I'm back on Cyrene with another enthusiastic team from the
Maritime and Port Authority organised by Joanne Fang.
We arrive just after sunrise and saw all kinds of marvellous creatures.
Here's the team eager for the landing while waiting for the dinghy to be set down on the water.
The lively Mr Teo on the boat is taking a video of everyone on his teeny tiny camera.
When we first landed, we are greeted by a Knobbly sea star on the shore!
Some of us wander off to have a look at the shore while waiting for the rest to arrive. In the distance are the refineries on Pulau Bukom. Cyrene lies
in the middle of the industrial triangle and yet it has amazing marine life!
Good paddling work out for the next team with lots of splashing!
The first things we spot are lots and lots of
Cake sand dollars (
Arachnoides placenta). Also many
Common sea stars (
Archaster typicus). Not to forget the intriguing sand coils made by
Acorn worms (Class Enteropneusta). The presence of such marine life shows that the sand is clean.
We also find a large
Olive snail (
Olivia minicea). This bullet shaped snail burrows rapidly into the ground, as we found out. So far, I've only seen this snail on Cyrene.
Soon enough, we hit the Knobbly mother lode. There are many many of these large colourful cartoon-like
Knobbly sea stars (
Protoreaster nodosus) on some parts of Cyrene.
What is special about Cyrene is that there are small Knobblies. According to the
Star Trackers,
"the presence of juveniles, subadults and adults indicated that there
is a healthy level of recruitment at Cyrene Reef. This habitat
may be the only sustainable population of knobbly seastars left in Singapore today".
We also saw the special the special
Pentaceraster sea star (
Pentaceraster mammilatus) that was first seen on Cyrene and is a new record for Singapore.
The water at low tide is very clear. It's easy to spot all kinds of marine life such as this pretty
Cerianthid (Order Ceriantharia), they are also called Peacock anemones because of their colourful variety. Here among the
seagrasses and various kinds of
seaweeds, there are lots of worm-like
Synaptid sea cucumbers (Family Synaptidae),
Swimming anemones (
Boloceroides mcmurrichi) and other small critters. The area is also dotted with
Chocolate sponges (
Spheciospongia cf.
vagabunda) and
Fan shell clams (Family Pinnidae).
We also come across a large
Grey bonnet snail (
Phalium glaucum) ambling about on the shore. This snail feeds on sand dollars, and is rarely seen elsewhere though common on Cyrene. It was a little lethargic but finally it came out of its shell, showing its curious siphon and tentacles.
There are still many
White sea urchins (
Salmacis sp)
that carry things. So they are rather hard to spot. Their tiny spines tickle when you hold one in the palm of your hand. This sea urchin is
more common on our northern shores like Chek Jawa and seldom seen on
our southern shores. Indeed, I consider
Cyrene the Chek Jawa of the South.
We hurry over to have a look at the reefy part of Cyrene before the tide turns. There's purply
flowery soft corals (Family Nephtheidae), lots of large
leathery soft corals (Family Alcyoniidae),
sponges and of course
hard corals.
Some of the coral colonies are huge! It was good to see that none of them bleaching. Cyrene seems to have recovered from the
mass coral bleaching event in 2010.
Joanne spots an
octopus! Who obliges to allow some shots before disappearing into its burrow. A squirmy
Worm-eel (Muraenichthys sp.) was also spotted, as well as many small fishes which whizzed away so quickly we couldn't really tell what they were.
Just before we left Cyrene, Joanne found an
Extraordinary sea hare (
Aplysia extraodinaria)!
The sharp-eyed team also spotted a cute
hairy crab (Family Pilumnidae) that looks fluffy so we sometimes call it the 'Teddybear crab', moults of
Flower crabs (
Portunus pelagicus), lots of
hermit crabs large and small. Resembling tiny lobsters, we saw and heard
snapping shrimps (Family Alpheidae). We saw several feathery
fanworms (Family Sabellidae).
Thanks to Joanne for organising this trip which arose from the little
talk I gave to MPA last month.
And a big thank you to all the MPA staff who made time to
come, and put up with my lame jokes and spotted so many great things on
our trip!
Now I'm off for another exciting series of lectures at the Bivalve Workshop in the afternoon!
