Back to long lost shore at Marina East

We discovered the reclaimed shores of Marina East at 2008 and it was a haven for soft sediment organisms such as carpet anemones, special sand dollars, huge eight-armed sea stars, variety of sea cucumbers and intriguing snails. Unfortunately, it was "reclaimed" again for the next few years and we thought it was gone for good.

I finally found a time to check out this shore again during low tide this afternoon to see if there's anything left. And I'm surprised to still find a portion of the shore that survived the coastal works that took place over the past few years.

This is the part of the shore that was exposed at a moderate low spring tide. The green colour seen from far seems promising!

And I was excited to see that the Spoon seagrass (Halophila ovalis) doing very well. They are quite widely distributed on the shore. I couldn't go too far to check the extent of their growth as the soil is still VERY soft! I sank a few time quite deeply.

Anothe seagrassy surprise would be this stretch of Sickle seagrass (Thalassia hemprichii)! The Sickle seagrass is not so commonly found on our shores.

There was also this clump of seagrass that looks like Needle seagrass (Halodule sp.).

To add on to the list of seagrass species found on the shore, I also came across this patch of Tape seagrass (Enhalus acoroides)! We used to see them on this shore before the coastal development.

Another familiar friend on this shore would be the Haddon's carpet anemone (Stichodactyla haddoni).

Here's a closer look at the green carpet anemone. I saw two of them on my quick look at the shore today.

As it was a hot afternoon, there wasn't much of what I could find except for many of these juvenile Flower crabs (Portunus pelagicus).

There used to be a small patch of mangroves at where the seawall meets the land and it's sadly gone.

This little mangrove sapling that settled on the groove of the seawall is probably a glimpse of hope of recolonisation.

Before I left, I flipped some rocks and found this Crown sea star (Asterina coronata)! Think it's the first record on this shore!

Let's hope that this shore will recover with time and that it will be left alone for nature to creep in again. Happy Chinese New Year to all!

More photos of the trip here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/koksheng/archives/date-taken/2015/02/18/