving that it ends up getting stepped on by wandering beach monkeys and wading ducks.
Weaving its way around the coral rubble was a little worm-like pipefish (Hippichthys sp.). Close relatives of the seahorses, these fish are an afront to the time-honoured family values cherished by our upright neo-Confucianist society; instead of forming well-defined nuclear families onto which the state can offload its socio-economic obligations, female pipefish, after a wanton courtship dance, produce a string of eggs which are attached to the male's belly. The poor guy nurses the spawn until they hatch into minibeans, even while the lady carries out further exploits with other fellows; surely there is no better example of the moral bankruptcy of the Darwinian struggle for survival! The fish on the right was rather excitable; it got so worked up at seeing my duck that it leaped onto a small sandbank and got stuck there, allowing me to peck at it take its photo. It's some species of wrasse (probably Halichoeres bicolor), a relative of the Napoleon wrasse, big kok-tau fish so beloved by Chinese seafood fans that diners have no qualms about getting their share of the fish before they run out. Like the pipefish, wrasses (Labridae) represent another threat to the conservative bedrock of this island state; many species are protogynous, meaning they can change their sex from female to male. Outrageous! And worse, they even have two types of males: proper men not afraid to display their masculinity as well as girly men who pretend to be female in order to sneak a bite of the ladies' cherries when the real guys are not looking.
Scampering over the exposed rock clusters are centimetre-long long-jawed intertidal spiders (Desis sp.), one of which tried to clamber up my sunburnt duck and almost received the same ugly fate as its blood-sucking cousin. During high tide, they hide in air pockets in submerged cavities. On the right are a couple of spider food (Halovelia sea skaters) making whoopee. Belonging to the bug order Hemiptera, sea skaters are rare marine representatives of the insect world, with the genus Halobates living on the open ocean.
Many crabs were sunning themselves in the late afternoon light. Unfortunately, most of them, especially the big-clawed swimming crabs, 
were rather rude, so I threatened to hand them over the man- and crabeating crabbygirl who would grind them up for molecular analysis, drown them in alcohol or simply tear their limbs apart with her bare hands just to show 'em who's boss.
And in line with the aspirations of the Southern Islands' new target demographic, a bottle of bubbly accompanied this outing to welcome the new year and toast the would-be resort dwellers who will enjoy unfettered views of soddy oil tankers and hulking barges amidst a cloud of sandflies and thieving monkeys by lifeless beaches unfit for the likes of anemones, clownfish and such low class ilk.
More pictures here, while Joseph Lai offers a botanical survey of the island. The monkey met a seasnake and got into a tangle with an octopussy but claims she's too lazy to upload her pictures. Next time, I'll throw the crab at her...
lol yea yea i'll get to it OK? no monkey works to the commands and bullying of ducks :P
Posted by: monkey | 04 January 2007 at 10:32 AM