Chek Jawa (18 May 2014)

It was another lovely day out at Chek Jawa with a team comprising many newbies and some oldies (but goodies).

We assemble at the Changi Point Jetty in the wee hours of the morning to catch the bumboat to Pulau Ubin.

One bumboat and van ride later...

Everyone's awake! Shocker.

The van taking us into the unknown...

Cyrene Reef (19 April, 2014)

Our first Cyrene Reef trip started off early today at Marina @ Keppel Bay. It also marked the start of the morning low-tides, so the Team had to get adjusted to the early hours again. Despite having to wake up at 5am on a weekend, everyone turned up on time and we left promptly at 6am. 

Siti showing a surprising amount of energy for an early morning trip, while Johannes clearly has other priorities. Photo courtesy of  Rachel.

Chek Jawa (1 March 2014)

Second monitoring trip for 2014 and TeamSeagrass heads to Chek Jawa. It's looking to be another HOT day as the Team boarded the boat to Pulau Ubin.

We had a large group of newbies and some old-bees who had forgotten how to monitor; so we decided today will be a teaching session, where we take it slow and emphasize the finer points of monitoring. After we sorted the old-bees, newbies and stalwarts into groups (this always takes waaay too much time, maybe we need a TeamSeagrass sorting hat?), I did the briefing and we headed out to shore to do the seagrass ID session.

Siti giving the briefing.

Pulau Semakau (28 February 2014)

2014 marks TeamSeagrass's 8th year in monitoring! Woo hoo! Our very first monitoring trip brings us to Pulau Semakau. It is also unfortunately our last trip to Pulau Semakau for the next year or so, as NEA is starting works on the construction of Phase 2's cells to accommodate future waste disposal.

Nevertheless, we managed to gather a team of 20 volunteers - firstly a BIG THANK YOU for coming to join us, especially since it is a weekday. With the recent hot dry spells, we urged our volunteers to protect themselves and hydrate! We also conducted our usual briefing in the NEA building prior to departure onto the seashore...
   

Captain Siti briefing everyone

Of mud and seed banks: Adventures with Seagrass-Watch, 2nd - 3rd Feb 2014.

So this is a totally belated post btw, I was supposed to do it, but all the thesis writing made it very difficult to face a computer and type stuff, so I put it off for as long as I could until it just got ridiculous, so here goes.

Len and Rudi from Seagass-Watch HQ visited us over the CNY weekend and OF COURSE we had to go seagrass adventuring. The aim of the trip was to collect some samples for nutrient analyses, genetic studies and to do a preliminary seed bank study.

Fortunately, the tides are evening tides, which means that we could sleep in after the CNY feasting and festivities before heading out to Chek Jawa on Sunday, 2nd Feb. Once we were there, Sam, Nor Aishah and I set out collecting samples for genetic analyses. There were some curious members of the public out and about and we had to tell them what we were doing. Good thing we have that research permit!

After that, Rudi showed us how to do seed bank sampling. It's a relatively simple method, using very simple tools, namely a PVC pipe and a kitchen sieve. The idea is to get about 10cm of sediment in the corer and sieve out the sediments and look for seeds. Here's Sam showing us how it's done:

Using the Corer (PVC pipe with cap) to sample ~10cm o sediment.

Pulau Semakau (3 November 2013)

What better way to celebrate Deepavali than to do our last monitoring of Pulau Semakau for 2013! It looked like a promising day, with most of the afternoon showers cleared by the time we met up at Marina South Pier. Unfortunately, we had to soldier on without three of our TeamSeagrass troopers – Siti, Rachel and Nor Aisha – who were all down with food poisoning from a very suspect ban mian stall.

TeamSeagrass preparing to leave for yet another public holiday survey