TeamSeagrass at the Festival of Biodiversity (26-27 May 2012)

The Team was busy at the Marine Exhibition during the Festival of Biodiversity last weekend.

We are fortunate to have Sankar to share about our seagrasses and the work of TeamSeagrass with the President, who graced the event.

Labrador (23 May 2012)

Finally, I got a chance to monitor the seagrasses at Labrador shore.

Labrador is one of the last few shores on the mainland with good growths of seagrasses, and it has been affected by the massive reclamation for the new Pasir Panjang container terminal (seen on the horizon in this photo).

Chek Jawa (13 May 2012)

Despite the wet start, a large team of enthusiastic volunteers gather to monitor seagrasses at Chek Jawa!

Today is a special trip because Len and Rudi of international SeagrassWatch are with us! We also saw more signs of dugongs!

Tuas (9 May 2012)

The morning started off with a bit a drizzle and I was still wondering if the monitoring could still continue. It was then that my brave volunteers gave me a thumbs up and off we go on our monitoring journey. Great Job Guys!

The midnight rain caused the rocks to be very very wet and slippery and we took some time to get down to the shore but the good thing was it was a nice cool morning. All the members were new today so I had to give a short briefing before the start of it.

Seagrassy stories on the World Seagrass Association blog in May

Seagrasses will be featured on the World Seagrass Association blog that Siti is managing, in celebration of International Day for Biological Diversity on 22 May. Drop by the blog to check up on the latest stories!

Photo by Michael J. Durako

In the first of these stories, Michael J. Durako shares about seagrass monitoring "Down Under". This included a helicopter seagrass survey! This method is used because of "the high tidal range (4 m), turbid water and presence of saltwater crocodiles". The method was found to be quite efficient and he shares "We were able to sample 126 sites in about 2 hours and never got our feet wet!".

Sigh. Back on Planet Singapore, crocodile-less and with plenty of low tides, we're resigned to wet booties and a long trudge. But this means we get to see more marine life close up! Looking forward to our upcoming trip in May after a short break in April.