Semakau, TeamSeagrass final monitoring for 2007

Its a bright sunny day and the seagrassers gathered at Marina South Pier, all excited to embark on the last monitoring trip for this year. They all waited and waited for this one very very late seagrasser to arrive - ME!

And so we set out on what seemed to be an extremely long boat ride to Semakau and for some strange reason, everyone needed to relieve themselves when we set foot on the island (note: Ria says to do it at the pier next time to save time and trouble).

I was assigned to site 1 transect 1 which was the furthest away as a punishment for being late. So my partners and I walked all the way to the end of the shoreline just to find that we cannot locate our stake. So Weiling tried to help by using the GPS and talking to Siti through the walkie and finally we found it (all thanks to technology).

At the meantime, we spotted this really cool looking sea anemone

So we laid out the 50m transect line and started the monitoring as we had a lot to catch up on except for poor Andy who couldn't find the tape bag and had to wait for Ron to finish so that he could start.


Oh and did I mention that the Enhalus were blooming? There were lots of the styrofoam looking male flowers everywhere. What a good sight to behold on our last trip! Its too bad I was so engrossed with the monitoring that I forgot to take a picture of them so those who caught pictures please do post them here!

It was about half an hour more till we had to leave and everyone is done and exploring our rubbish dump island. It seemed that the starfish were also "blooming" with all the procreation going around. Here are some photos of the seagrassers in action:








I've also managed to get some close shots of the tiny crabs that scamper around our feet as I brought along my long lens. Love those long pointy eyes...



There was also some live firing going on at a nearby island and we were jolted to our feet when the huge KAPOW sent shockwaves (ok, that was a little to exaggerated). In no time, the seagrassers were all caught up with photographing the huge cloud of smoke.


But it wasn't long till the sun began to set and we had to move out before the tide comes in. We took some last photos and you can see Siti in the background waving to the others to pack up and scram.


It was a good last trip for TeamSeagrass and we sure had accomplished a lot this year. So on behalf of TeamSeagrass, a big THANKS to all volunteers, coordinators, boat captains who had helped us make this a huge success. Hope to see everyone again next year!

Thanks to all who came for the monitoring session: Andy, Alex, Sijie, Dawn, Dickson, Gaytri, Helen, Kah Chine, Michell, Nor Aishah, Ron, Ru Qi, Shuan Kwee, Suizlyn, Vyna, Saravanan, Chay Hoon, Sam, Jerald, Marcus, Sze Wee, Sereena and Tze Chien.

More Photos from the Clean and Green Jamboree

Hello! This post is a little belated, because I am incorrigible when it comes to posting in a timely fashion.

Anyway, I wanted to share some photos of our TeamSeagrass booth at the Clean and Green Jamboree and the special visitor who came around for a visit :)


This is Nor Aishah the project manager for the TeamSeagrass display at the Jamboree. She volunteered to (read: brow-beaten) think up a wonderful display to attact people to the booth. As project manager, she was also in charge of the snacks, and she's seen here stashing them in a safe place so the little kids don't mistake them for freebies.


Here is Kok Sheng, with one of the first visitors for the day, showing the wonderful treasures that seagrass habitats hold.


In no time at all, the booth was SWAMPED with visitors which Dickson and Aishah entertain while I walk around snapping photos :)


This is one of the awesome posters that Aishah and Sijie made for the booth.


And here is Gaytri sharing seagrass stories with someone's grandma.


And rubbing sholders with PM LEE(!!) who came by our booth and asked how Chek Jawa was doing after the flash floods earlier this year. Talk about being down with it eh?


And all too soon, it was time to pack up, with Sijie and Andy ending the shift. In all, it was a fruitful day of bringing seagrass to the heartlands!

We're trying to get more involed in exhibitions, so if any of you talented seagrassers out there wanna share your poster-making, games-creating, smooth-talking skills, do drop us a line to tell us you're keen.

