The Amazing Starfish

Did you know that…

Not all STARFISH have five arms? Some only have three, others six or seven, some twenty, and a few up to fifty arms!

STARFISH have thousands of tiny, sharp spines covering them from the tip of one arm to the tip of the others? That is why starfish belong to a group of sea creatures called echinoderms. Echino means “spiny,” and derm means “skin.” These spines protect starfish from tiny sea creatures that try to attach themselves to them and feed off their strength.

A STARFISH’S mouth is on the bottom of its body, right in the center?

STARFISH have very small feet called tube feet? Each tube foot has a tiny suction cup at its tip. Starfish use these suction cups to walk and also to pump in oxygen—so starfish actually breathe through their feet!

STARFISH do not have eyes? Instead, at the end of each starfish arm are many cells that are very sensitive to light. As a starfish travels slowly through the water, these special cells and the sensitive tube feet help the starfish find food.

STARFISH eat oysters? When an oyster senses that a starfish is near, it will quickly close its shell with a snap! But the starfish wraps its arms around the shell and uses the suction cups on its tube feet to pry the oyster’s shell open just a crack.

A STARFISH actually pulls its stomach out through its mouth to eat? Because the oyster’s shell only opens as wide as a piece of cardboard, the starfish must slip its stomach into the shell and eat the oyster while it is still in its closed shell.

When a STARFISH loses its arms in an accident, it will grow new ones? One kind of starfish can grow an entire body from a piece of its arm one-half inch long!

WOW!

Starfish are pretty amazing creatures! They were designed to see, walk, breathe, eat, protect themselves, and heal themselves when they are hurt, all in a special way that fits their specific underwater environment. God is the Master Designer behind starfish, all sea creatures, land creatures, and yes, humans! God is your Designer and Creator. He made you with the ability to know him and love him. Starfish can do lots of cool things, but they can’t learn about God and love him like you can.

You are an amazing creature. Just think of all the cool things God has designed you to do: think, jump, learn, sing, love, run, play, laugh, help others… and there are probably many more things you can do and special talents that you have. But nobody is perfect; all humans do things that are wrong. Can you think of some things that you have done that were wrong? Maybe you were mean to someone at school or told a lie to your parents. God calls those wrong things sin.

Everyone who sins must be punished. But God loves us and does not want us to sin. He wants us to be like him—loving, kind, and good. And he designed a way to save us from our sins and to help us become more like him. God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to earth to be a human, just like us, except Jesus never sinned. Even so, he chose to die so that he could pay the death penalty for our sins. Three days after he died, God raised him back to life again! Isn’t God amazing?

Do you want to have a clean, new life? Then just believe in what Jesus did for you. Tell God that you are sorry for your sins and thank him for sending Jesus to save you. When you trust in Jesus and believe that he died for you, God will begin working in you every day, helping you to become more like him and to avoid doing wrong things. If you want to begin this new life with God, talk to him and say something like this:

Dear God, I am sorry for the bad things I do. Thank you for sending your Son Jesus to pay the penalty for my sins. I believe that he died for me and rose again so that I could go to heaven. Please change my heart and make me more like Jesus. Amen.

From: http://www.hopeway.org/gospel/TheAmazingStarfish.asp?ct=1

Written by: Bob Devine

Sand star transect at Pasir Ris

Yesterday I was with a team of friends who came to Pasir Ris to help me with my sand star transect. Some of us were early and we saw the WaterFest Jet Jam 2008 going on at Pasir Ris.


There were some tentages set up at the very high shore for this event.


And off the coast, there are indeed jet skis enjoying the water sports.


They even have a mini jetty or pontoon stretched out from the beach.

Just less than two months ago, news reported of the poor water quality at Pasir Ris. The National Environment Agency (NEA) has issued an advisory that cautions against swimming, wakeboarding and waterskiing in the waters there because of “high bacteria content” specifically, the enterococcus bacteria found in human and animal waste.

