Cyrene Reef (6 Jun 2011)

Under a threatening drippy sky, a brave small team heads out to Cyrene Reef to monitor the seagrasses here.

We land as usual, on the sandy stretch facing Pasir Panjang Container Terminal.

It's been a long time since we had the original team of coordinators back on Cyrene Reef! Hurray for Wei Ling, Shufen and Siti! They've been very busy and it's nice of them to make time for this trip! We had a very early start and it was very windy!

We're also joined by Dr Daphne Fautin, world authority on sea anemones, who is in Singapore to give a workshop. She also gives a hand to help the Team set up for monitoring. Thank you Dr Daphne!

While Wei Ling, Shufen, Vanitha, Siti and Lee Qi do Site 1, the rest of us hurry over to the far far away Site 2. Here's Jason bravely doing one line on his own.

While Kok Sheng and Chun Fong do another line. In the distance are the refineries of Pulau Bukom, with flaring going on. More about flaring.

I'm doing another line and the seagrasses today were still abundant, but the Tape seagrasses (Enhalus acoroides) are still rather short and many species had burnt tips.

Tape seagrasses used to be lush in the big pool near Site 2 which was green and we could hardly see the bottom. The pool still seems 'empty' with the sandy bottom now visible.

A look underwater here. Seagrasses are still growing. Hopefully, the seagrasses will be as lush as they were before.

Near the reef edge facing Pasir Panjang, I found some clumps of Tape seagrass with short blades and lots of hairy parts, which are the remains of the leaf blades.

I also came across small areas where the seagrasses had yellowish bases. This was seen in seagrasses of various species.

I also came across some seagrasses with translucent portions.

In the rest of the meadows, the seagrasses seem mostly alright with clumps of seagrasses here and there with brownish or burnt portions.

In some parts of the meadows, there's lots of pink crunchy Pom pom seaweeds.

Chay Hoon has found a Tape seagrass seed that is growing! Wow!

After monitoring, the Site 1 people head out to Siti's seagrass experiment site to help her there.

Here they are hard at work. There's lots going on at Cyrene today!

The rest of us are helping Dr Daphne and Chay Hoon find interesting sea anemones at Cyrene. And we found lots of anemones as well as other interesting marine life.

Cyrene Reef is still amazing, with lots of creatures including of course, many Knobbly sea stars of all sizes!

Glad to have with us on our trip today: Wei Ling, Siti, Shufen, Kok Sheng, Lee Qi, Jason, Chun Fong, Vanitha. And of course Dr Daphne and Chay Hoon.

Posts by others on this trip

• Ria with anemone discoveries and other distractions
  
• Kok Sheng with lots of anemones, Dr Daphne's comments about Haddon's carpet anemone, and many distracting finds from slugs to special snails and an awesome flatworm.
• Jason who enjoyed doing his line alone (hurray!) and lots of sightings from a first-timer's point of view.