First time to Sembawang beach

It's my first time to Sembawang beach during low tide. I cannot recall when was the last time I came here, or did I ever came here before. Anyway, it was a relaxing trip with James, Wen Qing and Chun Fong.


Not only was it relaxing for us, the shore is a popular place for Singaporeans to de-stress. Many of them were fishing as well.

Interestingly, Sembawang beach lies next to the huge Sembawang shipyard.


On another side of the shore, a sand bar was exposed during low tide with a group of people playing games on the beach.


Seemingly dead from far, the shore is alive. Here's Wen Qing and James looking at the marine critters.


Wen Qing spotted this tiny bivalve under a rock. James and I thought of putting it in water to see if there is any response.


Indeed, the clam opened its shell and revealed its inner white flesh with a cute foot sticking out, trying to upright itself.


On the surface of the clam's shells are more projections that are white in colour. I've no idea what this clam is though.


Under rocks are several small crabs including this one that looks like a baby Thunder crab (Myomenippe hardwickii). There were also many porcelain crabs.


Another small crab spotted is this one that I don't know as well.


James found this mass of seaweed looking creature that is usually overlooked.


Taking a closer look, we wondered if it's a seaweed. James saw some polyps among his shots of them. Could they be something else?


I noticed the waters from the land flowing to the sea was brownish, thus I went to check for the source. It came from a canal though. I hope it is not just a result of the heavy rains that mixed with the soil instead of some pollutants introduced.


Well, though this shore is quite not-green due to the absence of seaweed and seagrasses, there are still plenty of anemones that can survive such a beaten condition.


One can find tons of the Banded bead anemones attached on the rocks. When in a pool of water, they are very beautiful.


Somehow, I only saw one of this Mangrove anemones.


But the second most abundant anemone, other than the Banded bead anemones, will be these Striped bead anemones. They can come in black and white colours.


On the rocks, there are plenty of barnacles that have closed up when exposed to the air.


As well as this drill. Their eggs are usually yellow and pinkish in colour and are usually seen in most northern shores.


This series of egg cases belong to the Spiral melongena snail (Pugilina cochlidium). Wen Qing was really observant and detailed as she pointed out the yellow dots in these egg cases.

Being so commonly seen in most shores, I'm quite ashamed to know the existent of these dots only now. Haha. Are they the individual eggs of each baby snails? That's quite exciting.


Other tiny critters found include this bristleworm.


It's probably my first time however to notive the blueish-grey plates on the upper side of these bristleworms. Once again, I wonder what they are. Haha.


On some rocks, there are some colourful encrustations of sponges though no nudibranchs were seen on or near them.


Further nearer to a part of lower salinity, I saw some Green mussels (Perna viridis) but many of the Asian date mussels (Musculista senhousia).

With the presence of the Asian date mussels means there will be the sand stars!


Indeed, I came across a patch of the shore with plenty of the Plain sand stars (Astropecten indicus). How many can you find here?


When out of sand, these cute little stars brightened the shore up! Especially for me.


Towards the end of the trip, I saw this cute Red ribbon worm.


I took a closer shot of this pretty worm and realized its colour was so nice in detail.


As mentioned earlier, there were many fishermen and some of them caught catfishes and put them on the high shore for the moment while trying to catch some other fishes.


There were some shore birds seen as well during the trip including this Grey Heron (Ardea cinera). The others are too hard to photograph. Haha.


What lies opposite our Straits of Johor at the Malaysia side? There are some port-related facilities as seen from mainland Singapore. Is this Pasir Gudang?


On another side, we could see some kelongs and kampong houses by the straits as well as a mountain or hill that has been deforested.

Well, it has been quite an eye opener to visit Sembawang during a low tide. Glad to be able to have a look at this other part of Singapore that we seldom visit.