Sentosa, Dec holiday Outings

Not a good day to go out as NEA said showers at Sentosa in the evening. But the urge to go Sentosa where I had a great time during the seagrass transect a few months was too hard to resist. Yup, I'm not here for underwater world or play beach volleyball. My good friend fiona tagged along to lend an extra pair of eyes.

The tide was high at 5.00pm when I reached so we couldnt explore the corals. Thus we took a lesiurely walk down the beach. I found that dead fallen log where my seagrass teammates hanged our bags over the branches last time. The underside of it were littered with snails, probably because that area were still moist.

We walked towards to this interesting rock formation, where one area of rock were completely eroded from the cliff, creating a small narrow pathway in between.

Taken during the last seagrass transect

Over that area, we starting peeping into many of the water puddles formed on the rocks.

Of cos as an amatuer, we din get much discoveries. But we did found some:

Sea anemones! Lots of these tiny cindarians in the puddles.


But their tentacles disappear and body wrapped around being out of water.

Fan worms! Wee.. looks like two different kinds showing off their tentacles. They filter feed using those "feathers". This is done by tiny cilia on the tentacles which generate water currents through it. The tentacles can regenerate again if it was biten off by predators. The body of the worm is hidden inside the tube for concealment and protection.

And of cos all the Barnacles and Limpets stuck on the rock surfaces

Star barnacles and limpets

It will be an injustice to my Life Form and Function lecturers if I don't mention the operculum of snails! They were used to seal its opening from predators from reaching its soft body.

rounded and tough operculum of the turban shell (Turbo bruneus)


Lots of this seaslugs around. They look like the more terrestrial type with thicken skin

Not very sure but this looks like a hoof-shield limpet as it had a small elongated shell hence not a slug

Gosh, seaweeds were the most lot around. How to differentiate seagrass from seaweed? Look at the later paragraph ;p

Sea sausage

Mermaid's fan

Woa, seagrasses! hehe, I can even memorise their scientific names. Halophila ovalis and Enhalus acoroides. As I remembered, Siti and Ria said during the seagrass orientation that this were the only two species thriving here. So now one will know how I identify seaweeds. Cos all the rest which dun look like this two below are seaweeds! haha.

The spoon seagrass, Halophila ovalis

The sickle seagrass, Thalassia hemprichii

Around 7pm, the sun came down toegther with the tide. We then used our lousy torches to start going further down the sea to look for corals. But before that, we saw this:

Sunset. Overlooking Pulau Bukom or Pulau Sebarok with their oil refineries.

Sea anemones again! But this one was much larger

Another one with beautiful greenish tenacles and some seaweed beside

An exciting find by me, a big free living bristleworm! It was as thick as my finger man. These are segmented worms from the phylum Annelid. Some species can also be found nestled inside tubes made of debris due to sticky substances (mucus) secreted by the worm itself. Hence they are also named tubeworms. Tubeworms are sedentary thus hunting mostly by ambush. This bristleworm in the picture is probably an active, mobile predator. Some interesting things are that they have huge mouthparts, or mandibles hidden inside their mouth thus they are fearsome predators. Remembered last time Zeehan showed us a picture of bristleworm mandibles during one of the Semakau training. Gosh… Their hairs are also extremely brittle and thus can break off easily on touch, inflicting great pain. The hairs also contain venom. Thus another name for bristleworm will be the fireworm.

It as a crabby day too and Na found 4 of this reddish crab (red egg crab). It looks like its all cooked and ready to be eaten right? But don't! Its posionous! They were real vicious predators and kept attacking the stick using their claws when I poke it with a twig. Only this one below was more docile, maybe because it was feeding (Look theres something btw its claws). Also saw many hairy crabs halfway inside holes of rocks.

The vicious one. Grr!!

The docile one

Another crab, the Brown egg crab taken during the seagrass transect last time

And after that, I went further down to use my lousy torch looking for corals. Did not managed find much though. Can't even see a single soft coral.

Thats the end man. But I will be back with a vengence with a bigger brighter and better torch. Else it be like today again, relying more on my eyesight to spot stuff... (below).

Poor me

What a great adventure this trip was. I'm sure with a few more self-organised trips like this I will be able to make up for the lost OJT trips to semakau which I missed due to school commitments. Anyway I'm having a hard time identifying all those flora and fauna. Any help is appreciated!

Contents still halfway done. Will update it when I have time. Have a bad ache from bending too much today... Any errors pls tell me.

