Our first morning survey of 2018 is to Cyrene Reef! Although it lies in the middle of
an industrial triangle and major shipping lanes, Cyrene has some of Singapore's best shores.
Besides giant sea stars, hidden fishes, strange snails, we also saw a large holey sand dollar for the first time there. And lots more!
Cyrene's famous large
Knobbly sea stars greeted us at our landing point. And Jianlin spotted a well camouflaged
Large-toothed flounder among them. Later, I saw a
Bartail flathead which was also well camouflaged. Other abundant fishes were
Blue-spotted fantail rays. And there were also many
Common sea stars everywhere.
We saw many Knobbly sea stars and one hybrid sea star. But I couldn't find the
Pentaceraster sea star today.
For the first time in years, I had a closer look at the corals. There are many large leathery soft corals and some large hard corals. None of them were bleaching.
Many of the small corals were whole, without bald patches. They were mostly
Pore corals and
Merulinid corals of various kinds.
There were a few
Disk corals, some
Anemone corals, and some
Cauliflower corals. All of them looked well.
There were many large
Leathery soft corals of various kinds. All of them not bleaching.
I saw many
Flowery soft corals and they were all not bleaching. There was only one very healthy looking large
Leathery sea fan.
We came across several kinds of sea anemones including tiny carpet anemones,
Haddon's carpet anemones,
Giant carpet anemones. The 'Hat anemone' and one
Swimming anemone as well as one
Snaky sea anemone. I didn't see any
Frilly anemones.
Today the team saw many
Ramose murex snails! I saw one. This large snail is listed as Endangered in the Singapore Red List. Abel also came across three
Fluted giant clams!
Among the special snails commonly seen on Cyrene is the
Grey bonnet snail. I managed to spot one today.
But the most delightful mollusc of all must be the
Reef octopus. These nocturnal creatures usually hide during the day, so we were lucky to see some. This one revealed its presence by the water current it created as it breathed in its hiddy hole.
I was very surprised to see a very large
Keyhole sand dollar as we were about to leave. Our first sighting of this for Cyrene. I also saw a few
Black long sea cucumbers, and one
White rumped sea cucumber.
Cyrene is among our best seagrass meadows. And the seagrasses mostly looked well today. Fresh and green. With all kinds of animals living in the meadows. Such as sea anemones, many medium sized
White urchins and other animals such as
cerianthids.
Sadly, most of the clumps of
Tape seagrasses were still cropped short with decaying broken tips.
There were also some patches of seagrasses with 'burnt' tips or covered in blackish growths. I spent most of the time looking at the reefy areas so I didn't see any
dugong feeding trails on this trip.
On Jurong Island, I notice large piles of sand near the waters' edge. Ongoing reclamation? There was also a strong smell of gas in the area when we landed. Related to the
butane gas spill two days ago? Cyrene is also close to the Pulau Busing where there was a
massive fire on 20 Mar 2018.
We enjoyed a lovely sunrise when we arrived at Cyrene. Thanks to Edward and Sam for the trip! They are are filming Cyrene for the second season of the awesome
Living City.
Tomorrow, we survey another favourite shore at Changi!
Here's more photos taken by others on this trip
Jianlin Liu
Abel Yeo
Carol Phillips
Chris Wong
Marcus Ng
Others on this trip: Marcus Ng, Kelvin Yong
