Corals Galore!

Yay! With a bus service operational soon, it'll be more convenient to get to the beach. Thanks to Wai for the piece of news! Unfortunately though, my project is nearing the end... won't be sampling after the service opens... but that won't be the end of me at Labrador!

Actually, it's pretty distracting sometimes to do a research project at Labrador... and it's not really because of the scenery... though it's nice except for maybe the oil refineries at the background...

But the distraction comes really because there are so much interesting flora and fauna here at Labrador beach! I am always lured away from what I was supposed to do, sampling, to see other interesting stuff here... So its at this blog that hopefully I'll be able to share with all of you what I got to observe over the past few months...

I'd like to start with the most facinating animals here (in my opinion)... corals! During the very low tides, the reef flat exposes quite a number of coral species. In this entry, I'll share some pics on the the family Faviidae, a group of hard corals that are often known as boulder corals.
Favites sp. (star coral) - this has the adjacent corallites (skeleton of an individual polyp) sharing the same walls.


Favia sp. (knob coral) - this has corallites that do not share the same walls.


Platygyra sp. (valley coral) - this has valleys instead, may be long ones like this one.


Oulastrea crispata (zebra coral... what an apt name!) - this has white corallites (thick radiating septa) with black background

And finally, there also soft corals here too! These are of course much different from the hard corals just seen.


Lobophyton sp.

What diversity! And these are just some of the many species present there... I'll be back soon with more, but meanwhile, go down and take a look at them yourself.

BUT WITH EYES & CAMERAS ONLY ok? NO POACHING!!!