Big Sisters in the year of the water snake

Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year, the year of the water snake. It has been raining for the whole day and the team was worried it will continue to rain during our fieldtrip session in the evening.

I started out the fieldtrip slightly different today. Instead of heading straight to the lagoon, I went to check out the crinoids with Kok Sheng first. We saw many pretty crinoids of various size and colours.

Red crinoid

Lontong and Mangrove tree at P.Ubin

I always wonder what the hype is about with the Sunday-only lontong at Pak Ali's shop on Pulau Ubin until I tried it today.

Image from Pulau Ubin Stories

Checking out marine life of Chek Jawa with TeamSeagrass

Today is my first trip with other members of TeamSeagrass and we are doing monitoring at Chek Jawa.  I helped to guide two new teamseagrass members with the monitoring session.

It was a hot day but thank goodness, the wind helped to ease the heat a bit. After the monitoring, we all had some time to check out the shore of Chek Jawa.

Upon arrival at Chek Jawa, we were greeted with the sight of mama pig and her piglet feeding on food she pushed off from the bicycle basket. The wild boars are able to smell food kept high above ground, like a bicycle basket, and they are smart enough to knock off the bicycle in order to get the food. From the image below, this pair of wild boar even tore the packaging of the can drinks.

Wild boars helping themselves to human food by knocking them off bicycle baskets.

Giant octopus on a busy Changi shore

On this short window of low tides for January, I made my last trip for the month yesterday to a shore at Changi. This shore is packed with human activities, from visitors to the coastal boardwalk, fishermen netting in the shallow waters to ordinary visitors digging the substrate for clams. Despite the heavy rained that happened just minutes ago, there are still many visitors to the shore.

The weather changed very quickly. After the heavy shower, it drizzled for a while before the sun came out.

What makes this shore special is the sea fan sticking out from the shallow murky water during low tide. They come in a variety of colour and sizes.

Bending orange sea fan, probably dur to its weight with low tide.

Hidden world of Punggol beach

With the upgrade waterfront area at Punggol beach, it has attracted many families and cyclist to this small stretched. Despite the numerous human activities going on here, the marine life at Punggol beach is as many as the beach visitors. Often, most of them goes unnoticed and unappreciated by humans.

Punggol Beach and Jetty

Even on a not so low tide, a vast patch of rocky area to the right of the jetty is exposed for families to bring their children down to search and explore the place for marine life. 

Very well hidden in tiny pool, if not noticed carefully, are tiny anemones. The colours of the tiny anemones are very close to the sandy substrate it is on. These are probably the banded bead anemones (Anthopleura sp.)

Banded bead anemone

Banded bead anemone

Suspicious jerking snail shells suggest a hermit crab in it and it was noticed to be foraging for food. On the shore of Punggol beach, the banded hermit crab seems to be the dominate ones. Hermit crabs are to look at and may be pretty for children to keep them as pets. However wild animals dies quickly in captivity. It is good enough to observe these cute animals in the wild and leave them where they belong to.

Foraging banded hermit crab

Frontal view of the hermit crab.

Spreading all over the rocky areas and the jetty pillars, the bunches of glassy looking strands are actually the glassy branching bryozoans. Unfortunatly, I am not able to provide an exact common name for the orange sponge.

Glassy branching bryozoans with orange sponge and delicate feathery green seaweed

Orange sponge, some covered by bryozoans.

During last year's comprehensive marine biodiversity survey, a sea slug was found on these bryozoans. On this trip, many of the sea slug was seen. The Okenia pellucida is the species of sea slug found on the bryozoan.

Okenia pellucida, on bryozoan

Very well hidden are the brittle stars, which are hardly seen in the day as they are very shy animals.

Brittle star

Crawling around on the encrusted rocks are tiny crabs of various species, some of which scurry into hiding when sensing motion nearby. Of the crabs I managed to observe was this. I didn't manage to get a clear shot of the dorsal view

Underside of the crab

Other crabs seen on this trip:

Moon crab

The team also found another type of sea slug - Beaded nudibranch (Hoplodoris nodulosa).

Beaded nudibranch (Hoplodoris nodulosa)

Rhinophores

Feathery gills

I also saw two types of bristle worms on the shore, one of which could be a fireworm. Bristleworms are difficult to identify to species level without a close look at the head.

Bristleworm

Fireworm

At the edge of the rocky patch on the shore, I noticed a patch of seagrass. However the tides was not low enough for me to take a closer look at them. Towards the end of the trip, I found a stand of broken seagrass caught on a washed up branch. It looks similar to a spoon seagrass (Halophila ovalis), but it has longer leaf blades. Could it be the hairy spoon seagrass (Halophila decipiens)?

Patch of seagrass

The seagrass I found caught on a branch.

During the trip, I saw a young boy walking towards the water and later he was seen to be pulling the ropes attached to the fish trap. It turn out, there were actually two fish traps placed. Shortly after, he was joined by an adult, who seems to be his father. They checked the fish traps, probably removing the catch, threw the traps back into the water and left.

Boy pulling the rope.

Examining the fish trap.

The marine life at Punggol beach is what I would consider, a hidden world, with all the human activities going on. Life during the day may be less exciting as compared to night, but it is still as interesting.

Posts by others on this trip:
Kok Sheng - Colourful sponge garden at Punggol
Ria Tan - Colourful Punggol rocky shore