A small intrepid team headed out for Chek Jawa to monitor the seagrasses there just after sunrise.
We had glimpses of otters! And saw signs of what might be dugong feeding trails! The Chek Jawa seagrass meadows are awesome!
Throughout our monitoring session, the sparsely distributed Team glimpsed three
smooth otters on the shore. I saw them just after sunrise near the mangroves!
We saw several furrows that might be
dugong feeding trails. Some of these furrows were quite close to the boardwalk. Does this mean we might get a glimpse of dugongs feeding at high tide from the boardwalk? Wow!
There were also furrows near Site 1.
More possible dugong feeding trails near the beacon.
As the team doing Site 1 were heading up to the start point in the dark before dawn, we came across two pairs of
Mud crabs (
Scylla sp.) and one Mud crab alone, but nearby. Wow, are these large crabs reproducing on the seagrass meadows? I always throught these crabs were usually found in mangroves than on seagrass meadows.
At Site 1, two of our youngest members are hard at work. Sean here is doing a line on his own.
And Jocelyn is also monitoring on her own.
While Ivan and Jerome are doing a line.
Much further away, Site 2 is being done by Andy, Yen Ling, Nadine, Yunfeng and Gladys.
The seagrasses seemed lush today. I saw a slick of green slime in some parts of the shore.
A closer look at the slime. What is it? Algae reproducing? So much more to learn about our shores!
I didn't spend much time with the Team as I was with Dr Daphne Fautin, the world authority on sea anemones. She is in Singapore to do a
Sea Anemone Workshop. She also gave two public talks:
here and
here. More about
the sea anemones encountered on Chek Jawa on this trip.
We were also joined by Lee Qi and Benjamin who attended to Siti's seagrass experiments. We sure missed Siti today!
Thanks to the small but efficient team, we got lots done well before most people in Singapore had even gotten out of bed this Sunday! Today, we also used the wonderful bags that Wei Ling got for us! They are great!
Thanks to Wei Ling for arranging our transport even though she couldn't come. And many thanks to Shufen for making sure everything went well today.
And thanks to the team to turned up for this predawn monitoring session: Andy, Yen Ling, Nadine, Yunfeng, Gladys, Sean, Jocelyn, Ivan, Jerome. And to James and Chay Hoon for supporting Dr Daphne and Nicholas on this trip.
Posts by others on this trip
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