Coral garden on the reclaimed East Coast Park

This morning we decided to visit a new shore, something that we have not done for a long time! Thanks to Arjun and Ria, I found out about a potential spot with lots of corals and did a recce before today's survey.

Along the seawall, I was amazed to see thick growths of hard corals growing on a reclaimed shore! Such abundance is not even found in many of our natural reefs.

Underwater fantasy at Tuas

On our last evening low tide, we revisited Tuas shore with hope to cross over to Merawang Beacon. We were not able to do so during our previous trip in December as the tide was higher than expected.

There was a bloom of Sea lettuce green seaweed (Ulva sp.) at several parts of the shore before the water channel separating the beacon and the main shore. At the background is Pulau Merambong belonging to Malaysia.

CNY Day 3: St John's Island

Day 3 of our Chinese New Year field trip series was at St John's Island! It has been 2 years since my last visit and that was also during the CNY period.

St John's Island is one of the remaining few public-accessible shores that lies beneath a majestic coastal forest and cliff. This stretch of shore at Tanjong Hakim has been spared from reclamation or coastal development.

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!