ReefFriends Xplore! Dives- Kusu and Hantu Feb 2006

It never rains but it pour eh? Since I have time today, thought I'll blog about the ReefFriends Xplore! training dives for this month as well, which I went along for as a trainer. Blue Water Volunteers, together with the Hantu Bloggers and Gill Divers have organised a programme to train volunteers to be nature dive guides! Not that I'm an expert dive guide, but at least I know where some stuff are on our reefs, heheh...

As usual, didn't have much chance to flex the camera finger muscles while 'working', but managed to get these shots from Kusu and Hantu, while posing as a 'potential' dive participant being guided...

Ze Seawhip Goby!

Taken on the fly, so no arty black backdrop.
Noticed that my 'dive guides' tend to leave me behind while I'm taking photos :(
Can't be that much of a slowpoke right?
Or maybe they know that I can probably find them again (which is true, but still??!)

Oooooh! Mating nudi's! Not only are they nudist exhibitionists (naked gills lah), they don't mind putting on R(A) displays in the open! Check out the mating tube linking both of them!
The banded goby and its shrimpy friend (in the foreground, much the same colour as the sand). Zeehan says the goby is a new record for Singapore! (Now if I can remember the species name...)

Yellow shrimp goby
Sigh, this was the goby that took out the last juices of my camera batts at Hantu. Was exploring the muck channel between Cigar Reef and Hantu Patch (which is a very cool channel! Reminded me lots of Lembeh Straits). Came across filmy white seapens, a teeny tiny flatfish that was 1 inch long and hopping away, loads of shrimp gobies, sand perches, goatfishes... AND!! Some fish with long upright dorsal fin spines, bulbous blue-ringed eyes and distinctive pectoral fins half-buried in the muck!! But I ran out of batt to take a photo! ARGGGRHHH!! Needless to say, was much distraught.....

Guess there's nothing to do for it but to dive there again.. :P

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