Tuas: Our last mainland western reefs

This morning, we journeyed from the east (where most of our mainland shores are) to west to our last remaining mainland western reef at Tuas.

Here's a look at the last stretch of natural reefs in the west that escaped reclamation. The Merawang Beacon is a prominent feature of this inaccessible shore. Many thanks to Sheryl from MSD for giving us the permission to do our survey.

Underwater fantasy at Tuas

On our last evening low tide, we revisited Tuas shore with hope to cross over to Merawang Beacon. We were not able to do so during our previous trip in December as the tide was higher than expected.

There was a bloom of Sea lettuce green seaweed (Ulva sp.) at several parts of the shore before the water channel separating the beacon and the main shore. At the background is Pulau Merambong belonging to Malaysia.

Tuas shore with stars surprise!

We are back at the amazing shores of Tuas near Merawang Beacon! It has been more than two years since I have set foot on this colourful shore and we wonder how it is doing with the start of reclamation across at the Malaysia side.

Unfortunately, the tide was non-compliant and did not went down as low as we expected. Thus, we were mainly surveying the tiny crops of land that were exposed. Nevertheless, there were still much to see!

Highlights of trips with Northern Expedition 2012

This is a blog post on some of the highlights of trips made in October that is long overdue. I joined some of the trips with the Northern Expedition at the Mega Marine Survey and we surveyed shores along the Straits of Johor.

My dream of visiting the Western shores of Pulau Ubin was fulfilled as I tagged along the team surveying Tanjong Tajam on the first day. The last time I visited this part of Ubin was as a student as part of the OBS experience. The rock formation at Tajam remains as majestic as ever.

Back to underwater garden of Tuas

It has been two years since I have visited the pretty and colourful shores of Tuas. And I was glad to be back here with Sheryl and Ria who are monitoring the seagrasses. Bee Yan was here to survey the crabs at the small stretch of mangroves.

I headed out to the Merawang Beacon to have a look at how the reef is doing and was glad to find several beautiful hard corals and sea fans. 

Tuas: Journey to the west

Tuas is home to an array of beautiful gardens at differents parts of the shore. It is also the only shore in the west that I've ever visited. Considering almost all of our western coastline have been urbanised or reclaimed, it makes me all the more think that Tuas is a very special shore.


At Merawang beacon off Tuas, we spent a short 20 minutes exploring marine life around there because the tide was already quickly coming back.

Lovely marine garden at Tuas

Schering Plough is very fortunate to have a lovely marine garden at their very own backyard. With their dedicated volunteers who monitors the seagrassers at this garden, a team of us joined along to take a look at this fascinating shore that escaped reclamation.


The furthest and also the nicest part of the garden is marked by the green beacon on the rocky outcrop. In order to get there, one has to cross the deeper waters that is usually below knee deep if we know when the tide timings are.

Tuas and beyond

Finally the final of the four posts of the Tuesday Tuas trip. Here I will share with you all some nice landscape photos of this charming shore and beyond.


The Merawang beacon tells of its past as Pulau Merawang. I have no idea what has the island become of but judging for the GPS coordinates of the island's original location, it has been reclaimed together with Tuas. The remaining natural shore we enjoy now is what is left that belongs to the original island. A heritage that we do not want to lose forever.


Just beyond the beacon, there is an island nearby that looks like it belongs to Singapore. However it belongs to Malaysia. The shore has plentiful of nice shore and unique terraced rocky beach and Ria has done a post on this island on her wildfilms blog. I can see mangroves from this photo too!

It is heartening to know that the Save our Seahorses team is monitoring the shores over at this island. I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to take a look at this interesting island. Do click on the picture to see a larger image.


Later on, there was a thunderstorm coming from the north. The Tuas 2nd link is at the background.


At the same time, there was a spectcular sunset just round the corner towards the south!

How could these two contrasting events occur together?


This is a panoramic photo of the whole landscape connected together from seven photographs. The beauty of nature is emphasized with both storm and glorious sunset occuring at the same time as seen from Tuas shore. Click to see the larger image!


The sunet over Merawang beacon is simply breathtaking. You just can't believe this is Singapore since we are well known to be a concrete jungle. Let's hope this place stays this way!

Soft sediment creatures of Tuas

Here is the third post on my Tuesday Tuas shore trip. Previously, I have blogged about the gorgeous gorgonians and also the lively coral reef and coral rubble creatures around Merawang Beacon.


Another habitat of Tuas will be the soft sediment shore that has seagrasses and algae cover. Despite being located beside Schering Plough, the shore is well monitored and looked after. Team Seagrassers from Schering Plough do monitor the seagrasses there regularly.


There was a proliferation of the Halimeda seaweed at the soft sediment habitat of Tuas and that supports a number of creatures.


Like the Thorny sea cucumbers (Colochirus quadrangularis) in red (left). There are also the Black long sea cucumber (Holothuria leucospilota) which is less frequently found here compared to the coral rubble.


Like the coral rubble, there are also mats of zoanthids that dotted the shore.


The first record of the plain sand star (Astropecten indicus) at the Tuas shore! All of the previous sightings were only the painted ones (Astropecten sp.). These sand stars seems to be restricted to shores bounded by the Straits of Johor...hmm.


I found this elegant looking Glass anemone (Doflenia sp.). Unfortunately, I didn't get a good capture of this pretty anemone, see Ria's post for a nicer photo :-)


The Nparks team sighted this Spearer mantis shrimp (Harpiosquilla sp.) which is colourful with shades of blue, yellow and green.

Armed with sharp spines, the pincers extend and retract much faster than an eye blink and the sharp spines impale soft, fast-moving prey like fish and prawns.


Hiding near a rock crevice is a hairy crab (Family Pilumnidae). They are usually found at southern shores so I think it's my first time seeing them at northern shores.