This WaterFest event has proven to show that water activities can still go on. Indeed, the sea and the shore is an attractive place for people to have different recreational activities. To make our shores sustainable and accessible for the long run, it is important for us to keep it in good shape.


As individuals, we can make a difference even in small ways: don't litter, don't pick marine creatures home, don't leave a mess behind etc. And hopefully, the sources of pollution (if any) will be detected in the future in order to improve the water quality of the sea surrounding Pasir Ris.

In this way, we can continue to enjoy these places of recreation.


Of course for my friend and I, we love the shores because its alive! I have a group of friends with to survey the sand stars on the shore. After some preparation with the equipment, we quickly make our way down to the shore to catch the low tide.

We saw many leaves moving very quickly and my friends were intruiged! I overturned the "moving" leaves and they found out that there are leaf porter crabs underneath which is mainly for camouflage. During the day, it hides in soft mud, with the leaf above. However at night, it swims upside down at the surface, the leaf hiding it from aquatic predators.


I encountered carpet anemones that look harmless. However, they have stinging cells that can stunt animals like crabs and fishes. When captured their prey, the tentacles will bring the "food" to the centre where the mouth is to eat its meal.


The shore was also made colourful with different sponges and anemones.


It was interesting to encounter a snapping shrimp that is green in colour. When my friend Wei Ann first saw the snapping shrimp, he told me he saw a lobster. Haha. :-)

Soon, we started our transect, mainly to study their density and natural occurences of damaged arms. And yes, there was no time to take any photo of us at work but believe me, we worked hard because there were many sand stars!


Among the many sand stars we came across, I think for the first time I see this six-armed sand star. We also found a four armed one that was not four armed because of damage. That's really cool!

In all, it's fun to see them excited and exclaiming whenever they find a sand star. They go shouting "Starfish!". Thanks a million to Ginny and her sister, Lester, Bingquan, Kian Wah, Wei Ann, Geraldine and Yvonne for taking time out to help my project.

The shore at Pasir Ris though was reclaimed, is indeed alive. Hopefully if left untouched and given more time, this shore will be livelier and the amount of life may start to be comparable to well known places like Chek Jawa and Changi.

Pandan Mangrove field trip

This morning, the marine biology class with lecturers and teaching assistants were out somewhere in the southwest.


Isn't this Pandan reservoir? What has a reservoir got to do with marine biology?!


We are actually visiting Pandan mangrove organized by Siva. I really appreciate his effort in converting a classroom lecture on mangroves into a field trip. That's why we were all so happy today. In orange is our wonderful TA, Yujie!


Just at the reservoir itself, there is already life, I saw a monitor lizard or water monitor, too bad it wasn't photogenic enough to stay so long.


Distancing ourselves from the reservoir we are near the mangroves.

According to Siva, "Pandan mangroves is typical of the sort of mangrove strip that peppers several areas in Singapore, often escaping the public eye. Their presence is a footnote to a much larger expanse of forest that gave way to development. Thus these strips are all in close proximity with the urban areas that ate in to the original forest Although these are thin strips, they contain all of the symptoms of a mangrove ecosystem and are host to an an interesting diversity. Zonation inevitably overlaps in such small areas but can still be differentiated. Bordering Pandan mangroves is a clay-ey estuarine flat that hosts shorebirds and a different community of organisms from the mangroves."

To some, Pandan mangrove is special because it houses Api-api jambu (Avicennia marina) which is now thought to be only found at offshore islands like Tekong and St John Island. This rare mangrove tree that is considered endangered was not sighted by me though. Perhaps it is there and I've seen it, just that my mangrove id skill is still not there yet.


Nevertheless, I still got to encounter another mangrove plant that is considered rare also. This is called the Chengam (Scyphiphora hydrophyllacea) and what you see are the flowers.


These are its fruits. Chengam is a shrub that grows both in the mangroves and along sandy beaches. It has waxy leaves which reduce water loss through transpiration (A common feature for some plants found in the mangroves, along sandy beaches and coastal forests)

This plant also has durable wood which is useful for making small, hardy objects. Indigenous people are known to use the warm extracts from the leaves to treat stomach aches.


