Changi is teeming with sea stars! A small team surveys this shore for the first time in a year.
This area has one of the lushest seagrass meadows on the mainland and I was worried because we noticed
the seagrasses were sparse in 2012.
We arrive a little early and some of the shore is already exposed!
So it was a relief to see that the seagrass meadows here are now super lush!
All the three seagrass species we usually see here are doing very well. There were lots of healthy
Fern seagrass, large leaved
Spoon seagrass and
Needle seagrass everywhere. Today, we didn't see any
dugong feeding trails although perhaps this is because the tide wasn't that low and we couldn't see the seagrasses in deeper waters.
Seagrass meadows provide shelter and food for a wide range of marine life. From crabs to sea urchins and clams! There were many small
White sea urchins but not as plentiful as in the past. Crabs seen include various small
Swimming crabs and small
Moon crabs. There were also various
hermit crabs.
Kwan Siong found this baby
Knobbly sea star just as we were about to leave. It is very well camouflaged among the seagrass! There were large numbers of small
Biscuit stars,
Painted sand stars and
Plain sand stars. Other sea stars we saw included small
Cake sea stars and small
Spiny sea stars. We didn't see any
Pink sand dollars.
There were lots of sea cucumbers. About equal numbers of
Pink warty sea cucumbers (below) and
Thorny sea cucumbers. There were also many small
Garlic bread sea cucumbers. The team also found a
See-through sea cucumber.
Shannon pointed out this fish that I totally didn't notice. I'm not sure what it is.
There were many
Hammer oysters, some laying on the ground, others buried with the T-shaped side down. There were also many small to medium sized
Fan clams, and a few small
Window pane shells.
Fan shells provide the few stable hard surfaces in a seagrass meadow. This valuable real estate is often quickly taken over by other animals such as this
Purple branching sponge.
Among the snails on the shore was a small
Noble volute and one
Miliaris cowrie There were a lot of
Black-lipped conch snails! There was a man collecting a plastic bag full of
Gong gong. We didn't come across sand bars (Mei Lin says they are now in deeper water), so we didn't see the sandy shore snails.
I saw one small
Haddon's carpet anemone and one
cerianthid. It was a daylight trip, so perhaps that's why we didn't see the
sea pencils and other sea pens usually common here.
There were many
Big brown mactra clams washed up on the shore, these are usually buried. Also many 'uprooted' (the usually buried)
Ball sea cucumbers,
Smooth sea cucumbers. I'm not sure if this is normal.
As usual, we find it hard to leave while the tide remains low. Today, we are joined by Victor Tang who is doing a film about Singapore's shores! We are glad to show him some of the cool creatures found at Changi.
Our last visit here was in
May 2013. This shore is one of the few places where we found
Synpeachia temasek, a new genus and new species of sea anemone is described from Singapore!
Jianlin Liu and friends visited another part of Changi on the same day and saw
more cool creatures!
On the way to this shore, I noticed two large barges with large cranes on the beach at Carpark 6. It appears that they are working on a large drain there. I hope this doesn't affect the marine life found on the shore.
There are so many threats big and small to our beautiful wild shores. The more of us keep an eye on them, the better it will be.
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