Lovely marine garden at Tuas

Schering Plough is very fortunate to have a lovely marine garden at their very own backyard. With their dedicated volunteers who monitors the seagrassers at this garden, a team of us joined along to take a look at this fascinating shore that escaped reclamation.


The furthest and also the nicest part of the garden is marked by the green beacon on the rocky outcrop. In order to get there, one has to cross the deeper waters that is usually below knee deep if we know when the tide timings are.


The marine garden along the path towards the outcrop is very pretty and much of the colourful parts are submerged in the water. There are lots of life including the red coloured candy hydroids.


Also underwater are many of these orange sea fans...


as well as this one in white. If only our waters are clearer, snorkelling will be another option to explore our marine habitats!


It's great to also find many disk corals (Turbinaria sp.) of different sizes, this particular one is especially a large colony which I believe has been here for ages.


And this is how the disk coral look like underwater with their polyps and tentacles extending outwards.


Towards the end of the path towards the rocky outcrop, the waters get shallower and more of the colourful garden is exposed without the need for my camera to swim.


Arriving at the beacon area, we realized the whole place is crowded with zoanthids of all sorts.


And also plenty of soft corals! Most of which are the flowery soft corals (Family Nephtheidea). It is hard to find a spot to step on without killing these delicate animals on the garden.

We had a quick look at the rocky outcrop before quickly making our way back as the submerged waters between the main shore and the outcrop is getting deeper with the incoming tides. We prayed hard for no stonefishes or stingrays to come in between our way.


Back to the softer and sandier shore, I'm glad to find many huge sized Haddon's carpet anemones (Stichodactyla haddoni).


These carpet anemones also add on to the beauty of the garden at the sandy habitat.


The waters are quite clear at some deeper parts and I couldn't resist to make my camera swim to take more photos of the flowery soft corals.


I just like how the seaweed, soft corals and a solitary Thorny sea cucumber (Colochirus quadrangularis) come together naturally. It's like a botanical garden of the sea.


Last but not least, share with you another garden-like photo, this time with the Garlic bread sea cucumber (Holothuria scabra). :-)

Look out for another post that will be more on the critters found on this special shore.