3rd Monitoring session in Tuas

Hello Teamseagrass members,

This is reporting live from Schering-Plough coastline. We have just conducted our 3rd monitoring session on 16th Aug 2008. We are very glad that the tide this part of the year is in the evening, which means we could spend more time on the coastline walk.

As usual, the monitoring session started with a little refresher on the monitoring technique. We had a new quadrat to use too =) This time round we had a huge turn out from our Human Resource Team! Thanks to you guys =)

The majority of the seagrass (which is 99.9999%) found in the Tuas coastline is Halophila Ovalis. However, during this monitoring session, we observed that there were a few broken tapered grass (I think it is Thaslassia hemprichii) washed up shore. We tried to search for the tapered grass further offshore but we could not find any. Ria commented that they could be much much further off shore that’s why we did not manage to find any.

And as reported by Ria there was a huge bloom of the stiff green seaweed which covered most of the exposed shore. Quite irritating actually as it covered most of the exposed shore which makes walking difficult but I think the marine creatures will love them since they provide food and most importantly shelter for them to hide from us – the hyperactive marine creature mountain tortoise participants.

After 30 mins of monitoring, we were off to the more interesting coastline walks. This time round, we had a photographer-wannabe with us – Mr Samuel Tan and he did manage to take numerous photos on the beautiful marine creatures we have. Here are some of his photos:

Crabs are always found in everyone’s camera when they visit the Tuas coastline. But you can’t blame them as there are just too numerous of them on the coastline. They are always the first creature to greet you on the Tuas coastlines – you just can’t miss them. Don’t you find that the crab on the right side looks like a spider especially the color combination.

There is another photo that I like as the eyes are like so mesmerizing though I do not know what marine creature it is. Let me make a smart guess – a type of SNAIL?

Among other marine creatures that we saw included a tiny mudskipper which was spotted by one of our observant team members borrowing in the sand. Many fishes and a starfish were also spotted by many of our members. I must say they are really getting good in observing these creatures.

Soon it getting dark and we had to conclude the Seagrass and coastline monitoring session. Glad to say we do have another evening session in December and hope that we can spot more interesting marine creature.