Thailand - Koh Lipe part 2

Every once in a while, especially when our room was getting cleaned, we would spend morning in the most shady part of our beach, on the North side of the rock where there were less people. Our hotel provided for beach chairs and bean bags as well as the towels.

I don't know which tree this is, but it was interesting to see how the roots "bypassed" the rock to get to the soil.

Near the rock there was a lot of leaves, driftwood and unfortunately also some trash. One day we saw a young Asian water monitor (Varanus salvator) among them. This little one looked quite harmless, but these beasts grow quite big. In Koh Lanta we saw one that was for sure a meter and a half long and quite chunky. It was stalking chicken on the lawn near the road close to our hotel, but after seeing us watching, it quickly disappeared in the bushes.

On the other side of the rock, on the South side, there was the "official" hotel beach, where most of the hotel guests were. While it was pretty and also shady, it was too crowded to our taste.

Many hotels, including the one next to ours, had happy hour, when you would get two drinks for the price of one. It was the opportunity not to be missed, even though the full price also wasn't really high.

Mostly our days revolved around snorkelling. We usually swam all the way to the small island, there were less people there and the visibility was much better than closer to the beach. Except for the sharks we saw most of the creatures we saw on day trips with divers in Koh Lanta, even so close to the quite populated beach - like Crocodile needlefish (Tylosurus crocodilus)...

and Banded sea krait (Laticauda colubrina).

We also found several Bubbletip corals here ((Plerogyra sinuosa).

The Mat Zoanthid were also there.

I found this pretty blenny near the island, it has most beautiful and  elaborate eyebrows, which are actually called cirri. The cirri are also an unmistakeable sign that it is a blenny and not a goby. But even after browsing through several hundreds of photos of blennies I am still not sure which it is. Update: I found it! It is the Jewelled blenny or Lawnmower blenny (Salarias fasciatus).

This unusual fish we know already from Maledives - it is a Blackeye thicklip wrasse (Hemigymnus melapterus).

These guys were just casually sitting around on rocks with the smug look on their faces, they are the Speckled sandperches (Parapercis hexophthalma).

We saw several nudibranch Phyllidia Varicosa around the island as well.

There were plenty of all kinds of fish there, like the Pearly spinecheek (Scolopsis margaritifer)...

...and Blackspotted pufferfis (Arothron nigropunctatus), this time a bit darker than usual.

This Diadema sea urchin was particularly pretty, usually they are black or white or have bunches of all black and all white spines, but this one has black and white stripes on every spine.

The Indian tube worm (Sabellastarte indica) was very similar to tubeworms we saw elsewhere in the world.

We had to walk over the hill every evening to get to the town. It was a proper jungle up on the hill and I was always looking left and right in hope to see some interesting little creature. We didn't see anything and while we heard plenty of birds we even rarely saw one of them.

The tuktuk is THE transportation means in Thailand, it is used as a taxi to transport tourists, it is used as traveling groceries, or traveling restaurant, it is very versatile.

We saw many cats around and most of them had a bell around their neck. I'm thinking it's probably to protect the birds, but I'm not sure if the bell doesn't prevent them from catching mice either. This one was very focused on an insect and didn't want to smile into my camera.

We usually went to the town early in the evening, before 6, when there was still some light and not too many people were on the street yet. So we could freely choose our restaurant for dinner, lots of good ones got full later in the evening and one would need to wait for the table or try the next one.

This restaurant was pretty good - we had a feast of Panang curry with rice, fried Morning glory (the green vegetable, also known as Chinese water spinach), green papaya salad and grilled snapper with sides - glass noodles, veggies, Thai basil and prik nam pla (chilly and fish sauce) sauce. And when we were leaving people were waiting outside to get a table.

This beautiful Heliconia was growing next to the path leading to our bungalow. 