I do feel that Tuas shore is like a combination of the northern shores and southern shores to a certain extent because there is a good mix of coral reef and soft sediment creatures.


An Estuarine sea horse (Hippocampus kuda) was sighted among the Halimeda seaweeds! It's always a special find to sight the charming sea horse.


Also found among the hard Halimeda seagrass is Diamond tuskfish (Halichoeres dussumieri/nigrescens). We later brought this distressed wrass back to a tidal pool. We were careful in handling this fish has sharp teeth and can give a nasty bite!


Free from poaching pressures, the shore was dotted with numerous gong gongs (Strombus canarium)!


On top of peacock anemones which I didn't found time to photograph, there are also huge Haddon's carpet anemones (Stichodactyla haddoni).

Soon I found something special which has been also sighted before by Samson the last trip.


Despite the numerous common Cake sand dollar (Arachnoides placenta), there shore also is home to the much rarer Laganum sand dollar (Laganum depressum) which I definitely preferred more.


If I'm not wrong, these are the yellow horned sponge which are not common at other shores except Tuas.

Now it is time for corals! Both hard and soft.


We have the ever resilient Zebra coral (Oulastrea crispata) that can be found even at the most beat up shore.


There is also the larger colony of boulder coral (Porites sp.) submerged at the deeper levels of the shore.

How about the softies?


I saw this leathery soft coral that looks quite different from the smoother surfaced encountered at our southern shores.


The colony is usually thick, disk-like with a highly ruffled edge. In some, there are many bulbous or short finger-like projections. A check with the wildfacts page revealed that this is the starry leathery soft coral.


Soft corals are aplentiful especially for the Spiky flowery soft corals. They are very common only at Tuas and the spikey soft coral do house a lot of different tiny creatures. Only if I have all the time of the low tide to look closely at them. :-)


It was a treat to have many of the Ball flowery soft corals at Tuas. They are usually numerous only at remote shores like Beting Bronok. Don't you think they look like cauliflower?


The soft coral was a great hiding place and there was a tiny colourful brittlestar just within it!


Sometimes they can be rather colourful with stunning red colours.


More of these cute little ball-like soft corals.


Last but definitely not the least, a special find by Ria. A Melibe nudibranch (Melibe viridis)!


The melibe is a large nudibranch that has an expandable hood which it uses to trap small prey.


There's just so much in this narrow stretch of shore that escaped reclamation! The trip ended with a glorious sunset and a terrible thunderstorm.

How can both sunset and thunderstorm come together? Find out why in my upcoming last post of the Tuas series of blog posts. I will share with you some nice landscape photos of this lovely shore.

Lively Merawang beacon

Just off the coast of Tuas is Merawang beacon that stands on a rocky outcrop.


As I have always said in many blog posts, do not judge a book by its cover. Never think that the rocky outcrop is lifeless and boring by just looking from afar until you go and take a closer look yourself.


For the first time, I got to touch the towering beacon after wading in deep waters to get there.


Just near the base of the beacon are different kinds of barnacles, a first sign of life.


At the coral rubble surrounding the beacon are huge mats of zoanthids (Palythoa tuberculosa).

Tuas is well known to have plenty of hydroids (Class Hydrozoa) which we do not really know of its detailed indentification. They can inflict painful burning stings which takes a long time to recover. Therefore, it is important to be fully covered with long pants.


This looks like the fluffy hydroids.


This one looks like the stinging hydroids.


And this pretty pink one looks like the candy hydroids.


Interestingly, there a Green mussel (Perna viridis) stuck on a mat of Melted chocolate ascidian.


Also on the ascidian are many Sponge synaptid sea cucumber. They are small and numerous!


Another sea cucumber, this is the much bigger Black long sea cucumber (Holothuria leucospilota) that is quite common at the coral rubble area. They tend to be close or underneath rocks.


Feathery fan worms are aplenty too! There are both the orange and banded brown ones on the coral rubble.


If there is a hard substrate, sponges will not be a miss unless the shore is really atrocious. There are many weird looking sponges including this one. Probably we will get a better idea when Swee Cheng's sponge guidebook is released in the future.


Beside this blue sponge is this cute little thumbs up sea squirt (Polycarpa sp.) which indeed squirted water when I was observing it.

Most part of the coral rubble area was submerged but a view from the top reveals it simply like an underwater colourful garden full of sponges, soft corals, sponges, hard corals, sea fans etc.


And I was surprised to find this branching sponge that is as big as a potential sea fan. It is stunning. You can also see the soft coral (in brown) beside the sponge.


A closer look at this gigantic sponge reveals that it is a great hiding place for animals like the brittlestar. Can you spot it?

Unlike northern shores like Changi or Pasir Ris, there are many hard corals over at Tuas.


Like this magnificient disk coral (Turbinaria sp.). It does look like a disk from its shape.


This is another disk coral that is larger and in a greenish-grey shade.


A hard coral is a colony of many individual polyps. Each polyp is an animal and they are each very beautiful.


When submerged underwater, the tentacles are fully extended outwards and it looks really lively!

How about soft corals?


Soft corals are aplenty at the coral rubble as well like this pretty Pink flowery soft coral (Family Nephtheidae). Out of water it looks flaccid and rather lifeless.


But when submerged they look stunning, making the underwater coral reef garden more colourful!


As you noticed in this post, most animals spotted are immobile but I still managed to spot this Ornate leaf slug (Elysia ornata) crawling underwater.

The coral rubble and reef area surrounding Merawang Beacon is so exciting! Rarely can you find a mainland shore that is as stunning as this. Probably because this shore is protected from public access and therefore the reef animals and plants can thrive.

The Tuas shore also has other habitats like the soft sediment part of the shore which I will blog about it soon. Watch out for this space!