Pasir Ris quickly

Last Tuesday should already mark the end of the low spring tide week with Ria doing a health check at Pasir Ris and also sharing the enormous life you can find at an seemingly dead tide pool.

Nevertheless, Chee Kong, Yikang and I went out to another part of Pasir Ris on Wednesday to check out mainly on the sand stars there during this not-already-so-low tide quickly. This time, we explored the shore near the mangroves and it was soft!

We were looking out for the sand stars (Astropecten indicus) that Chee Kong said he saw them at this location three years ago.


While I was suspecting if three years could have changed the shore, Chee Kong alerted us that there are still many sand stars. In fact, our first sighting was quite an exciting one. We saw four-armed, five-armed and a six-armed sand stars at one go. It's interesting to note that they can survive estaurine conditions with lower salinities due to the river discharge of freshwater. That could be why these sand stars were not badly wiped out during the mass mortality event at Chek Jawa in January 2007.


On top of the carpet anemones (Stichodactyla haddoni), there are also many other types of anemones thriving at such a silty and soft shore like this mangrove anemone.


A bristleworm (or also known as fireworm) appeared suddenly. Their name suggests that have bristles made of calcium carbonate or silica which are brittle and contain poisons. When these bristles penetrate the skin, they break and cause a burning sensation.

Therefore despite how pretty and attractive it might look to you, don't touch bristleworms or the water that they are in!

Chee Kong also found this Mangrove horseshoe crab (Carcinoscopius rotundicauda) which can be sometimes encountered in our undisturbed mangroves and areas near such mangroves. Despite having "crab" in their name, they are not real crabs but are related more to spiders instead!


There were many of these skinny and plain grey looking mudskippers near the mangrove area.

I don't recall seeing these mudskippers before! Could anyone advice me what species of mudskipper is this? All I know is that these mudskippers are rather tame and they do not avoid our presence.

This trip is not only the last of this week of seven consecutive days of field trips, but also be the last time my trusty and loyal Panasonic Lumiox TZ1 camera shares its captured images with all of you. I accidentally dropped my camera yesterday (after many histories of dropping) and it has finally died. Sobs.... RIP!