Life at the edge at Terumbu Raya

We are back at Terumbu Raya after about one year! Terumbu Raya is translated into The Great Reef from Malay. The reef edge of Terumbu Raya, especially the side facing Pulay Semakau, is known to be breathtaking!

As today's tide was long and low, I walked further to survey the stretch facing Beting Bemban Besar and was surprised to find lots of mushroom corals! This unexplored stretch is a gem.

Coral health check at Terumbu Raya

I'm back at Terumbu Raya, a submerged reef off northern part of Pulau Semakau after 3 years! My previous trip was in Jul 2011. Terumbu Raya, also named as The Great Reef in Malay is home to thick growths of hard corals and its associates by the reef edge.

How is the coral bleaching situation at Terumbu Raya? We are glad to see that most of the hard corals are fine except for some partial bleached ones like the coral on the top left hand corner of this photo.

Back to the Great Reef: Terumbu Raya

What a GREAT way to start a GREAT day at the GREAT reef, Terumbu Raya!

Raya means great in malay. Terumbu Raya is a submerged reef off Pulau Semakau and it never fails to amaze me. This is my third trip here.

The Great Reef lives up to its name

After more than a year's wait, I was excited to be able to revisit The Great Reef.


Think I've gone diving from this photo? Nah! I was doing "half snorkelling". Haha. It is actually an intertidal trip where I was at the reef edge for most of the time because it is just so stunning. The waters are relatively clear and there are lots of corals.

Tiger Cowrie at Terumbu Raya!

We all saw our very first intertidal Tiger cowrie (Cypraea tigris) at Terumbu Raya this morning!


Probably not that we would expect to find it in the intertidal, Mei Lin and Chay Hoon both scream in delight when they saw this special cowrie!

Corals of the Great Reef part two

Here's the long awaited part two of the corals from the Great Reef aka Terumbu Reef. Finally submitted my thesis, so I could find some time to finish this off today.

I had shown some interesting corals during the first part which are mainly boulder corals.


Here's the little surprise! There was this faviid coral that looked like it had a sad or frowning face. But seriously speaking, I wonder what happened to this poor coral. Was it hit by something or predated upon? Hmm...


My underwater camera had a good swim at the reef edge, as you can see from the blue background in the direction of the reef slope. It was really cool to be surrounded with corals (not quarrels =_=).

The brown ringed like boulder coral is probably a Big o-ring favid coral (Family Faviidae) and the green one on the right is a Pebble coral (probably Astreopora sp.).


I fell in love with the Pebble coral! Their small corallites are usually a blunt conical shape, giving them a pebbled appearance.


This is another similar-looking coral but it is a Moon coral (Diploastrea heliopora). This coral, unlike the Pebble coral, is much rarer in Singapore's shores. Their corallites are regularly spaced out which gives them their overall regular tidy pattern.

Their large polyp tentacles are said to emerge at night, how cool is that. I wish I can see it for myself one day (or I should say one night...hehe).


Terumbu Reef is a place where you can find many Pectinid corals (Pectinia sp.).


Though they have a smooth layer of thick tissue, actually beneath is a thin and fragile skeleton with delicate fluted patterns. Sometimes you might find the Banded fan worm with this coral.


This Pectinid coral looks slightly different and it is possibly Pectinia lactuca.


Next to this Pectinid coral in the deep waters are some free living mushroom corals (Family Fungiidae).


I especially like this Smooth mushroom hard coral (Family Fungiidae). Their neat looking walls have tiny teeth which are hidden when covered by the living tissue of the animal, so that the walls appear smooth. Somehow this coral looks quite cartoon to me :-)


Another mushroom coral is this sunflower mushroom coral (Heliofungia actiniformis). No prizes to guess why they are called sunflower corals. They are sometimes mistaken for anemones as their long tentacles block their hard coral skeleton.


Another commonly-mistaken-for-anemone coral is this, adequately named, anemone coral (Goniopora sp.). Their long coral polyps retract when out of water.


I am not quite sure what this is but it might also be a Goniopora sp. according to my friend. Could it be a Small goniopora coral (Goniopora sp.)? Hmm...


This huge colony of branching corals are the Montipora corals (Montipora sp.). When in water, they are good hiding places for animals such as seahorses!


How about corals that look like plates on the ground. The upper surface of this Ringed plate coral (Pachyseris sp.) has ridges that are parallel to the growing edge, often forming concentric rings of ridges.


One more similar looking plate-like coral will be this Ridged plate coral (Merulina sp.). Instead of ringing around in a concentric fashion, their thick and short corallites walls form meandering valleys and ridges, radiating from the centre of the plate to the edges.

Yeah, there's just so much about hard corals from the short two hour moments at the Great Reef! It's very exciting indeed.


Last but definitely not the least, just to let you know that they are also soft corals there like this Omelette leathery coral.

Thanks to some of my labmates who helped a bit with the id of some corals. Otherwise I will still be frantically searching for its identification.

Hopefully by my next time out at the reef, I will be at a better position to tell different corals apart.

Corals of the Great Reef part one

Here's the continuation of the sightings from my previous Terumbu Raya trip. The short two hours out on the field was well occupied because I took so many photos that processing them required a lot of time. Nevertheless, here are the corals section, which I had also split into part one and two. :-)


As said in my previous post, Terumbu Raya or also known as the Great Reef lives up to its name. There's indeed many different types and high number of corals at the reef edge. Not to say at the reef slope which will have more.


Some of them can be quite gigantic in size, I wonder how old are these corals?


On land, there are also colourful hard corals like the Small o-ring favid coral (Family Faviidae) that is green in colour and the brownish Jigsaw maze favid corals (Family Faviidae).


