by Rhonwyn Wilkinson.<\/p>\n
One of the really exciting things about diving is that you never know what you will see when you drop beneath the surface. \u00a0A few days ago, we were waiting at the dive shop for our surface interval between dives to\u00a0be completed.\u00a0 Clement, one of the marine biology researchers from Hong Kong University using Tioman Dive Centre as their research base ran past us heading into the surf with his snorkel equipment. \u00a0“Mass sea urchin spawning!\u201d he yelled as he disappeared. \u00a0We looked at each other with curiosity, then kitted\u00a0up and headed into the water for a practice survey of the house reef. \u00a0We soon noticed what Clement was referring to. \u00a0The diadema sea urchins were on the move! Diademas everywhere were congregating into great masses,\u00a0they were climbing to the top of the highest available point be it rock, coral head or each other! \u00a0Once there, at some humanly imperceptible signal, the first urchin started to spawn, spewing its gametes into the water column. The others followed suit, creating a cloud of gametes so thick it almost obscured the urchins themselves. \u00a0Gradually the water cleared as the presumably fertilized gametes were whisked away by the currents. \u00a0We felt lucky to have witnessed such an amazing event!<\/p>\n
The next evening I was to be treated again. Snorkelling off the rocks a little off the house reef at Tioman Dive Centre\u00a0I came upon a lone cushion star getting ready to spawn.\u00a0 Being a hermaphrodite, it can produce both\u00a0egg and sperm. It had crawled to the highest point on the largest coral head in the area and began discharging it’s gametes into the sea and into the waiting mouths of numerous small fish who noticed the event!<\/p>\n
We usually dive twice per day with our Blue Ventures Malaysia program. I can’t wait to see\u00a0what tomorrows dive will reveal!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Rhonwyn Wilkinson. One of the really exciting things about diving is that you never know what you will see when you drop beneath the surface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":28415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[467],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"yoast_head":"\n