 

The beauty from the past

When I was writing first couple of posts about Thailand I found it really difficult to name the creatures I photographed under water, since searching the Internet is almost impossible if you don't know the name of the thing you are researching. I tried Google search by photo as well, but with mixed results. So I decided I need a good book on the subject and last week I got it - the Indian ocean reef guide by Helmut Debelius. Just for good measure I also ordered the book Birds of Thailand, I know it will come handy. For some 20 years I already own the Red sea reef guide by the same author, I bought it when we went on couple of diving holidays in Egypt.

Both books are beautiful, with not just great photos and description of fish, corals etc, but also some nice and unusual stories. You probably noticed that in my last post about Koh Lipe I was already using  my new book and managed to name most of the creatures and things on my photos. I also updated the posts of Koh Haa and Koh Bida with the new information. 

But my new book, as any book, has finite number of pages and not all the fish fit into one book. I was surprised how much usable information I was able to find in the Red sea reef guide, but mostly in my 4 small books about the reef life of Maldives, which I bought on our first and second trip to Maldives more than 25 years ago. Thinking back I'm still so happy that they were available in resort souvenir shops and that I had the wits to buy them, even if we had to transport them home in our suitcases.

When searching for clues I also referred to my trilogy of book I have about Caribbean, even to find similarities and maybe determine to which family a certain creature belongs to.

When I successfully narrow the search down to genus or family, I also use plenty of Internet resources. Some are really great and I'm in awe of how much work and time some people must put into all these databases.

One of my favourite is  http://www.seaslugforum.net/ , but you need to know the name of the slug or at least the family to which it belongs to to get to the information.

I very much like the  https://www.diveandrelax.com/koh-lanta-marine-life/  , their database is maybe not the biggest, but it is exactly of the area where we were.

Another great resource about Thailand waters is  http://thai-scuba.com/wp/project/marine-life-archive/ , it came very handy.

Another very comprehensive source is  https://www.fishbase.se/search.php , it takes a bit of work to limit the search to area or species that one wants, but it is not too tricky. Here I found all the fish in their database that were reported from Thailand:  https://www.fishbase.se/country/CountryChecklist.php?&what=list&trpp=50&c_code=764&cpresence=present&sortby=alpha&ext_pic=on&vhabitat=saltwater&showAll=yes . It is quite a long list with lots of photos, but when you know nothing about a fish you are interested in, you just have to browse through all the photos in hope you see what you are searching for.

Here is another resource I found useful:  https://reefguide.org/home.html . Here one can find also the reef inhabitants from other tropical seas, not just Indo-Pacific.

And here is another surprisingly large and comprehensive database,  https://www.diverosa.com/home.html . There are so many beautiful photos there, either organised by family or by diving trip where they were taken. If I understand correctly, this is the work of two enthusiastic divers and I have immense respect for what they are doing. 

When browsing their photos, I discovered one that helped solve the 7-years old mystery. In 2017 we were on holiday in Thailand on Koh Tao. I took these photos of creatures that I had absolutely no ideas of what they were, they just didn't look even remotely similar to anything I've seen so far. And on this site I saw the familiar photo with the name as well - these are the sponges, named Pink pufball sponge (Oceanapia sagittaria). The sponges have a stalk, that is not visible on my photos and usually look like some pretty flowers. The balls are where they expel water, but the majority of the sponge is actually hidden under ground. 

You can't even imagine how happy I was to solve this!

Thailand - Koh Lipe part 1

On Thursday, January 25th, after a bit more than a week on Lanta Yai, we travelled to our next destination. In the morning we were picked up at the hotel and were brought to the pier where we boarded the ferry or rather a big speed boat to Koh Lipe. The departure was scheduled at 10.30, but at 11.30 we were still standing on the pier. It was really hot and very windy and waiting wasn't pleasant. And we knew the ride wasn't going to be pleasant either. We boarded the boat at nearly noon and next three hours were quite rough. Strong wind whipped up the sea and boat was pounding and jumping from one big wave to the next. All the side windows had to be closed because the waves were getting into the boat (the crew only closed the windows after a dozen of people got thoroughly wet) and so it was very hot inside. Luckily no one was really sea sick, but we were all very relieved when it was over. 

Shortly after disembarking we were picked up by a small truck and were brought to our hotel. The view from our room immediately made it up for the rough ride.