There also also many sea hibiscus with their pretty yellow flowers.


Unfortunately, one of our buckets started to float away but we have a hero to save the day!


Soon, we went more inland into another part of the mangrove.


At this zonation, we can still walk on the substrate despite the not so low tide. It was definitely an experience for many first timers down the mangroves. We saw many interesting organisms like snails, crabs, worms, mudskippers etc etc.


Not forgetting this TV junk! Which was later coined (in a corny fashion) as the water monitor.

All too soon, we completed our field trip!

What should one do while waiting for the bus to pick you up?


Take out your umbrella/big hat and start the anti-sun/glare/UV campaign.


Or embrace the nature by lying and relaxing on the grass, suntaning yourselves.


Or start talking to each other to exchange ideas.


I guess all of us enjoyed the trip and thank God for there is no rain. Nice first time visiting this special patch of mangroves.

Singapore's largest sea star!

I was not supposed to have any field trip for this low tide season since the tide is not super low and I have tons of work to clear up. But my stand was shakened when I saw that Ron, Samson and Siyang found the six-armed sea star (Luidia penangensis) from Changi yesterday. This is because this six-armed sea star is one of the two remaining sea star species that I have not personally seen intertidally.

Therefore, I decided to sacrifice some sleep in the predawn hours to try and see this illusive star for myself. Glad Ron was also thinking to revisit Changi so the duo of us went off in search of special stars at 4am.

Unfortunately, we couldn't find any Luidia penangensis or Luidia hardwicki that we were searching for. The tide was playing a fool of us as it did not go down as much as expected again (Yes I experienced this before!). Nevertheless, there was a bigger surprise awaiting which was revealed right at the end of the trip.


Despite the not-so-low-tide, I found this beautiful and stunning pinkish cake sea star (Anthenea aspera) which enthrilled both of us.


A closer look at the aboral surface reveals many minute pincer-like structures known as pedicellariae. The snapping actions of these structures help to defend against small attacking or settling organisms and also to keep the surface clean.

The yellowish circle part is believed to be the madroporite. The madroporite is a sieve-like button-shaped structure on the top surfaces of sea stars. It serves as the external opening of the water vascular system.


The underside of this pretty cake sea star :-)


The shore at Changi is rich in cake sea stars, and we found several others with different colour variations.


The underside of the above cake sea star.


Ron found this rather large biscuit sea star (Goniodiscaster scaber) which are surprisingly very common! I like this particular biscuit sea star because of its orange and brownish body.


How do you identify biscuit sea star?

This is a common question asked by friends whom I've brought them out for shore trips. Dr Lane's "A Guide to Sea Stars and Other Echinoderms of Singapore" stated that the oral surface of biscuit sea stars should be off-white, sometimes with purple pigmentation around the mouth and extending along either side of the grooves on the arms.


Ron also found this special four-armed Gymnanthenea laevis sea star.


From the underside, we can speculate that it is four-armed not because one was autotomized or bitten off, but it has been like that since it was a juvenile. This is so because from the centre, there are only four grooves of the arms radiating out.


There were several other types of sea cucumbers like this plain looking one, on top of the warty and thorny sea cucumbers.


There were also the usual gang of anemones like this one on top of the carpet anemones, peacock anemones etc.


Ron found this orange seahorse that we don't commonly find as compared to the yellowish ones.

However, we also had several encounter with the dead or dying.


It was sad to see this stingray died because it was hooked to a fishing line left behind at the shore. The olive snail was fast to start feeding on the body.

But the most saddening yet shocking or exciting part of the trip was during the moment where we were just about to leave the shore at the "end".


I spotted this dead body of a sea star that is HUGE in size. A closer look reveals that this is highly likely to be the body of the eight-armed sea star (Luidia maculata).


This is a photo of the eight-armed sea star taken earlier this month when I visited Changi. The arm of this particular one is about 10cm which is the usual size we see on the shores.


