Stars at Lazarus reclaimed beach

As I was walking along the sterile-looking clean white sand on the artifical reclaimed beach bay connecting Lazarus Island and Seringat, something caught me by surprise.


I found a lone common sea star (Archaster typicus) which is adult sized. Why was I so surprise since marine creatures are known to reside in low water level mark areas?


This is because Kias and Seringat (originally are submerged reefs) were connected to Lazarus Island through reclamation that buried the living reefs. Read more about their fates at the wildfilms blog.

More about the glorious original marine life of Lazarus at Dr Chua Ee Kiam's simply green site.

They also created a beach made by thousands of cubic metres of sand imported from Indonesia. The sand was checked for sandfly eggs so that future visitors will be spared the insect's bites, which can be itchy. (from The newly redeveloped St John's and Lazarus islands have beautiful beaches and sparkling waters, by Teh Jen Lee The New Paper 2 Dec 06)

Indeed it is sad that those reefs had to be buried to build a lifeless beach made for probably the rich to enjoy.


Nature is resilient and I was glad to witness this common sea star (which unfortunately is not common anymore and is under the Red list) at the reclaimed beach during a not so low tide.


What was also thrilling were the presence of these pretty dubious nerites (Clithon oualaniensis) which dotted the shore together with creeper snails.


And through these creatures, we can indeed know that our God patiently draws these fine patterns in which that every nerite is unique from each other, just like us human beings. These two are Pamela's favourite patterns. :-)


We only explored the shore for about 15 minutes and before we left, Chee Kong also found another common sea star, this time a juvenile one. Wow.


Interestingly, this one has parasitic snails that the ones we see on top of the plain sand stars (Astropecten sp.).

Great to know that a lifeless artifical beach is becoming more lively! With time and little or no disturbance, they will come back in a way that we can even not imagine, so let us just leave these marine creatures alone.


Just opposite Lazarus is our favourite Kusu Island.

The portion near Kias though is now lined with breakwater seawall, I was told that hawksbill turtles are usually sighted in that area. Surprisingly, Pamela and I saw the turtle at two instances coming up to the surface to breathe and going down again. It was like spilt second! But nevertheless exciting to know that they are around our waters.