Goodbye Marina City Park

Marina City Park has a place in my heart because I have done a project during Sec 2 in 1998 on freshwater life in different areas and conditions of Singapore. That I think is my first attempt doing something regarding biodiversity. I only remembered I had a wonderful time doing this whole project as I enjoyed catching fishes too. In the end, my science teacher gave us a 10/10 excellent work grading. We were even asked to set up a booth in our school library event. In our booth, we had a number of fish tanks, with fishes caught from the ponds or lakes. Of course at that moment we were young and didn't know a permit will be needed. It was just pure innocence and joy.


I still have the project book with me and its my pride, my debut work on biodiversity.


We went to different areas of Singapore. For the southern part, we came to Marina City park.


And we started to document what can be found it that place.


What was most significant of that place is we caught a lot of juvenile snakeheads. Yes, these fishes are very strong and fighting fit. They ate up all the other smaller fishes in the tank...


A simple result of our project. Don't ask why got seahorse cartoon in a freshwater project..haha.

Ok, now back to proper.. went to Marina City Park recently before it closes on 1st June for the Gardens by the Bay’s site preparatory works.

The Marina barrage in progress between Marina East and Marina South

A last glimpse of this park...

Ants can communicate, why can't some of us?

A baby mudskipper below a bridge.

The lake was quite contaminated, but to my delight there were quite some water hyacinth found. According to A guide to pond life by Dr. R.S. Bhathal and T.S. Foo, this water hyacinth is a large floating plant with swollen leaf stalks. The leaf stalks contain air and thus help the plant to float on the water. The leaves are smooth and nearly round.

Cattail usually grow about one and a half metres above water. Thousands of tiny seeds are packed together in brown spikes that look at fat cigars.

Apple snails lay eggs above the water line. They can leave the water for a few hours as long as they are kept moist. The eggs are usually pretty colors like yellow or pink.

And the tranquility and ambience of a city park is sort of destroyed by a wheel.

This charismatic kingfisher dives for small fishes and insects. It sometimes beats a fish against a branch to kill it.

Does this look like Marina City park to you? Yes it is, if you explore enough.

I don't know what is this, perhaps a damselfly? It's pretty cute I must say.

And at the end of it all, I finally found this! Water banana! Why water banana? If you look closer, their roots look like bananas. It has another type of root though that anchors the plant to the bottom of the pond. Wonderful, I thought they were all gone cos they were aplenty in 1998. I only get to find this at some secluded corner. Ok, task complete, time to go home.

Goodbye Marina City Park, thanks for the childhood memories.