On 8 Nov 2014, We revisited Beting Bemban Besar, a submerged reef off Pulau Semakau. It was the blooming season for sargassum seaweed so this made landing and departure as well as exploring reef edge difficult. I had a closer look at the seagrasses and found several types of marine life. The corals near the edge and the resident knobbly sea stars are still doing fine!
On 7 Nov 2014, we visited Semakau East to have a look at this stretch which we seldom do. Though the weather didn't look good, we managed to spend quite a fair bit of time exploring the reef. I came across a beautiful giant clam submerged at the reef edge.
On 11 Oct 2014, we visited Pulau Hantu to look at the beautiful reefs, of which at certain stretches are very thick and full of life! We saw several giant clams, slugs of different types, flatworms, uncommon fish etc. It's amazing to witness the diversity of marine life just right opposite the petrochemical plants of Bukom.
On 10 Oct 2014, I visited Labrador shore to see how it was doing. Labrador is our last natural rocky shore in Southern Singapore and it used to be much better before the surrounding reclamation began. Glad to see that the seagrasses are still thriving and that marine life is slowly coming back. Let's hope with time it will recover.
On 9 Oct 2014, we did an intertidal survey of Northern Semakau where there are lots of corals at the reef edge. I had a great time exploring the colourful reefs using my underwater camera. I also spent some time looking at the higher shores and noticed that the seagrasses are cropped. The Cryptic sea stars at the rocks are still there.
There's lots of crap crabs at Punggol where James and I visited this shore on a wee hour of 0430. This also marked the end of the morning low spring tide field trips for 2014!
It's our last season of morning lows for the year before we usher in the evening low spring tides from October onwards. For our last submerged morning trip with a super early 0300 departure, we surveyed Terumbu Pempang Tengah.
