An evening with Cyrene

It has been pouring cats and dogs nowadays quite usually and we were quite blessed with good weather yesterday at Pulau Jong. And God is so good, the afternoon showers ended immediately after we reached Cyrene Reef today!


We were kinda early as the tide was only just beginning to recede and expose the magical reef in the middle of a busy shipping lane.


But it's always "No Problem" according to their new motor boat that sends us for the amphibous landing. This time, Mei Lin made it safe without the blue-black bruise she suffered yesterday. However, I landed with quite an impact though.


Quickly, we were greeted by the many numbers of common sea stars. They seem to be aggregating, for procreation I suppose?


I had a brief visit to the anemone where nemos can be found. Indeed, the nemo is still doing well there, though it is super shy as usual.


I saw this tiny red dot thing swimming around and wow, it's a super small sized juvenile with a white band. It's so cute and much less shy.


I also get to visit another species of carpet anemone where there are anemone shrimps residing.


The anemone shrimp looks pretty much transparent with its pretty tail with three orange spots.

A drama scene suddenly began at a blink of an eye.


I did see the scene completely but Marcus said that a swimming crab hit the anemone and apparently autotomized its own arm in other to escape. The arm was then quickly swallowed by the seemingly harmless and innocent looking carpet anemone. If you take a closer look, the right front claw of the crab is really missing! Wow, that was action pack.


There was this another type of anemone that can swim by pulsating its body movement, thus its name as swimming anemone. The first photo from top left is when it is close and then following at the opening series. As it pulsates, it will open and then close repeatedly in order to swim. Andy got a great video of that and we shall wait for it.


Yet, there is another much larger anemone on the seagrass area and I've no idea what it is!


What is Cyrene Reef without the hundreds of knobbly sea stars? Indeed the star trackers were working very hard to try and document a portion of the many many knobblies in Cyrene.


I particularly like this knobbly sea star that is pink in colour.


Sijie found this biscuit sea star which I think it's a first in Cyrene Reef. It's amazing how Cyrene Reef compromises of possibly the best combination of both commonly found northern and southern shore creatures.


I like the sides of the groove where it is tinted with blue.


Since we are on the topic of echinoderms currently, there were a number of sea cucumber species found. This one is the rare one, it is Holothuria notabilis. According to Robin, this species is being exploited for food in Madagascar.

Other species of sea cucumbers found include the sandfish sea cucumber, black sea cucumber and the synaptic sea cucumber.


Urchins are also can be found at Cyrene. This diadema sea urchin has some white or purplish spikes which is quite cool.


The seagrass habitat area also is home for many salmacis sea urchins that is white and oval in shape. There are many of them!


What intrigues me is that these urchins like to carry stuffs on top like zoanthids, shells, and even a crab carapace! If given a chance to research, might survey them and see what is the frequency that carry something and what do they usually carry. Most importantly, why is it for!


The seagrass lagoon, though it looks uniformly green white the beige sandy substrate, is a treasure trove. From this section of the photo, you can find four types of creatures!


The first is this rare Melibe nudibranch which is very big as compared to its other "naked" counterparts.


Next, there are also pencil sea urchins and juvenile common sea stars among the seagrass.


While squatting to take photographs of the urchins, I saw this tiny, yet stunnning looking blue dragon nudibranch that is crawling on the seagrass blade.


In fact, there are two of them! If I didn't squat down to look at it more carefully, I won't see it at all. It takes a keen eye to see the enormous amount of life.


I encountered this weird and unfamiliar looking feathery thing that I first thought it was a christmas tree worm from far.


A closer look reveals that it might be egg capsule of some animals since furthermore it is NOT moving.


Andy had a couple of great finds like this cuttlefish that squirted ink while swimming away from us.


He also found this juvenile batfish. Of course, both were nicely videoed by him underwater. We await for the clips.


At the coral rubble area, I found yet another more purplish looking blue dragon nudibranch.


Like northern shores, there are also gong gongs at Cyrene. You can see their eyes peering at you.


It's tranquil to be out at Cyrene with the blessed good weather and wonderful sunset.

All too soon, darkness started to enter and we had to quickly leave this oasis of life.

A last photo for sheer fun, Chee Kong as an arm chair biologist.

In one-two weeks time is EXAMS! Today marks the last day of FUN and I look forward for the low tides during December to explore our shores again properly.

Maxima giant clam at Jong

I finally got to visit Pulau Jong! It is the PAU (bun) island that we always see from the boat whenever it passes by to Semakau.

According to a local legend behind the island's name, a Chinese junk was attacked by Malay pirates one night where the island now is. Just as the pirates were about to board the junk, the captain awoke. When the captain saw the pirates, he uttered such a frightful yell that the sea spirit turned the whole junk into an island.

This small looking island is not just a piece on land with forest, but during low tide you can see its reef extending outwards.

In fact, it is a very charming island in my own opinion with its shape and coastal landforms.

It has natural caves that are carved out when waves hit against the lower resistance portion of the rock formation. You can see the fault lines also very clearly. Like the cliffs at Tanjong Rimau of Sentosa, the formation is pinkish because of iron. It reacts with sea water and result in iron oxide which give it the pinkish reddish glow.

On these magnificient natural cliffs are many types of coastal plants.

And there is one that has purple fruits though I have no idea what is it.

