CNY Day 2: Little Sister's Island

On the second day of Chinese New Year, we visited Little Sister's Island! It has been close to 3 years since we set foot on the shores of Little Sister's though we have been visiting the Big Sister's a lot more.

Once again, we were blessed with good and cooling weather and there was even a lovely sunset which I missed. Here's a look at the shores and jetty Little Sister's Island with Big Sister's Island on the right.

CNY Day 1: Cyrene Reef

On the first day of Chinese New Year, we were off to Cyrene Reef! It's been a while since we visited this favourite shore that is situated around Pulau Bukom, Pasir Panjang and Jurong Island. Our previous trip was in July 2014 where we had the "near-death" experience.

The stretches facing the oil refinery at Bukom and also Jurong Island is home to several hard and soft corals. Some of which can be relatively huge, like the one in this photo.

Back to long lost shore at Marina East

We discovered the reclaimed shores of Marina East at 2008 and it was a haven for soft sediment organisms such as carpet anemones, special sand dollars, huge eight-armed sea stars, variety of sea cucumbers and intriguing snails. Unfortunately, it was "reclaimed" again for the next few years and we thought it was gone for good.

I finally found a time to check out this shore again during low tide this afternoon to see if there's anything left. And I'm surprised to still find a portion of the shore that survived the coastal works that took place over the past few years.

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.