Tuas (27 Sep 11)

Sheryl is back alone on Tuas to do monitoring of seagrasses there.

But all the seagrasses in the study areas are GONE! Sheryl checked one of the sites nearer the seawall. The area is no longer sandy and is now very rocky and there are no seagrasses here anymore.

I had a look at the other site (yellow arrow). Kok Sheng is already out on the shore for a quick documentation look.

This outer site is very sandy but there were no seagrasses. Only seaweeds, mostly Halimeda seaweed (Halimeda sp.).

But this doesn't mean there are no seagrasses at Tuas. In fact, there are still lots of seagrasses! And lush growths of them.

This area, however, lies outside the study area. The seagrasses have seriously moved.

In this area, the seagrasses are quite lush. We can easily get a 90% seagrass coverage reading. 100% Spoon seagrass (Halophila ovalis).

The seagrassy area grades out into soft mud further east.

We had a look at the rest of the shore and found a driftnet! While this was sad, as I removed the net, I noticed Fern seagrass (Halophila spinulosa) stuck to part of the net. Wow, my first sighting of this species here.

We should probably consider re-siting the study area to better capture the seagrass growth here.

More about what we saw and did on this trip on the wild shores of singapore blog.