Besides Chek Jawa, there are other Ubin shores that are just as beautiful. A small team explored one such shore this morning well before dawn.
Alas, the sponges and other colourful marine life we saw on the rocks in the past are missing. We saw a similar decline recently at
Chek Jawa and
Pulau Sekudu, as well as
Changi opposite.
Kok Sheng first brought us here in
Dec 2009, and we returned in
May 2010,
Dec 2010 and
Dec 2012. During those surveys, the rocks were coated in colourful sponges, ascidians, soft corals and sea fans. This morning, they were quite bare. But we did see some interesting marine life.
There were some small sea fans growing on the rocks in deeper water. I saw
Candelabra sea fans amd
Gnarled sea fans.
Many of the large sea fans that I saw appear to be succumbing to fouling organisms growing on them.
I saw one long
Asparagus sea fan which I usually only see at Beting Bronok. Fouling organisms appear to be starting to grow on it.
There were many patches of
Zebra coral on the rocks in deeper water. As well as tiny clumps or scattered polyps of
Cave corals. I saw only a few clumps of
Candy hydroids and
zoanthids. There were also some clumps of
Ball-tip corallimorphs.
It was lovely to see four feather stars: three
Blue feather stars and one
Black-and-white feather star.
I saw a few medium to large
Biscuit stars and one medium
Cake star. But no other kinds of sea stars. I only saw one
thorny sea cucumber.
There were very few clumps of sponges. I saw a few clumps of
Prickly ball sponge, a small patch of
Elegant branching sponge, some clumps of
Rainbow sponge. There were many patches of
Melted chocolate sponge. Chay Hoon of course managed to spot some interesting nudibranchs.
There were a variety of ascidians on the shores, the most abundant being the
Thumbs up ascidians and
Yellow clustered ascidians. The patch of ascidians below seems to be getting coated with a green scum.
There were a lot of these
Blue spotted flatworms. Flatworms eat immobile animals such as ascidians. This one is well wrapped around a
Yellow clustered ascidian and is probably eating it.
There were many
Onyx cowries as well as the more commonly seen
Ovum cowries. Still abundant on the rocky shores are
Banded bead anemones and
onch slugs. As well as many
Drills laying yellow egg capsules. There were also many
Haddon's carpet anemones.
This boring looking lump is an
Armoured sea cucumber. The first one I've seen outside of Changi.
This is not a little dead leaf. It is a fish! The
Brown sweetlips.
Jose spotted this large octopus which slowly disappeared into its burrow.
There was a small
Noble volute which was clutching something in its foot.
There were
Spoon seagrasses on the softer parts of the shore as well as a lot of pink fluffy stuff which might be some kind of seaweed or cyanobacteria. The stick-like thing is a
Slender sea pen!
Lisa found a
Spiky sea pen. It had a tiny porcelain crab in it that looks different from the ones I usually see in this sea pen.
I came across a bundle of abandoned fishing nets. It has been abandoned for so long that marine life has started to grow on it including one sea fan.
I came across one fish trap that appears to be active.
At first I thought it was a jellyfish. But it turned out to be a spotted balloon. Sea turtles love to eat jellyfish and if they mistakenly eat balloons, they can
die a slow death. Please do not release balloons!
The loss of sponges on our northern shores is disturbing. Is this a reflection of water quality? There's so much more we still don't know.
Photos by others on this trip
