Pulau Tekukor is alive!

Just minutes from Sentosa Cove, lies the natural reefy rocky shores of Pulau Tekukor. Including last longest natural coastal cliff in Singapore.

The corals seems fine, and coastal forest looks good. As usual, the rest of the team make all the special finds: giant clams and more! I will update later.

I have never seen a lot of hard corals on this shore. As on our last survey in Jan 2025, there remains a few large ones. I saw the usual sprinkling of small colonies of the boulder-shaped common hard corals. Most seemed alright and well-formed without dings and dead portions. I didn't see any that were bleaching.

As in the past, there remains some small to medium sized leathery soft corals of various kinds. I didn't see any that were bleaching or stressed.

Pulau Tekukor has probably the last longest natural coastal cliff in Singapore. It is cloaked in a natural coastal forest. Today, I spent most of the time here. The forest seem alright with the usual trees and plants commonly seen.

Rock slides and landslides are a natural part of cliffs. They are what create the charming rocky shore and pebbly beach. But the falling rocks also take out trees and plants.

Nasry was particularly keen to have a closer look at the many large patches of Raffles pitcher plants that continue to grow well here. We noticed, they seem to form a fringe under the growth of Resam. We saw some with large pitchers and others with small ones. Most were flowering profusely.

There was also a large healthy Nyireh bunga producing large bomb-shaped fruits, a small Chengam shrub profusely flowering and fruiting, and several Beach gardenias also flowering.

We were shadowed by four macaques as we explored the coastal forest area. While we were amused by the one little macaque that appeared to stalk Yan Le very closely, we were probably also being stalked by the others in the troop. The macaques didn't confort or attack us and they left us alone after it became apparent we had nothing to offer them.

There was an intriguing line of Tape seagrass and Sickle seagrass washed up on the mid-water mark. Nasry noticed the macaques were nibbling on them. We also saw the small patch of Sickle seagrass on the southern most point facing St John's Island. I didn't make it to the western shore where most of the seagrass is. Hope to update based on observations by the rest of the team.

I am relieved to see that the trash on the high shore remains highly reduced, first noticed in our last survey in Mar 2023. In previous years, there is usually a lot of plastic trash here. I hope whatever changed the situation continues to keep trash off the shore.

The shores of Pulau Tekukor might be impacted by the Keppel Tg. Pagar reclamation, slated to start after end of 2027. Feedback to these plans highlighted that nearby shores such as Tekukor might be impacted by higher sedimentation from these works.