See you guys at Semakau!

TeamSeagrass at the Clean and Green Jamboree

Clean and Green Jamboree is a celebration of all things green in Singapore. Previously just a week of events, this year, it has been extended to a full month! Media reports about this event on wildsingapore.

This year is also the first time, the green theme includes seagrasses!
TeamSeagrass led by the intrepid Miss Siti (right) set up a booth at the event to share with the public about seagrasses! Together with a game designed by Nor Aishah (left), Team members used photos and posters to share about the importance of seagrasses. And Gaytri's gorgeous one-of-a-kind banner takes pride of place at the booth.

Kok Sheng shares more photos and stories on his wonderful creations blog.

Sentosa (27 Oct 07) and Labrador (1 Nov 07)

The Labrador Angels were back on the shore for a successful monitoring. Read all about it on their labrador blog. This trip was to make up for their earlier trip, which was rather a bit less of a success because they forgot to bring the transect squares...oops.

TeamSeagrass also monitored Sentosa a few days earlier. But I wasn't there so no photos. Siti says all went well.

TeamSeagrass in the news!

Kok Sheng, one of our Seagrassers was featured recently in the Chinese press...

And here is a translation of the article, courtesy of Chay Hoon...

"Like other youngsters, Kok Sheng often goes to the seaside. And he is there to be a volunteer. He is a volunteer for this green group called " Team Seagrass". The group is involved in monitoring Seagrass and other marine creatures.

For the last nine months, Kok Sheng had visited Chek Jawa@ Pulau Ubin, Pulau Semakau and Sentosa with Team Seagrass to do reccees and monitoring.

As a Team Seagrass volunteer, Kok Sheng said that they will monitor the health of the seagrass and identify the species of seagrass at the monitoring sites. The data collected at these sites will be analyzed to get a better understanding of the state of the seagrass.

If they found that the seagrass are not doing well, they will not do anything. Instead, they will let nature takes it course and let nature heals the seagrass.

In addition, he said that if action was taken by us to try to heal the seagrass, we might be upsetting the balance of nature nd disturbing the life of the marine creatures. The main objective of Team Seagrass is to collect data about the seagrass. And through these information, enable ordinary folks to understand the importance of marine creatures and that we have wonderful marine creatures in Singapore.

One of KS's most unforgettable experience was the monitoring session at Chek Jawa early this year. He said " It was raining eveyday and when we were at Chek Jawa, we found many seagrass and marine creatures dead and Chek Jawa looks like a graveyard.

He said this is because the seagrass and marine creatures can only live in salinity and the large amount of rain forced these plants and animals to live in fresh water. This result in casualties as they are unable to cope the drop of salinity in the water.

If you are interested in monitoring Seagrass, you can log on to this website : http://www.teamseagrass.blogspot.com to find out more about Team Seagrass."

More links
Kok Sheng's project to monitor the recovery at Chek Jawa following the mass deaths there.
Kok Sheng's wonderful creation blog about our amazing marine and other wild life.

Chek Jawa (28 Oct 07)

The Team got completely wet this monitoring trip. Although the day started out fine and bright, it started pouring as soon as we left Changi. We huddled at Ubin Jetty until we THOUGHT the rain had eased. But as soon as we actually started monitoring, the heavens opened up!

Thus I didn't take any photos at all.

Fortunately, several Team members did, and they've posted their stories on their blogs.

From Sijie's nature scouter blog, here we were at Ubin jetty waiting for the rain to stop.
And the rain made it really hard to do monitoring...
On Kok Sheng's Chek Jawa project blog a look at the rainy shore...Despite the wet weather, Chek Jawa seems to be doing well with some recovery from the mass deaths. The day before, Kok Sheng's team saw the first Knobbly sea star for the year!

At the end of the trip, just as we were about to go home in the gathering gloom of dusk, we saw a civet cat!!More about this sighting on the wildfilms blog.