Sharing with Sentosa Leisure Group about our shores

This afternoon, I had a great time sharing about Singapore's amazing shores with Sentosa Leisure Group.

They were a very kind and enthusiastic audience and I learnt more about Sentosa from them too.


Thanks to Lieow Shao Wei, who not only arranged this opportunity, but has herself been very active for our shores. She helps with TeamSeagrass monitoring at Sentosa, joined the Mega Marine Survey and has joined us on some of our surveys.

I shared more about the marvellous shores managed by Sentosa. Including the awesome Kusu Island which is ringed with rich reefy shores.

I haven't been to Kusu Island, though, since these massive works were being done on the seawalls there in Jan 2013. So I'm not sure if the corals survived.

Sentosa also manages St. John's Island, Lazarus Island and Seringat Kias, Pulau Tekukor. As well as the amazing Sisters Islands.

Another jewel managed by Sentosa is Pulau Hantu. I shared about the good work done by Debby Ng and the volunteers of the Hantu Bloggers who conduct guided dives at Pulau Hantu every month for the last 10 years!

Photo from the Hantu Blog

Sentosa's Tanjung Rimau shores has some spectacular cliffs and coastal forest now rare in Singapore. As well as great seagrass meadows!

A4 poster on wildsingapore flickr for free download

Sadly, some great reefy shores at Sentosa were lost due to reclamation for Resorts World Sentosa.

I also shared about the amazing reefs found on Sentosa near the Serapong golf course. Which we managed to survey in Jul 2011 and May 2012 thanks to the support of Shao Wei and Sheila.

Among the heartbreaking issues that impact all our shores including those managed by Sentosa is driftnets that indiscriminately kills corals, crabs, fish and other marine life. We saw two long driftnets at Sisters Island in Oct 2011. I shared about the struggles of the volunteers for Project Driftnet.

There are also huge fish traps (taller than a person) laid on many of our reefs such as Pulau Jong, which is also managed by Sentosa. Volunteers disabled these three large traps found there in Apr 2013.

Sentosa is proactive about some threats on our shores and they have been in contact with the Police Coast Guard about the destructive impact of the security barriers laid on the Tanjung Rimau reefs, that Heng Pei Yan observed in Aug 2013.

Photo by Heng Pei Yan

As with all our shores, trash is an issue on many of the shores managed by Sentosa. Shao Wei is organising Sentosa staff to take part in this weekend's International Coastal Cleanup Singapore by cleaning up Tanjung Rimau! As advertised on this cute poster she put together for my talk.

After the talk, I learnt more about about an amazing patch of sea anemones full of 'Nemo's that have settled in some artificial parts of the island. We also talked about what kind of marine life might be found at Sentosa Cove as well as Sentosa One Degree Fifteen.

Thanks to Shao Wei and the many other colleagues at Sentosa for working together to try to protect our shores. And also thank you also  for the kind gift of the Islander membership so that I can visit Sentosa more easily.