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!

Seagrasses and coral reef of BBB

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!

Beautiful giant clam at Eastern Semakau

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.

Splendid reefs of Hantu

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. 

How is Labrador shore doing?

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.

Rich coral reef of Northern Semakau

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.

Full of crabs at Punggol shore

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!

One of the most interesting crabs we encountered would be this tiny unidentified porcelain crab with a face band in between its eyes. This crab that was found on an ascidian is indeed very cute!