Pulau Semakau (20 Feb 08)

Our first weekday monitoring for the year and still we had a great turnout from the Team! Wow!
We arrived very early for a change as everyone was on time, and all went smoothly. So we had a bit of time to look around while waiting for the tide to go down.

Thanks to Andy, I corrected my very 'senget' (crooked) line. It was a bit tough to monitor with the strong wind ruffling the water and the water murking up as we stepped nearby. But we found that if we stayed still for a while, we could get the job done. Sam and I had lots of fun figuring out grassy species. We got the totally naked quadrat (the square thing) which only had naked holes, no strings attached (our proper quadrat got borrowed by Siti...see below). The holes whistled in the wind making a really strange sound!

All too soon, it was over. Err...sorry no photos of actual seagrassing from me as I left my camera on the high shore this time (getting too old to lug the cam while monitoring). Here's more photos of the team by the kindly duck and Sam on his peculiar blog and Sijie's nature scouter blog. Sorry for just linking to blog posts by other team members (I'm so slack).

Seagrassing over, we headed off to explore the shores. The tide wasn't very low, and the wind was blowing mighty strong so it was hard to take photos.

There were some interesting hard corals like this Heliofungia actiniformis which is actually a mushroom hard coral. It has long tentacles so it's sometimes mistaken for an anemone.
Those seen are usually brown, so this green was a special find for me.

In this pretty Pocillopora coral all fluffed up with polyp tentacles extended
I saw some movement! It turned out to be a tiny fluffy crab.Here you can see just one of its eyes in the middle of the photo, while the rest of its beige fluffy body blended right in with the coral. I couldn't really make out whether it was a hairy crab.

For some reason, I spotted many different kinds of fan worms today.Here's a pair next to one another, not a very common sight.

And another pair of animals that was REALLY close to one another...
Was this pair of mating Jorunna funebris nudibranchs. Nudibranchs are hermaphrodites and exchange sperm when two individuals of the same species meet one another. They do it sideways, facing in opposite directions. The front end of this nudibranch has a pair of black edged structures that look like bunny ears (these are called rhinophores). The back end of the nudibranch has a circle of fluffy feathery structures which are its breathing gills.

There was also one Gymnodoris nudibranch, a cartoon-like nudi that never fails to amuse.
And a mama Noble volute (Cymbiola nobilis) who was busy creating egg capsules.She has made egg capsules that are bigger in total size than she is...wow!

And just before we headed home, I got startled by this startled octopus!Poor Siti couldn't be with us today even though she was also on Semakau. She was busy being filmed for the Once Upon A Tree series about our shores. Her segment will come up in episode 5! Isn't that fabulous, we must look out for it. Shawn Lum and the film crew were on Semakau all day from 9am. Shawn looked like he got burnt! That's real dedication.

We had a super day today. A great team, a fabulous ferry (we got the VIP ferry literally with red carpet inside and outside deck seating, which was marvelous for the trip back under the full moon...it was amazing! Thanks Shufen!), and NO MOSQUITOS!

A special thanks to all who came for today's weekday session: Robin, Jion Chun, Wilson, Paula, Marcus, Leon, Sijie, Nicholas, Mingyi, Meera, Rachel, Andy, Gaytri, Chay Hoon, Joseph Lai, Sam, Kenerf, Swee Cheng.

Other posts about this trip
A fabulous photo montage by Marcus on his budak blog
Sam's fabulous photos and lyrical thoughts on his ramblings of a peculiar nature blog
Sijie has lots of photos of seagrasses, also heron and other amazing finds on his nature scouters blog

TeamSeagrass at Temasek Polytechnic's Project Eco

This post came long overdue but here it is at last!
Temasek Polytechnic recently had a roadshow called Project Eco and it featured TeamSeagrass as one of its exhibitors. There were posters, brochures and cards with many, many beautiful pictures of our fascinating wildlife (and not to mention seagrasses) given out to the students.

What more, our dear Ron, who is also TP's "Web Specialist" gave a wonderful presentation on the wonderful marine life on our shores. The crowd must have been amazed by how diverse our shores really are!

Here are some pictures that were taken by the organisers of the event:

The Project Eco displays


Our panel also had the authentic TSG flag!!


This eye catching poster with pictures of the marine life at the Southern Shores are a big hit amongst the students.


The students just love it


And here's Ron with his presentation. He's got really nice photos from his uncountable trips to our shores.


This is probably the first time some students and lecturers saw how corals look like, much less imagine that they are all here in our small island.


Just look at the crowd! I've never seen so many people at the library Podium before.


And lets not forget to credit these hardworking organisers for the time and effort they spent on making our world a better place to live in.

2 Feb is World Wetlands Day: Healthy Wetlands, Healthy People

World Wetlands Day marks the date of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. It is run by The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

And seagrasses are part of the wetlands ecosystems!

What do wetlands do for us?
Why should Singaporeans care?

Destruction of wetlands around us affect us too.

An extract from the World Wetlands Day website in on the wild singapore news blog

Sentosa (24 Jan 08)

A cool evening over Sentosa and you can see the seagrasses and marinelife on this marvellous natural shore.We wasted no time (not even taking the traditional group photo) and got down to monitoring the seagrasses straightaway. This natural shore outside the sea wall has lots of Tape seagrass (Enhalus acoroides) and Spoon seagrass (Halophila ovalis). The tide was not very low but the team worked fast in the fading light.

