Predawn at Berlayer Creek

I visited Berlayer Creek during predawn for the first time (as my previous 2 trips were during evening tides). The tide on this trip was lower and I was looking forward to see what lies at the lower water mark.

It was a lovely morning when I did a solo trip to this mainland shore that seems to be improving over time. This shore is just right next to Labrador Park.

St John's Island's underwater garden

It's our first predawn trip of the year and I'm trying to adjust to having to wake up at wee hours again! We are back at St John's Island this time.

The best part of today's trip would be to survey the rich reef edge of the island. This is something that requires both good low tide and daylight to happen. In addition, there must be any boat movement around to stir the sediments and good visibility also helps!

Lazarus trekking with giant clam find

Though Lazarus Island has been joined with St John's Island and Seringat, much of the island remains untouched. The side facing St John's Island is real rocky. In fact it is a natural form of foot reflexology. Haha! We went around the entire island during low tide to see how's the shores of Lazarus doing.

The top find of the day would definitely be this pretty boring giant clam in blue and green. Not that it is really pretty boring but it is indeed a giant clam that bores itself into the rock.

CNY Day 3: Tanah Merah sandflat

It's the third day of Chinese New Year and a small team of us were out at Tanah Merah sandflat during a not-so-low tide. Nevertheless, there were still lots to see! And it's great to revisit this shore. My previous trip here was also during the 3rd day of CNY in 2014.

When the tide goes out, one can actually find lots of marine life on the seemingly-dead sandy shore such as the numerous sand dollars on the rich sand bank.

CNY Day 2: Cyrene Reef

Happy CNY Day 2 from one of our all time favourite shores, Cyrene Reef! Once again, we were blessed with relatively good weather (except for the drizzling at the beginning).

The underwater seagrass garden at Cyrene is really pretty to take photos. The "bloom" of Forskal's sidegill slug (Pleurobranchus forskalii) are still around, though not as many as last December.

CNY Day 1: Southern Semakau

Happy Chinese New Year! Annually without miss, we will also be visiting the shores since the low tide and the Lunar New Year are both influenced or predetermined by the moon.

This time, we decide to visit Southern Semakau, a stretch that is not so reefy but has seagrasses and the associated animals that are found on them. We were blessed with good weather as we only had a short sprinkle of rain despite the pessimistic weather forecast.

Western Ubin with OBS

A team of us visited the Western part of Pulau Ubin near Outward Bound School. Many thanks to the kind invitation of Alex from OBS, many of us visited this intertidal shore for the first time.

We enjoyed the late afternoon with clear weather and blue skies. This stretch of Ubin is almost untouched and we were looking forward to surveying the shore, which Ria would call it as the mini-version of Chek Jawa.