Stop the buying!

Does this picture look familar? I stole this shot at GoodWill Bird Trading shop at Serangoon. Further photography was prohibited by the uncle there.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos caged

Compare that to this picture, which I extracted from ACRES website. Looks almost identical to me.

Well, I'm not sure if those birds were breed or poached but my guess is that they probably were poached. So when the Buying stops, the Poaching will too! Apparently, my friend told me this shop was guilty of selling endangered birds a long time ago. But not sure if it does now. But the sight of a cute little toucan in there is rather saddening. This is my first time seeing a toucan but din really expect to see it in a bird shop.

Anyway, one thing I noticed was the large number of sparrows and pigeons clustered around the shop. Yeap, they were attracted to the bird food there, sunflower seeds which were spewed around the cages. My god, the town council should fine them for poliferating pigeons by feeding them instead of culling those innocent birds.

The Meandering River

Hurray! Exams are finally over as of yesterday. Just morning today, I decided to make a trip to the river opposite Ngee Ann Poly. Man, I have been dying to go there for a year! Whenever my bus 151 or 74 went pass it on the way to school, its always so nice to catch its view. Opps, and also, as an amatuer, this is actually my first adventure nature trip.

I made an ugly map looking from Google Earth so I won't get lost. The pink arrow is the direction I followed in the end. An error: should be Ngee Ann instead of Singapore Poly.

I stopped opposite SIM (singapore management university) as I wana capture a shot of this, another of my favorite bus view:

Lush greenery

Large area of elephants' ears (Alocasia macrorrhizos), a kind of cocoyam

Some cauliflowery fruits growing from the stems and branches

Yupz, and walked down to the river...

The "meandering" river as named by me. Not that meandering though =X

Wasn't really comfortable when walking beside the river as the grasses were long and irritating although theres still a narrow trail. And I even stepped into some mud puddle, getting my shoes and socks all soaked.

Complains aside, I soon succumbed to the beauty of the river's ecosystem. This is really a dragonfly's paradise! Lots of them were buzzing around in dazzling displays of yellow, red and blue colors.

Dragonfly


Overexposed shot of a blue damselfly. damselflies have their wings closed up at rest.


The morning dew

Looking down at the river, there were huge patches of hydrilla covering the water body, Practically the entire stretch is clogged up by it (look at the earlier photo of the river)

Hydrilla verticillata

Exotic Inflorescences. The seven golden candle sticks, Cassia alata. This is an introduced species from America and the plant contains a fungicide which is used as a soap ingredient in Philipines. Info from Ria Tan's site. The flowers look like candles while the unemerged orange buds are the "flames". Why it is called "seven" I'm not really sure but a search in the net shows alot of results of this pharse in the Bible. Prehaps it was named so from there.

Fast-flowing stream linking to the river

Of cause, being influenced most by Dingli, I was on a constant look out for birds. A kingfisher flew past me when I first enter the river. Seemed to have purple feathers but I'm not very sure cos it disappeared in a flash. A white bird, probably an egret also flew away on seeing me. There were also eagles in the sky gliding about, 2 of them. In fact there seemed to be lots of birds in the vicinity from all the different sounds ringing about in the forest. I recorded some and managed to captured a silhouette of a bird together with audio recording using my MiVo MP3 player and Dingli told me it looked and sounded like a dollarbird =).

Anyway, the treat of the day came when a racket-tailed drongo flew passed and away from me. Wow! Those two long tail feathers really mesmerized me.

Obstacle course, a fallen tree on the trail

In just a short 30mins, I reached to the end of the river and met with the malaysian railway line. It was going to rain soon so I had no choice but to take the left route back to civilisation rather than the other way where I can walk deeper into the forest.

Following the railway back to civilisation

A memory of this beautiful place

Thinking back, its kinda baffling that wildlife exists just right at our backyard, isolated from humans.

Ngee Ann Poly right at the back

Considering this as my first adventure experience. It was truly amazing! But alas now I realized the importance of having an experience guide. So many things happening around me but I can’t identify them. That aside, I do admit I enjoy the solitude and can take my own sweet thing in walking. Nvm, anyways Dingli had agreed to go visit the river another day with me, haha (Thats why this is part I). Anyway, since this is the holidays, I had planned more nature visits around here. But first have to survive through my reservice next week =S sianz wor….

ty to prof Tan for helping to identify some plants.