East Coast Park is Alive!

The low tides are here again, this time after a rejuvenating church camp in Malaysia which was really great.

Chose to visit East Coast park this morning since its the nearest to home to cycle to. Siyang had to dive so I was really glad when Geraldine decided to accompany me to cycle there. It is her first trip to the intertidal shore and she did enjoy herself :)


East Coast is not as dead as you think. It's not as bad as trying to imagine the above as sea pen and ball sea cucumber... though I really found these during the trip.


On the walls of breakwater, one can find many oysters (Family Ostreidae). Perhaps this is not the best photo but there are a lot.


I was walking on the beaten shore and admist the heavy pollution from rubbish, I was stunned to find a carpet anemone sitting around a wrapper or bag. It looks well protected this way, perhaps it may be feeling very out of place too.


This mudskipper (Family Gobiidae) was skipping around. They are not snakes or frogs but fishes related to gobies. They have gills to breathe.


Are those yellow stuffs eggs from a snail like those pink stuffs found in Changi? Beside it is the button shell (Umbonium vestiarum).


Geraldine found a sea squirt which are also called ascidians. They are called sea squirts because they can squirt a jet of seawater out...haha. And we witnessed it! They are animals that filter fed plankton by generating a one way current across their interior of the body.


Two jellyfishes were stranded on the beach, and they are most likely dead. Do not touch them with your bare hands because they have stinging cells.


Though I can't find the larger sea fans, I managed to spot the smaller ones. These are not plants but animals like corals and anenomes. They consists of colony of individual animals and they filter feed for food.


Is this a sponge?


Yup, this is a sponge, nicely doing ok in the beaten shore.


Had some fun looking how this crab tries to threaten me with its claws.


Surprising to find this pufferfish, too bad its dead and washed up. At least we know there are pufferfishes around the coast.


My shortcoming is I alway miss out on things smaller than 3cm. Thank God I surprising managed to find this interesting juvenile nudibranch (Chromodoris tumulifera). It is smaller than 1cm.


Isn't it so pretty?? Really made my day.


The other interesting find must be this Grapsus crab which I found at another location of East Coast. It is very beautiful and quite big in my own opinion. Never seen it before! Wow.


Well, East Coast Park is still teeming with life, even with this pair of horseshoe crab that are in the Red list of threatened species in Singapore. They are found by Shuyi's friend weeks ago, thanks for the photo ;)


So can you please don't treat the beach as a dumping ground ok? It's terrible how the marine creatures try to survive in such harsh conditions. East Coast Park has plenty of dustbins so let us be good stewards of our parks. :)