Guess what was the radius of the arm of this dead sea star found? It is about 20-30cm long! My ruler reads 30cm in maximum.


The central disk itself is already about 8cm in diameter! What a gigantic sea star!


There was not only one of such carcass found but FOUR.


Can you see how huge these eight-armed sea stars can be as compared to the 30cm ruler?


This fourth one had most of its arm already detached. However, it wasn't rotting as badly as the above few.


One can see that its arm still look quite fresh, with patterns similar to the ones we seen alive previously.

We were puzzled and caught in a surprise how large they can be. 20-30cm of arm lengths may be an understatement since these are rotting arms. Those alives might be even bigger.

Immediately after returning home, I referred to Dr Lane's "A Guide to Sea Stars and Other Echinoderms of Singapore" and indeed Dr Lane mentioned the eight-armed sea star to be a large sea star with eight arms, each often exceeding 20cm in length. We feel these giant stars tend to only be found subtidally since no one has seen such a large one alive in the intertidal area and that those large sea stars that Dr Lane recorded were collected in a trawled hauled from the sea bed. That is probably why we only see these large ones when they are dead and stranded on the high shore.

Today's discovery could possibly suggest that Singapore's largest sea star is not the knobbly sea star or the cushion sea star but the eight-armed sea star!

There is life at Pasir Ris beach

Just less than a month ago, there were several reports regarding the unacceptable water quality at Pasir Ris Beach. The NEA decided to warn against swimming off Pasir Ris Beach because high levels of bacteria normally found in the faeces of warm-blooded animals were found in the water.

Does the poor water quality due to high bacteria count means that the shore of Pasir Ris is dead and badly diseased?


You're wrong. I was surprised to see a galaxy of sand stars (Astropecten sp.) this morning.

Yes, my friends: Khairul, Ginny, Xiuli and I were at Pasir Ris at 5am for my sand star project. We were amazed to see many sand stars at the shore.

Interestingly, I was asked whether should we use gloves today due to the high bacteria count report. I guess so long as the seawater doesn't enter your mouth or eyes, it is not a problem. Always remember to wash your hands before handling food: I learnt this lesson the hard way as I got diarrhoea for one week after my P. Hantu trip which is likely due to dirty hands touching tibits.


We also encountered two Cake sea stars (Anthenea aspera). This is the larger star which is adult-sized! If you look closer, you would have realized you missed other living organisms.


Yes, there are quite a number of these common shrimps near the arms of the cake sea star. I wonder is there an association between shrimps and sea stars?


A rough or "agar" guage of a decent living shore is sometimes to see if there are octopus. Indeed we saw something purplish and small flashing across.


Yes it is an octopus, and it's a juvenile one. It looks miniature and cute.


The substrates at Pasir Ris shores are usually silty. This favours anemones in general.


I saw this elegant looking glass anemone.


There is this unidentified sea anemone on the shore and to my surprise, there is a semi-buried sand star just right next to the anemone.


Though not true anemones, peacock anemones add colour and variety to any intertidal shore. They are usually accompanied with back phoronid worms near the stalk of the peacock anemone. That's not all...

There's more life in this photo: tubeworms (bottom left) and


a tiny goby at the bottom right of the previous photo.


There are also sponges enrusted on hard surfaces. One would ask, is it an animal or plant?

Actually sponges are animals, and are simple animals. It's okay if you think they are plants because scientists used to know sponges as plants long time ago.


I had an encounter with this striped eeltail catfish that was trapped on the sand during low tide. Gently, I tried to return this poor stranded fish back into deeper waters.

Today we also saw a huge stranded jellyfish!


Here's Khairul and Ginny with the smaller cake sea star (with brilliant yellow tips on its arms) found by Xiuli.


As usual, Xiuli is still photoshy! Haha. Need to be more paparazzi to take her photos next time.

Am very grateful they sacrificed their sleep hours to come and help me with my survey. We had a good time at Pasir Ris and it's nice to visit a mainland shore with the convenience of not needing to charter a boat and van (as to visiting Chek Jawa at P. Ubin).