Sentosa (20 Jul 2012)

Well before dawn, a small team headed out to find out how the seagrass meadows at Sentosa's natural shores are doing.

How nice to have Rae of Rasa Sentosa and Shao Wei of Sentosa Leisure Group help out with TeamSeagrass monitoring today. I did this alone in Oct 2011.


The seagrasses at Sentosa seem to be doing well. Today, we saw lots of Spoon seagrasses (Halophila ovalis) and Tape seagrasses (Enhalus acoroides). Siti also saw some Sickle seagrass (Thalassia hemprichii) here in Apr 2012, but we didn't come across it today.

The Tape seagrasses here are nice and long in most parts of the shore. A relief to know as Tape seagrasses at Labrador, Cyrene Reef and other southern locations have recently been cropped short. There were some places though, where the Tape seagrasses were not very long.

Another lovely surprise, to see many young female flowers about to bloom. Shao Wei and Rae saw some in bloom as they did a site on their own while I went on to do some other sites. The seagrasses were also blooming here when I last monitored in Oct 2011.

Today, there was a light bloom of Hairy green seaweed (Bryopsis sp.).
As we monitor, we also come across sea creatures. Sharp-eyed Shao Wei spotted an octopus! As I tried to take a photo of it, it decided to take a closer look at my tiny Sneaky Swimming Camera! Before it disappeared into a burrow.

We also saw other interesting marine life on this natural shore at Sentosa. More on the wild shores of singapore blog.

Thanks to Rae and Shao Wei for the hospitality and helping out with the monitoring so early in the morning!

Work is ongoing to install floating 'security barriers' along the shores of Sentosa which seem to include some part of this natural shore. Let's hope this work will not permanently damage the seagrasses here. Monitoring will help us know how the work affects them.