Pasir Ris quickly

Last Tuesday should already mark the end of the low spring tide week with Ria doing a health check at Pasir Ris and also sharing the enormous life you can find at an seemingly dead tide pool.

Nevertheless, Chee Kong, Yikang and I went out to another part of Pasir Ris on Wednesday to check out mainly on the sand stars there during this not-already-so-low tide quickly. This time, we explored the shore near the mangroves and it was soft!

We were looking out for the sand stars (Astropecten indicus) that Chee Kong said he saw them at this location three years ago.


While I was suspecting if three years could have changed the shore, Chee Kong alerted us that there are still many sand stars. In fact, our first sighting was quite an exciting one. We saw four-armed, five-armed and a six-armed sand stars at one go. It's interesting to note that they can survive estaurine conditions with lower salinities due to the river discharge of freshwater. That could be why these sand stars were not badly wiped out during the mass mortality event at Chek Jawa in January 2007.


On top of the carpet anemones (Stichodactyla haddoni), there are also many other types of anemones thriving at such a silty and soft shore like this mangrove anemone.


A bristleworm (or also known as fireworm) appeared suddenly. Their name suggests that have bristles made of calcium carbonate or silica which are brittle and contain poisons. When these bristles penetrate the skin, they break and cause a burning sensation.

Therefore despite how pretty and attractive it might look to you, don't touch bristleworms or the water that they are in!

Chee Kong also found this Mangrove horseshoe crab (Carcinoscopius rotundicauda) which can be sometimes encountered in our undisturbed mangroves and areas near such mangroves. Despite having "crab" in their name, they are not real crabs but are related more to spiders instead!


There were many of these skinny and plain grey looking mudskippers near the mangrove area.

I don't recall seeing these mudskippers before! Could anyone advice me what species of mudskipper is this? All I know is that these mudskippers are rather tame and they do not avoid our presence.

This trip is not only the last of this week of seven consecutive days of field trips, but also be the last time my trusty and loyal Panasonic Lumiox TZ1 camera shares its captured images with all of you. I accidentally dropped my camera yesterday (after many histories of dropping) and it has finally died. Sobs.... RIP!

Moments of Tanah Merah

Today Ginny, Dennis and I spent some moments at Tanah Merah shore after sunset.


There were already some beachgoers when we arrive but they left promptly when the darkness sets in.


To our surprise, there are many Button snails (Umbonium vestiarum) on the sand bar.


A closer look reveals their intricate patterns and colours. It is said that no two of them looked the same.


The snails are alive with bit of their foot sticking out.


They can see with their eye stalks!


And their foot extends out for movement.

Button snails were highly abundant in Singapore in the 1960's, but populations have declined drastically as their habitats have since become degraded or were lost. They are now listed as 'Vulnerable' on the Red List of threatened animals of Singapore. Trampling by careless visitors and overcollection can also have an impact on local populations.


If there are button snails, there should have sand stars (Astropecten sp.) that predates on the snails.


And they do zip across the sandflat with their tube feet movement to find button snails to eat. Cool isn't it.


Sadly, we saw a large painted sand star that is injured.


While overturning to check for its underside, it is still heartening to see it being able to turn back to the right side rather quickly. Hopefully it will regenerate its lost arm.


This shore is also special because it has many living Cake sand dollar (Arachnoides placenta) and they create these markings when moving.


This is the upper side of the sand dollar.


And the underside reveals its mouth at the centre.


There are also hermit crabs dominating used shells from dead snails.


The spiral melongena is responsible for this yellow zipper-like egg capsules that are often encountered on rocks and other hard surfaces. The young hatch as miniature snails with a shell and a foot.


I managed to see this only anemone on the sand.


But it was interesting to find another anemone attached to a dead moon snail shell. It is very pretty!


Before leaving, I saw the wordings of the beachgoers marked out on the sand: "The love of God". Isn't this so nice! :-)

It is His love that sustains me throughout my life.

The WOW shore exploration

After an exploration of a new shore during a not-so-low tide, this time a small team of us managed to come back during an extreme low tide. It wasn't easy getting to the shore but we were glad we eventually did because there were many WOW surprises waiting for us.

This shore is VERY soft as Andy once sank knee deep the last time he came. That happened to me too! However, the super low tide revealed a section of hard sand that we could stepped on and off we go to the low water level mark to explore for the first time! The area was quite extensive. Wow.


On the sandflat facing the sea are many adult Haddon's carpet anemones (Stichodactyla haddoni) including this anemone in a pretty purple colour, like the ones you can find in Chek Jawa.


There are carpet anemones in other shades of green too and this one even a pair of anemone shrimps living on it.


These Commensal shrimps are probably Periclimenes sp. and they listed as 'Vulnerable' on the Red List of threatened animals of Singapore due to collection for the aquarium trade.