Our room was in the bungalow up on the hill and the lady at the reception said: Your room is on the hill, but view is great and when you finish vacation, you very fit.

That afternoon we were too tired to do much, we went for a short swim in the sea and then had the best ever green curry in a hotel on the next beach.

Next morning the weather was great and sunny and the views from our balcony were even more beautiful. Our room was facing to East towards Langkawi, that we could see in the distance.

Again there were many birds in the trees chirping and singing and entertaining us. We would probably be sitting on the balcony much more if it wasn't so hot during the day, it was about 35 Deg C, and in the evening there were a few mosquitoes around.

There is quite a difference between low and high tide there and in low tide it was not possible to go snorkelling as the corals were almost sticking out of the sea. Our days followed the similar pattern - after great breakfast at our hotel (yum, we had curry already for breakfast!) we figured out when to go snorkelling - when the water was high enough and it wasn't too hot. The hottest time of the day we spent in our room (really no problem with such a view) and in the evening we walked to the village, some 10 minutes away, and found another restaurant with delicious food.
 I was very surprised how much fish and sea life was even in the shallow water where all the tourists were. Only problem was that there was lots of sand suspended in water and the visibility wasn't the best. But couple of hundreds of meters away was a small island where the visibility was better and the sea life even richer. 

There were plenty of colourful Parrot fish here as well, even near the shore in murky water. I checked several resources but didn't find the name for this one.

Near the island I found these three young Circular batfish (Platax orbicularis).

This small fish was defending its territory and constantly swimming towards me. I think it is a White Damsel (Dischistodus perspicillatus).

And this is very probably Honeycomb coral (Gardineroseris planulata).

Occasionally we would spend time on the hotel beach in beach chairs, watching the sea, people, birds... This is the view from our beach towards the island where we were snorkelling many times.

And this is the view to the North along the island, with many colourful long tail boats. In the back there is a neighbour island, Koh Adang.

We usually went snorkelling once a day and Tomaz usually accompanied me. Each time we discovered pretty things. This is a Gold-saddle rabbitfish (Siganus guttatus).

We know Moorish idols (Zanclus cornutus) already from our previous snorkelling and diving trips to Maledives.

There were big schools of Tropical Silversides (Doboatherina duodecimalis) here as well.

There were many healthy corals there, although we've seen many people walking or standing on them. These are the Blue corals (Heliopora coerulea).

And here are the Leather corals ((Sarcophyton family).

This bright green algae is the Turtle weed (Chlorodesmis family), I also found another name - Maidens hair algae.

The Parrot fish eat algae off of coral reefs (here the Hump coral or Porites lobata) and there are the marks of their teeth on lots of corals. When snorkelling, one can hear the grinding of their teeth. 

These colourful beauties are the Christmas tree worms (Spirobranchus giganteus).

Another Leather coral ((Sarcophyton family).

There were plenty of Boring giant clams (Tridacna crocea) around, in all possible colours - brown, blue...

This pretty thing is the Iridescent scallop (Pedum spondyloideum).

We saw plenty of wrasses as well, of different colours and patterns - this one is a Zigzag wrasse (Halichoeres scapularis).

After so much colours one is surprised to see the fish that is just plain black and white - this one is a Freckled goatfish (Upeneus tragula).

I didn't see many blennies and gobies in Thailand, maybe with all the colours and shapes around me I just didn't notice them. This one was smiling at me from the Sea grape algae (Caulerpa lentillifera), it could be a Brest-spot Blenny (Salarias guttatus).

This might be another Zigzag wrasse (Halichoeres scapularis), with a bit different colouration than the one above.

This guy didn't attract our attention with the colours but the shape - it is a Blackspotted pufferfis (Arothron nigropunctatus). When in danger it can blow up and looks pretty much like a ball. 

These two are the Melon butterflyfish or Rip butterflyfish (Chaetodon trifasciatus).

These are the Moluccan cardinalfish (Ostorhinchus moluccensis).

And here are some iconic Clown anemonefish (Amphiprion ocellaris).