So great to start 2018 with youth volunteers who will make
International Year of the Reef 2018 happening! It rained incessantly for two days, but stopped just in time for our trip.
Although it lies in the middle of
an industrial triangle and major shipping lanes, Cyrene has some of Singapore's best seagrass meadows. We saw dugong feeding trails, large Knobbly sea stars and other awesome marine life!
It was great to see
dugong feeding trails. We saw them on our trip in
Dec 2017 and
Aug 2017 too.
Among the fascinating animals spotted by everyone were
Knobbly sea stars and
Pentaceraster sea star,
Common sea stars, a baby
White sea urchin, there was a recently dead urchin being eaten by snails. There were also some
Black long sea cucumbers. We also saw a
Ferocious reef crab, a
Stone crab and some little crabs that look like
Fiddler crabs. There were also many
Swimming crabs of various kinds and Hairy crabs too. We also saw small
Orange-striped hermit crabs and lots of tiny hermit crabs.
We saw one huge
Forskal's side gill slug and the white egg ribbons that they lay, also
Leaf slugs, some black
tailed slugs. Other molluscs included
Moon snails and their
sand collar egg mass, lots of
Reef murex snails, living
Fan shell clams. There were also some
cerianthids, a
Snaky sea anemone. a
Frilly sea anemone. As well as a few small corals among the seagrasses. None of them were bleaching.
We saw a
Smasher mantis shrimp!
It was great to see some male flowers of the
Tape seagrass sprinkled like bits of styrofoam on the water. The male flowers have one end that is attracted to water, and the other that repels water. So they 'stand up' on the water surface and often form rafts.
We also saw one female Tape seagrass flower, with a male flower on it.
Unfortunately, much of the Tape seagrasses are still cropped short. But the other seagrass species looked lush and were growing well without much epiphytes covering them.
Near our arrival point were signs of a recent boat strike with a deep hole on the edge with bare sand, surrounded by recently churned up dead corals.
We also came across an encrusted fishing rod. This suggests that fishing boats may fish over Cyrene Reef at high tide?
Here are some of the young marine community volunteers who have come together to celebrate
International Year of the Reef 2018! Here's more on
what to expect from them. Their energy, passion and ideas are so inspiring.
We are lucky to have the youth volunteer team from
Lepak In SG who will be organising monthly workshops on marine issues. Join their upcoming
20 Jan 2018 (Sat) workshop at Pulau Ubin to learn more about mangrove restoration there and contribute your ideas!
Visit the Celebrating Singapore Shores
blog and
facebook page for the latest updates on events, happenings and fascinating information about our shores.
Natalie took much better photos of out trip! Here's some of them...
Dayna saw cool stuff which I missed and took great photos too ...
