I had a great time sharing about our shores at the National University of Singapore.
With an enthusiastic group of Real marine biologists!
Chek Jawa and the people who worked on this shore influenced me deeply, so I shared a little about this. I had earlier shared
more about my memories of Chek Jawa on the Singapore Celebrates our Reefs blog. Including
what happened after deferment of reclamation, the
construction of the boardwalk and the
future of Chek Jawa.
There's lots to see for ordinary people even underwater! Debby Ng and the volunteers of
the Hantu Bloggers conducted guided dives every month just to prove that this is so.
As usual, I spend some time on my favourite shore, Cyrene Reef. Which has spectacular seagrass meadows and other ecosystems, and in many ways is the
Chek Jawa of the South, despite it being located in the
middle of the Industrial Triangle.
Despite the many threats that face them, we still have many marvellous shores. And each of us can make a difference to share about our shores. The best way to act is to be a nature guide! Both in the field and indoors. There's lots more on how anyone can
explore,
express and
act for our shores!
After the talk, there were lots of great questions that helped me think more deeply about what we do. One of them: how do we avoid damaging the shores when we do guided walks? A great question and here's
some of the approaches I've taken that seems to deal with some of the issues. There was also a discussion about Resorts World Sentosa bringing in dolphins: lots more about this on the
Save the World's Saddest Dolphins facebook page. And many other questions too. Some even offered to help me work out talks for schools. This is great!
Thanks to Dr Peter A Todd of the
Marine Bio Lab at NUS for inviting me to share at this seminar! Thanks also to the wonderful audience who put up with my rather rambling talk and laughed at my lame jokes. These young marine biologists and scientists are the hope for our shores! Bravo!
After my little talk, the students got into groups to discuss some very interesting ideas that Dr Todd put to them. It sure seems fun to be a marine biologist!
How nice also for Mei Lin aka
Giant Clam Girl to drop by and pass me a copy of the "Reef Rehabilitation Manual"! Wow. And also to bump into Siti who is working on our seagrasses. And thanks to Rick and friends for sharing a slice of cake with me.
Find out more about that goes on at the
Marine Bio Lab on their website!