The waters at the tide pool are clear and we can see the Ladder maze favid coral (Family Faviidae) quite vividly.


This is yet another view from the faviid coral from underwater.


Family Faviidae is really a huge family and here is another coral of the same family: the Big o-ring favid coral.


Could this also be the Big o-ring favid coral (Family Faviidae)? Sigh, faviid corals are quite hard to tell apart :P


This colony of maze looking coral looks similar to the Brain corals (Family Mussidae) but other than that, I'm rather clueless too... There's just some many species of corals in Singapore so I'm not complaining either.


Finally some familiar looking corals. The starry looking polyps led to it being named as the Galaxy corals (Galaxea sp.).


The Euphyllid coral (Family Euphyllidae) is a fascinating coral with tentacles that end off with a U-shape. I do not usually encounter them though.


Here is the Lettuce coral (Pavona sp.) which has leafy looking shapes that give them their common name. These structures are great hiding places for all kinds of animals!


Now it's time to really get brainy. I kind of gave up trying to distinguish their species so for the next few photos, they are simply Brain corals from the Family Mussidae.


The "brainy" is quite different, it has a neon-green colour.


This probably the Lobed brain coral (Lobophyllia sp.).


And here's the last brainy coral to share with you all.


Last but not least, here's the anemone coral (Goniopora sp.) swaying its long polyp with the waves. It has a very cute Banded fan worm on it!

Look forward to the 2nd part of the coral posts on Terumbu Raya. There's a small little "surprise" in that upcoming post. So keep your eyes glued to the updates of this blog while I continue to slog on for my thesis.

The Great Reef- Terumbu Raya

My many firsts today!

My first morning trip of 2009.

My first visit to Terumbu Raya- which is translated as Great Reef. :-)

My first time seeing some critters which I will share with you all later.

I'm glad to visit one more patch reef which I've blogged about previously. Wasn't supposed to come as my thesis is running out of time. But Termubu Raya is just too hard to resist!


It's always a drag to wake up at unearthly hours. The sun only just rose after we reach Terumbu Raya, a patch reef off the intertidal area of Pulau Semakau. The glow and rays from the sunrise was spectacular.


Very soon, light filled the skies and here we are presenting to you Terumbu Raya!


Just upon stepping on this great reef, I saw the my first Fire anemone (Actinodendron sp.). Like fireworms as the name suggest, you won't want to touch them.


I like the white lines radiating outwards on its oral disk.


I showed the fire anemone to Alicia and Stephen and they pointed out the octopus just beside the anemone! I was probably just too engrossed with the fire anemone.


Alicia had a keen eye and she spotted several creatures. She later showed me this bluish green thing that looks like seaweed. Wonder what is its species.

Low tide timing was short. For today, I focused on the reef edge.


I was stunned to see a huge array of coral reef. What amazes me is the clear water. I could see the edge and reef slope pretty clear. I am really very tempted to dive or snorkel!

Chay Hoon says that her dive at Hantu yesterday was an incredible 10m visibility!


There were several sponges that should be barrel sponges.


I heard that the Neptune's cup sponge has not been recorded in Singapore for a long time. So therefore, these should be barrel sponges. But this one was quite big, about 20cm in diameter.


There are also other orange sponges that is more horn-shaped like.

Termubu Raya has many types of anemones according to their previous trip.


At the reef edge, the Bubble-tip sea anemone (Entacmea quadricolor) is not difficult to find. This one has a white ring near its tip.


Whereas this one has a green tip. Unfortunately, no associate tomato clownfishes were sighted.


At another part of the reef edge, I found this showy and attractive looking anemone. It just defies my concept of anemones as it is neon yellow and pink!


A closer look reveals that it is a Pizza anemone (Cryptodendrum adhaesivum). I don't think such a bright pizza anemone has been seen before.


Another anemone that I've spotted is this wriggly sea anemone that we still don't know its identification. While photographing this anemone, my eyesight became macro for a moment...


and I saw this tiny 1-cm nudibranch! My first time seeing this Chromodoris Fidelis which is usually only sighted during dives.


Terumbu Raya is a great place for nudibranch and I later saw this Phyllid nudibranch (Phyllidiella pustulosa). The blue colour is nice.


Chay Hoon spotted this commonly sighted Polka-dot nudibranch (Jorunna funebris) which is also known as the oreo slug.


Soon, Chay Hoon found for me yet another special find! Another of my first time! This is a Ceratosoma Gracillimum that is also yet usually only sighted during dives. November saw in during her previous trip and I'm so glad not to miss it this time.


It looks like it has wings and want to fly away anytime. Hehe.


This endearing nudibranch has pretty details to look out for like its rhinophores and its gills.


There were a couple of flatworms that I've spotted including the Blue-lined flatworm (probably Pseudoceros sp.) and also this greenish one that I've never seen before. It looks like a leaf slug. Sadly, half of its body is missing. But it can still swim gracefully.


Chay Hoon also saw this really huge flounder at the bottom of the deep reef edge. Too bad I stirred up sediments so no clear photos.

The only sad part about Terumbu Raya is no sea stars sighted till now. :(

There are still a couple of echinoderms around as consolation.


Like this stonefish sea cucumber that is really big.


And this stunning red feather star that Chay Hoon again found.

Well, Terumbu Raya lives up to its name! It is indeed a great submerged reef that most Singaporeans don't know about it unfortunately. It's at our very own backyard.

This spectacular reef has many different kinds of corals which will require some time for me to write a post out of it, given my limited coral knowledge.

I have to get going with my thesis and will try to find time later to writeup the second half of today's fantastic reef experience.