Dugong feeding trails at Cyrene!

Siti saw dugong feeding trails at Cyrene Reef! Dugongs are also called sea cows because they only eat seagrasses.

We often see dugong feeding trails on Chek Jawa, even on Changi. But this is our first sighting of them on Cyrene!

Siti was on Cyrene on 12 Apr (Thu) for her seagrass experiment when she spotted these typical furrows in seagrass meadows.

Cyrene has one of the best seagrass meadows in our Southern shores, with lush meadows of a wide variety of seagrass species. These include: Tape seagrass (Enhalus acoroides), Sickle seagrass (Thalassia hemprichii), Serrated ribbon seagrass (Cymodocea serrulata), Noodle seagrass (Syringodium isoetifolium), Spoon seagrasses (Halophila ovalis) and Needle seagrasses (Halodule sp.).

I hope the dugong is alright as Cyrene lies in the middle of the industrial triangle made up of the massive industries on Jurong Island, huge refineries on Pulau Bukom and the world-class container terminals at Pasir Panjang.

The waters around Cyrene are major shipping lanes with heavy traffic in small and large vessels including container ships.

Kok Sheng also saw dugong feeding trails at Pulau Semakau in May 2011, so there do seem to be dugongs in our Southern waters!

More about dugongs in Singapore and about Cyrene Reef.