How did the construction of the boardwalk affect the shores at Berlayar Creek? I decided to find out today!
How nice to see many large carpet anemones still on the shore! I also quickly monitored the seagrasses here.
I came across 10 of these
Haddon's carpet anemones (
Stichodactyla haddoni) and they were all in good health.
Another exciting encounter, a dead
Laganum sand dollar (
Laganum depressum) which is rarely encountered. Does this skeleton mean there are live ones somewhere on the shore?!
I was on the shore to quickly monitor the seagrasses there as part of
TeamSeagrass at the request of NParks. So it was very heartening to see some patches of
Spoon seagrass (
Halophila ovalis)!
Some of the patches were quite dense. I have a sense though, that there are fewer of these patches. Sadly, we didn't do a 'before' monitoring session prior to the construction of the boardwalk. Nevertheless, the seagrasses are still there and hopefully they will expand!
Later on, I had a closer look at the fluffy stuff that grows on seagrass blades. Cool!
These seagrass patches were on the eastern side of the Creek, under Bukit Cermin.
Alas, I couldn't find any seagrasses on the western side of the Creek. None here.
None here either. But I'll keep coming back regularly to see if seagrasses start growing on this side of the Creek in future.
Along the way, I came across small clumps of sponges, button zoanthids and various kinds of seaweeds here and there.
A closer look at the
Strap brown seaweed (
Dictyota sp.)!
As elsewhere, there is a bloom of
Sargassum seaweed (
Sargassum sp.) growing on what seems to be a reefy edge in deeper water, facing the Marina at Keppel Bay. Today, the tide was too high to see what's out there.
I also had a quick look at the mangroves on the Keppel Golf Club side of the Creek. They seemed alright.
How nice to see some
Gold-spotted mudskippers (
Periophthalmus chrysospilos) on the shore. I didn't really carefully explore the shore as the tide was short, so I can't really say with certainty how the shore compares to my last slow visit there in
July 2010. I'll have to come back more regularly to check up on the shore.
As I walked along the shore, I get the sense that the sand bars are much wider at the mouth of the Creek, and the surface has become much firmer in most places. There's a lot more sand and less mud.
It was a lovely evening and many people were enjoying the sunset at the park. This shore lies just across the natural shores at
Sentosa, Tanjung Rimau.
Sadly, golf balls from the nearby Keppel Golf Club continue to build up on this shore.
There were quite a lot of them on both sides of the Creek. Since I was alone, I just didn't have the hands to collect them all.
I also came across some old driftnets that were half buried in the sand, already encrusted with marine life. I had to leave them there, in any case they are no longer invisible so hopefully animals won't get accidentally trapped in them.
As I was leaving, I noticed a clump of what seems to be freshly abandoned nets. They were tightly wound around a steel bar embedded in the sand.
Cutting through the nets, which took a while, I managed to remove them from the shore. The steel bar is circled in yellow.
As I headed home, the sun set behind the
massive reclamation for the new Pasir Panjang Container Terminal going on just off Labrador shore.
Despite the many pressures on these shores, I'm glad to see life still clinging on!
Read more about the boardwalk and download a
DIY Trail-Guide on the NParks website. More about the
opening of the boardwalk in Jan 2012, how it was built and more background on this shore.