Other anemones spotted include several of these plain sea anemones.


And this sea anemone that I've no idea of it's identification.


There are also many peacock anemones (Order Ceriantharia) in different colours. We also found an orange peacock anemone with phoronid worms.


As seen from my previous trip during a not so low tide, finally I got to see the clumps of tape seagrasses (Enhalus acoroides) with many snails and sea cucumbers on it.

There was also a patch of spoon seagrass (Halophila ovalis) and needle seagrass (Halodule sp.) nearby with plenty of living snails.


The snails include the intricate looking Dubious nerites (Clithon oualaniensis) and creeper snails.


There are also plenty of sea cucumbers on the seagrass area including this orange sea cucumber that is still awaiting for identification.


There are also many thorny sea cucumbers (Colochirus quadrangularis) all over the sandflat and seagrass patches. You can see its filter feeding tentacles out to filter feed plankton and suspended organic particles from the water especially during high tide.


We could also find the not so common warty sea cucumber (Cercodemas anceps). Wow, there's quite a good variety of sea cucumbers already.


Furthermore, we got to find this weird white sea cucumber that we don't know what it is! Wow.


Mei Lin found this ball sea cucumber (Phyllophorus sp.) buried in the sand and she sighted it by it's feeding tentacles above the sand.


And the most WOW discovery of the sea cucumbers there will be the many tiny red sea cucumbers that were common on Chek Jawa and Tuas, in groups of many individuals.

They are about 1cm or shorter. Often mistaken for worms, each has all the features that bigger sea cucumbers have. Tiny long white tube feet emerge along the body length, and are used to cling to the surface.


You can also see from this photograph that their long branched feeding tentacles emerge from the mouth.

I've not seen this sea cucumber before so it's really a wow discovery for me, in addition to its many numbers.


As for sea stars, I found this large painted sand star (Astropecten sp.) on top of the four rare eight-armed sea stars that I've described in a separate post. I also found a tiny biscuit sea star on the sand flat.


How about sand dollars? It is delighting to find many rare Laganum sand dollars (Laganum depressum) that I've never seen before. WOW! They were only reported intertidally before by Ria previously at the Sentosa North shore that has already been buried for IR reclamation.

There are also many of the usual Cake sand dollars at the bottom left of the photograph (Arachnoides placenta).


They come in different shades of pink and they prefer soft and silty sand substrate to live in.


This rare sand dollar has somewhat pentagonal rather than circular shape. On the upperside it is thick at the edges and at the centre, and thinner elsewhere, creating a shallow circular depression around the centre. Spines at the edges of the body are longer.


The underside where the anus can be found, has long spines.

What a wonderful find of rare sand dollars in large numbers at this shore!


On the sand flat is also this juvenile sole fish (Family Cynoglossidae) that swam at the sandy bottom.


There was also this bloody red worm that I've no idea what it is. But it did look like it bleed.


Scurrying on the shore and running away quickly are many of the ghost crabs (Ocypode cerathophthalmus). This particular one did not run away from me because it seems to be feeding on another small crab! Wow.

Soft sandy and silty shore seems to also harbour many molluscs and we found a number of surprising finds at this shore.


Including this live gong gong snail (Strombus canarium) with both eye stalks peering out at me.


There are also snails spotted that are alive instead of the usual dead shells we sighted usually at other shores. This one is possibly a Bufonaria sp. (Family Bursidae).


This is yet another snail with beautiful shell that is ALIVE!


At the high shore, I was wow-ed by the aggregation of snails. There were plenty of space but I don't know why they aggregated like that!

Could they be all dead snails that are inhabitated by hermit crabs? I regret not checking it out more.


The only thing I checked was the button shell that is actually inhabited by a hermit crab.

If the above aggregation were all hermit crabs, then they might be doing a MASSIVE exchange of shells. Wow. With the christmas spirit somemore. Hahaha.


Other than the numerous tiger moon snails (Natica tigrina) encountered, there are also pretty lined moon snails (Natica lineata).

The final WOW of the day must be this snail.


I saw this snail that we all have never seen before! It has a very pretty mantle covering its intricate shell. In addition, it also has a pinkish siphon.


The underside of this snail reveal a orange foot that is oval in shape.


Don't underestimate it's foot because it seems to be rather strong! I heard the ladies said it was doing pushups on the sand. :P

We found several others of this special snail soon after the first sighting.


Great find of this newly sighted snail! Hopefully we can get its identification soon to see if it's a new record in Singapore.

There's so much to explore in our shores of Singapore. Unexplored and hidden shores might have rare and new stuffs that no one can ever imagine. Before they are gone, by coastal development, we really need to take a closer look at the biodiversity of the marine life and know what exactly we have on our waters.