An adventurous landing on Terumbu Buran

Throughout this year, we have been visiting various submerged reefs of Singapore and we are almost hitting our target of getting to most, if not, all of them! The last two on our list are the most difficult ones to land- one of which is Terumbu Buran.


Here is a beacon for Buran, just off Sentosa. The currents here are just turbulent! Just at the back is Terumbu Buran, our destination of the day.


The boat had a made a roundabout in order to find a good spot to land. And we past by Midway Reefs which was still submerged at that point of time.

It took a long wait for the boat to anchor properly and finally we headed for the reefs!


Here are November, Danny and Chay Hoon with Jumari on the dinghy. We had to travel through thicklets of sargassum before reaching an appropriate height for the amphibious landing. At the background is the city.


And hooray! They have landed!


And here we were, wading towards land!


Greeting us will be the two shore birds that flew above us as we manoevured towards the rocks.


It was great stepping foot on this "mysterious" reef which we always see from our boat rides from Marina South Pier but wander what it has.


There were a few hard corals like these boulder Favid hard coral (Family Faviidae) nearer to the water edge. Terumbu Buran has very pretty rock formations. See more photos from the link at the bottom of this post.


At one corner of the huge rock is a garden of branching sponges and other living organisms.


Such as many of the Button zoanthids (Zoanthus sp.) as well as quite a lot of anemones that I'm not too sure what they are.


These anemones look similar to the Posy anemones but their tips are a bit rounded.


Another anemone that I came across will be this Wriggly star anemone.


Chay Hoon spotted this Giant carpet anemone (Stichodactyla gigantea) with a shy False clown anemonefish (Amphiprion ocellaris). Can you see its tail? :)


Buran is very rocky, so there are also lots of colourful sponges above rocks and also below rocks.


There are two abundant species of sea cucumbers here. One of which will be this Long black sea cucumber (Holothuria leucospilota).


Another common species of sea cucumber, which are actually found underneath rocks, will be these Little African sea cucumber (Afrocucumis africana).


I was delighted to see this huge Brittle star underneath a rock.


It has a pink disk when you flip to see its underside.


Along the way, I came across this sluggish looking Two-spot reef octopus that seems to be not as active as the usual ones I see.


I was quite interested to see this Giant top shell snail (Trochus niloticus)!


Because it was my first time taking a closer look at its features. It seems to have two flaps where the eyes probably are situated. As well as a snout looking protrusion!


There were lots of crabs on this shore, such as this Red-eyed reef crab (Eriphia ferox).


Climbing high up on rocks will be these tiny little Purple climber crabs (Metopograpsus sp.).


Hiding underneath is this Red egg crab (Atergatis integerrimus).


It was nice to see this pretty Sally-lightfoot crab (Grapsus albolineatus) which I've not seen for some time.


Soon, the sun was setting and we proceeded with a smoother departure as compared to the arrival. Another new submerged reef, hopefully to be visited on Monday!

More photos of the trip here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/koksheng/archives/date-taken/2010/11/06/