Walk at Sungei Serangoon mangroves

Feeling bored today, I decided to cycle to a patch of mangroves along Serangoon reservoir.


In order to reach there, I had ride along TPE and went underneath the bridge. It was pretty eerie exploring alone and also seemed like an ideal place for illegal immigrants to hide in.


Lots of Tamil scribings at the bridge. There were also a lot of wasp nests overhanging from here. >Update: They are Thai instead of Tamil.


There was a juvenile Malayan water monitor lizard (Varanus salvator) swimming in the river. These lizards can be found at all sorts of water ways, even at canals and beaches.


Peeping down in the water, I can see barnacles extending out their hairy legs to feed. From the video, it was interesting to see that they can actually move their legs around to "grab" and filter food in different directions. Besides these crustaceans, there were also some tubes whereby worm like animals were snaking out from. I wonder what are those?


This is the part where I was itching to explore. A small stretch of mangrove just at the doorstep of Seng Kang housing estate. Some construction work were ongoing but it seemed that they are not going to clear the mangroves but just the land after that.


Avicennia alba or Api-Api Putih is the most common plant here. It can be easily identified by the tapering leaves and white underside.


There were also lots of climbers, Clerodendron inerme and all of them were fruiting.


Here was another climber, the sea derris (Derris trifoliata). The sap contains toxin which is used as a fish poison and can be destroyed through cooking.


Buta-buta (Excoecaria agallocha) or blind your eyes is another plant which has poisonous sap that can blind one's eyes. Excess salt absorbed from the seawater can actually be transported to old leaves which are shed periodically.


The only fern species found in a mangrove habitat are the mangrove ferns. This is Acrostichum aureum and the fertile fronds containing the spores are spread all over the leaves at the end, thus appearing brownish.


Katydids (Family: Tettigoniidae) are closely related to grasshopper, thus also earning the common name; long horned grasshopper. This was sitting on another api api, A. rumphiana.


This little snail is called a perwinkle, Littoraria sp. Did it made those holes on the leaves?


Besides herbivores, I also managed to find a predator. A praying mantis (Order: Mantodea) nymph was waiting patiently on the leaf waiting for a careless prey to stumble by it.


One more interesting discovering was this fresh carcass. I wonder what species of snake this was... Update: Thanks to Ivan for the ID, this snake is a house wolf snake (Lycodon capucinus).

I would have like to carry on walking to the end of the mangrove but unfortunately, I was not dressed appropriately for this trip (in singlet and sandels). After getting cut by the sharp barnacles, I decided to head back. Did not manage to see a variety of species here but I did not explore much and it seemed more diverse at the opposite bank. Have to find a better route to come here though! It was pretty terrifying to cycle on an expressway~

Labour day at Semakau

It was May day and RMBR is here at Semakau again for a public walk.


It was really a good start with LK spotting about three dolphins swimming very near Semakau's jetty. Unfortunately, I did not bring my x12 zoom camera but still, I am glad that the participants were able to see this amazing scene. This really shows what amazing life we still have in our waters!


Here is my team mangrove with my friend Mervyn in the green shirt also coming to join as participant.


My group had several eagle eyed participants and Celina managed to find a spider conch (Lambis lambis) crawling on the seagrass using its sickle shaped and razor edge operulum showed in the picture. Like all true conches, they have a pair of long eye stalks that can peep out of their shells to scan the surroundings.


Residing on this gigantic anemone (Stichodactyla gigantea) was a anemone shrimp (Periclimenes brevicarpalis) at the centre of this picture. Besides gaining considerable protection from the stinging tentacles of its host, it also have a partially translucent body to break its body outline, making it difficult to spot.


We saw several upside down jellyfishes (Cassiopea sp.) in the tidal pools. As its name indicates, it normally lie in an upside-down manner to allow its symbiotic algae in its tentacles to photosynthesize.


This is the top view of a seahorse (Hippocampus comes). They cannot swim fast thus rely a lot on camouflage and simply staying still by hooking themselves to seagrasses or other structures using their prehensile tail.


The hunter seekers also found a tiny little frog fish. This adorable creature has a pair of frontal fins positioned in a way to allow to walk. Notice that there is an extension from the tip of the head. This is actually a bait to lure fishes towards it.


A huge ocellated sea cucumber (Stichopus ocellatus) named because of their eye spots on its body which to me looked more like pimples with white pus. eww...


Last but not least was this star, which happens to be a baby cushion star (Culcita novaeguineae). When they mature to become an adult, they will look very much inflated like a pillow thus earning its common name.


Last but not least was our traditional group photo with the iconic knobbly seastar (Protoreaster nodosus). Another nice day with great discoveries and an enthusiastic gang of participants!

Softies at Pulau Jong

I had the chance to dive at Pulau Jong more than a year back and the corals underneath were really fantastic. How about the intertidals here?


The sun came out as an eerie orange ball. Somehow, weather this month is unusually sorching hot. Could this be a result of global warming?


We often called Jong as the "bun" island due to its characteristic shape. It also had a rather extensive intertidal flat that stretches out in the southeastern direction. The sky was overcast when me, Robert and RY got to the island first.


A heavy downpour occured soon and Robert managed to find a natural tent which was actually a cave with overhanging trees while the rest of the gang stayed in the boat. Luckily the rain clouds were blown over to Pulau Bukom and Semakau, allowing us to carry on the exploration.


The intertidals on this small island is very unique compared to others because of their soft corals (thats the reason for my title btw). They were basically so many of them in huge sizes that they seemed like carpets on the seafloor!


RY managed to find what seemed to be like a spotted belly crab (Ozius guttatus).


There were lots of red eye reef crabs (Eriphia ferox) that were hiding inside rock cervices.


KS remembered that there was a resident giant clam (Tridacna maxima) here and he bought us there to have a glimpse. You can see that it was also completely surrounded by soft corals. Their colourful mantle actually contained symbiotic algae that can make food from the sun and transfer some to its host.


The tide is just at the right level, thus I saw a lot (at least 4) blue spotted fan-tailed ray (Taeniura lymma). Even though they are very shy creatures, be wary as they are armed with a venonmous barb at the tail.


Typical in the rocky shore was this giant top shell which was about 20cm in height....


and the black sea cucumber (Holothuria leucospilota). This timid cucumber often peep out from under the rocks and extend out their feeding tentacles to suck out any detritus on the sand. When disturbed, they can spill out lengths of sticky white paste to entangle their predators.

Last but not least are the slugs~ Apparently, the Bryopsis algae is in season now and we managed to see many sap-suckers of these seaweeds another than the leaf slug which we saw at cyrene reef.


First up is this slug Dermatobranchus sp. It was really a challenge photographing them and me, RY and KS almost broke our backs bending over to take a nice shot of it on the waving algae.


I finally gave up after the first picture and just causally took pictures of the two remainding slugs. This is Thuridilla gracilis.


And the hairy one was the smallest of all, about 5mm! Not sure about the ID though.


KS found these three nudibranchs (Chromodoris marginata). Nudibranch is actually a combination of Latin and Greek words called naked gills. This is because their gills are located externally, which is the fluffy cauliflower structure at its back.

A nice day at Jong with several satistifying photographs. I will blog about today's Semakau public walk soon. We actually saw dolphins!