Sam and Kenef joined us shortly, having rushed in from work. And we went exploring.This Sentosa shore has lots of living corals. And many of the kind that glows in the dark at sunset.Living corals are a colony of animals called polyps. And while some may appear to be dead rocks, a closer look will reveal the tiny polyps and the tiny hard skeleton that each produces.
While most corals are immobile, some like this one, are free living and unattached as adults. This is a mushroom coral (probably Herpolitha limax).
There are also soft corals. They are colonial too, being made up of tiny animals that live in a shared leathery tissue. So they are sometimes also called leathery corals.Robin found a tiny flatworm! These worms are really flat and sometimes mistaken for nudibranchs.Later on, I saw one that was the 'normal' size...as big as the palm of your hand! It's quite a handsome worm.The shores were covered in the green hairy seaweed (Bryopsis sp.). And sharp-eyed Sam spots the little hairy slugs that are usually seen in this seaweed. The seaweeds are also coated in tiny beachfleas!
We saw lots of Copperbanded butterflyfishes (Chelmon rostratus) today! Siti says this is a sign that the shore is healthy and doing well. Some pools had several of these colourful fishes. When you see them edgewise, they almost disappear!

All too soon, we had to call it a day. While some of the more hungry ones left early, Sam and Kenef carried on until the tide came all the way in. Sam shares what they saw in his the wilder side of Sentosa, without the alcohol on the ramblings of a peculiar nature blog.

Thank you to all who came for the monitoring today: Robin, Edmund, Michelle, Vyna, Jerald and Sam and Kenef for keeping us company.

First TeamSeagrass monitoring for 2008: Chek Jawa (20 Jan 08)

The Team was back in booties and on the shores this hot HOT afternoon.
Sam was Field Coordinator (front and centre) and got everyone finally on the shores after many false starts.
We had quite a lot of first timers aka Green Grassers, so Siti did a quick quiz on "Is this Seagrass?" Everyone passed with flying colours.
Then it was straight to work on those transects. The day was not only hot, but also VERY windy. Which made laying the tape a bit of a challenge.

Today there was also a Chek Jawa public walk on at the same time.So there were lots of intriguing pots of finds by the eagle-eyed Hunter Seekers of the Chek Jawa guiding team. Ron's tidechaser blog has more about the public walk.

What we couldn't miss was the heaps and heaps and HEAPS of sea hare eggs all over the seagrass meadows.Someone remarked that they looked like pink bee hoon!

And the sea hares were everywhere too! They are the Hairy sea hare (Bursatella leachii).They were BIG and many had orange 'hairs'. Usually, they are a more boring brown.Like this one which is all stretched out in its full glory. Sea hares have two pairs of 'tentacles'. One pair in front of the head (oral tentacles) and another pair on top of the head (rhinophores).They were found all over the place. Many in huddles...ermh probably getting ready to lay MORE eggs? Usually, we see lots of these sea hares for a time, and then none at all again for a long time.

This explosion of sea hares reminds us of our first monitoring in 2007, also on Chek Jawa. Wow! This shows that by simply visiting our shores regularly we learn something about the seasonal cycles that affect them.

Very quickly the Team were done and we met up on the Northern shore where the Transect 2 people were.

The Lesser-crested terns (Sterna bengalensis) were resting on the shores where they usually do, right at the tip of the Northern sand bar.

The northern shore is where the Button shells can be found in the thousands!
They lie just beneath the sand, leaving tiny tell-tale holes.
Time for another group shot!
We decided to check out the shore for Halophila beccarii, a rare seagrass that is still found on Chek Jawa. We did find patches of it.
On the way back to House No. 1, Siti and Shufen look for and take back seedlings of Rhizophora stylosa, a rather rare mangrove tree that is still found here and there on Chek Jawa. They will be growing these seedlings for a replanting effort.

On the boardwalk on the way back, the Team saw a Long-tailed macaque. A hornbill was also spotted!

A quick washup, a drink and snack and we were soon back at Ubin Jetty.

In the late afternoon sun, Ubin town is particularly picturesque.And the shore line just amazing under the blue blue sky.It was a great day out, and we did a lot of work and had fun too!

A last shot of some of the Team before we headed back to the mainland.

Thank you Sam for being our Field Coordinator for the Day. We know how much work it is and really appreciate it. And to all the Equipment Marshalls (Gaytri, Hannah, Sijie) who got all the equipment sorted out and cleaned.

Also a big thank you to Andy, Charles, Fiona, Yee Sum, Jion Chun, Kenerf, Kevin, Hui Guang, Meerna, Michell, Nicholas, Robin, Jerald, Sereena, Suizlyn, Zhigang and Lucy.

Other blog entries about the trip
on Sijie's nature scouter blog

Save our Seahorses Newsletter, Jan 08

Choo Chee Kuang of Save our Seahorses is TeamSeagrass' counterpart in Malaysia, just across the narrow Straits of Johor, opposite our Tuas monitoring site.

Read all about their work in the Jan 08 issue of the Save our Seahorses Newsletter, it is now online (PDF).


There's a report on their conservation work, as well as a disturbing fall in numbers of sea horses and pipefishes ...
as well as other interesting articles about pygmy seahorses and more!

See also these recent articles about seagrasses at Pulai, Johor

My Johor: The simple life at Sungai Pulai
R. Sittamparam, New Straits Times 17 Jan 08;

Seagrass worth millions of ringgit lie unprotected in Malaysian waters
Food for marine life under threat
Nisha Sabanayagam, New Straits Times 10 Jan 08;