Other coastal plants you can find at Pulau Jong include this seashore pandan.

And also the sea lettuce.

I always cannot resist not taking photographs of the white flowers of the sea lettuce.

On the rocky shores, life is teeming! Each black spot is actually a snail!

Among the many snails and nerites you can find at the high shore, there is this beautiful nerite that is pink with patterns on it.

By looking at the underside, Ria knows the id, which I cannot remember the scientific name already by now.

There are also top shells found at the rocky area.

Instead of the usual egg crabs, the red eyed reef crab is quite common at Jong.

Not forgetting the flora portion, we also saw a couple of seagrass species including this spoon seagrass.

However echinoderms are not too common here, except for the black sea cucumber which are numerous on the Jong-ky shore.

Nevertheless I saw this leafy slug beside two of the black sea cucumbers.

I didn't get to see many nudibranches though except for this polka dot nudi. Later, Chay Hoon shares with us that there are very tiny Gymnodoris slugs on the seaweed which I gave up photographing without trying given my camera's not too excellent macro. Mei Lin got a good shot though, and I hope she can share with us soon.

If you ask us what is most prominent and significant in Pulau Jong, we will reply in unison, "Soft corals!".

Indeed there are MANY large soft corals around the intertidal reef area of Jong. Much more than their hard corals. If you ask why, I personally feel perhaps it's due to the stronger currents??

Just beside another large patch of soft corals, Ria found something special! Can you spot it?

It's an adult giant clam of about 30cm in length! When opened in water, the colourful mantle looks really gorgeous! It's great to have Mei Lin (aka "giant clam girl") to be with us as we get to also somehow see giant clams. Click here to see her pretty face at the Wildshores of Singapore blog.

This girl told us that this is most likely Tridacna maxima which we intertidal people have never seen before (or got it properly identified). The previous sighting was at Raffles Lighthouse during diving in 2003. Now, we are the fortunate few to be able to see it!! Wow!

Next, we had a tough task trying to identify whether it is the elusive T. maxima. Here's the diferent parts that were analyzed to check its identity.

We had to check for its structural makeup and found out that this giant clam has closely stacked and small scutes (fluted projections out from the shell surface) in contrast to the more commonly sighted T. squamosa that we see at Semakau and other southern shores. Also, the surface area of the mantle looks more elongated. This is true because the common name of T. maxima is elongated giant clam.

With the double confirmation by Dr. Peter Todd and Karenne Tun from Marine Biology Lab, NUS, indeed this is the second living elongated giant clam found in our very own local waters (the other at Raffles Lighthouse).

Becauses surveys of our water are not intensive and due to possible misidentification of giant clams, we might have more of this T. maxima which is wonderful!

Below are more photos of this fascinating giant clam.

This is the excurrent siphon which is to clear their excretory products. Mei Lin is studying whether these siphons can probably also aim and squirt water at predators. Indeed, Andy was squirted when he tried to video the clam.

How then can they know that there are predators? This is because they can see! Look closely and you can see the eye spots of the giant clam in this photo (clue: look for the tiny spots at the top).

The giant clams are more colourful than you think. The underside of the mantle can be bright yellow or green, and there's a hint of it from this photo.

I still can't believe that we saw this fascinating giant clam! Yea, finally we can declare that we have seen all the three giant clam species in Singapore intertidally.

And it's so coincidental that when Mei Lin first joined us for southern shore trips, we get to see this rare giant clam that she can helped to find its identification.

Marina Barrage opened, Marina East sealed up?

Today is 1st November where Marina Barrage is opened with the Clean and Green Carnival. Marina Barrage consists of a dam that also doubles as a pedestrian bridge that links from Marina South to Marina East. So where is Marina East and what can we find there? Read more about my previous blog post to discover what's there.

More than a month ago, I decided to do another cycling trip there via Tanjong Rhu. I was greeted with the Benjamin Sheares Bridge and the new Singapore flyer.

Upon reaching the usual entrance of Marina East, I realized the whole place has been sealed up! It is to develop the Gardens by the Bay to create Singapore's waterfront garden.

I decided to explore the periphery of the sealed up Marina East.

And you will be surprised to find life at the opening of a drain. There were many types of fishes including the archer fish and some colourful ones. Sorry I couldn't take their photo because they were extremely shy!

Nevertheless, there were some plants that look interesting.

I'm not a very terrestrial biology person so would appreciate if any friends reading this can help id the plants/animals following this post.

It's quite fun to explore the wild garden that colonized this reclaimed area rather than wait for them to build a man-made garden.

Down by the breakwater was a type of coastal creeper that I've seen before at Sungei Punggol.

I decided to explore bit deeper between the NTUC golf course and ECP expressway.

Here is another drain that is filled with freshwater life!

On top of the tree branches are the not so common pink necked green pigeons.

Fungus are decomposers that help to ensure nutrient cycling within the ecosystem.

While looking at the shrubs, I saw some butterfly fluttering about at the yellow flowers.

I like this pinkish flowered plant!

A closer look.

Like Siyang's blog once mentioned, nature is all around us. Open your eyes and you will be amazed!

Can I ask those who have visited Marina Barrage if we can access Marina East from the pedestrian bridge on top of the dam? I would be interested to check the inside of this interesting reclaimed land again. :-)