Wild fun for kids during the June school holidays!

Exciting nature activities specially for kids are lined up for the coming school holidays! Free fun ways to discover and enjoy Singapore's biodiversity! Come for the Chek Jawa Open House, Festival of Biodiversity, Ubin Day.

Come for the once-a-year Pesta Ubin, Pulau Ubin Open House: 18 May to 30 Jun. Lots of nature activities, for families and some specially for kids. Many Pesta Ubin activities are free of charge. Some do NOT require registration. Simply come to Pulau Ubin and join the fun! Find a Pesta Ubin activity that suits your schedule and interest! Don't say Bo Jio!

Corallimorphs of Singapore identified!

Thanks to Ren Min and scientist friends, our corallimorphs are identified!

I am touched that Ren Min and team surveyed our shores for corallimorphs. I only helped at the intertidal trips to Ubin, Pulau Hantu and Big Sisters Island. The team did dive surveys too.

Here's some of the corallimorphs that are seen on Singapore shores. I have updated the wild fact sheets with their IDs!

Thanks also to Ren Min and friends for their kind comments about the wild fact sheets.

Check out the full article here: Ren Min Oh, Mei Lin Neo, Nicholas Wei Liang Yap, Sudhanshi Sanjeev Jain, Ria Tan, Chaolun Allen Chen and Danwei Huang, "Citizen science meets integrated taxonomy to uncover the diversity and distribution of Corallimorpharia in Singapore", The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology Volume 67, Pp. 306-321.

Bryozoan surveys, May 2019

Thanks to the team of Bryozoan experts for inviting me to join their survey for bryozoans in Singapore. We visited 4 shores and found lots of bryozoans.

I didn't really get a chance to survey the shores as usual, but here are some of things I observed. Thanks to Jianlin for leading the regular team on surveys of some of our shores at the same time.

Mass coral spawning 2019

Singapore's corals are alive and very sexy too. Their annual orgy of explosive sex just happened! Thanks to the dedicated team who have been keeping an eye on this event every year, we get a glimpse of what happened.

What is Mass Coral Spawning and why is it a big deal? More below!

Punggol beach still alive

There is still life on Punggol beach, although today, the water was bad and I sense the shore was even less lively than our last survey in Sep 2018.

I noticed the new line of blue drums 'security barrier' on the shore. But the team has a good morning exploring. Among the highlights: uncommon seagrass, slugs and the Burgundy sea anemones are still there.

Return to Sentosa Serapong after mass dying

We return to Sentosa Serapong for the first predawn trip of the year. On our last survey in Jun 2018, there was mass dying on this shore. With a heavy smell of death (like a badly run fish market) as we saw large corals and sponges that were bleaching, or had dying, rotting tissue.

Today, we didn't see any bleaching or dying corals. While the leathery soft coral garden seems to be doing well near the beacon, and the area nearer the old jetty seemed mostly alright, we didn't see as much live coral in the area facing the spillway. We saw familiar favourites like the red feather stars in abundance, also the Fluted giant clam. There were also many anemonefishes in almost every large anemone. So we can still hope for this shore to return to its full glory!