After a rain storm, we survey the large expanse of Changi's seagrass meadows during a super low tide. The seagrasses are lush and thick. We saw lots of dugong feeding trails!
I heard that this shore was affected by the
300-tonne oil spill in the East Johor Strait in January. I didn't see any signs of oil today and was glad to see many of the usual animals.
Dugongs eat seagrasses (and hence sometimes also called sea cows). They leave a typical trail when feeding in a seagrass meadow. A band of bare sand of equal width, somewhat meandering. There were many such trails visible today in the very low tide.
Some of the trails were exposed briefly above water.
Here's a brief view of the large extent of the seagrass meadows, exposed on this super low tide today.
The meadows comprised mostly of
Spoon seagrass (large and small leaved) with some
Needle seagrass (mostly narrow, but I saw a few clumps of broad leaved ones) and some patches of healthy looking
Fern seagrass. I couldn't find the patch of
Smooth ribbons seagrass, but they might still be there, I just overlooked them.
Seagrass meadows are home to all kinds of animals. I saw this small green
filefish that looked just like a seagrass blade, and a small
solefish.
Later on, we saw a
Cowfish!
As usual, the most abundant animal on the seagrass meadows are sea cucumbers. Dominating the shore were many
Thorny sea cucumbers and
Pink warty sea cucumbers. There were also many
Orange sea cucumbers, some
Purple sea cucumbers. I saw one small
Garlic bread sea cucumber and a
Smooth sea cucumber and a few
Ball sea cucumbers.
In fact, Changi is full of spectacular echinoderms such as sea stars. Today, we saw many small to medium sized
Knobbly sea stars. There were many tiny to small
Biscuit sea stars. I saw one
Common sea star.
There were also some
White sea urchins (I saw about 10 small to medium sized ones), many
Flat-armed brittlestars and I saw one
feather star.
There are lots of
Haddon's carpet anemones on the shore.
Most the Haddon's carpet anemones were alright, but I saw two that were very pale.
Other anemones seen included one
Swimming anemone, one
Big hermit-hitching anemone, some
Tiger anemones, one
Mini carpet anemone. Dr Sergio was with us and fortunately we found a few
cerianthids that he found interesting. But this shore doesn't have many of them.
Other critters seen included some
Orange-striped hermit crabs, a few
Flowery sea pens, some
Acorn worms. And many clumps of these lacy white things. I'm not sure what it is.
I didn't see any living
Noble volutes, but did see one of their egg capsules that looks like the babies had hatched. There were many
Hammer oysters. I saw some pink egg strings but couldn't find any sea hares. The only slug I saw was an
Ornate leaf slug.
Recent surveys by others at Changi reported seeing the
Clear sundial snail, which we have seen only in the South so far. I saw one today, laying eggs.
Why are these snails suddenly appearing at Changi? Did they come in with the sand that is being used to reclaim Tekong?
We had planned to survey the seagrass meadows at Changi Point. But we got word that a huge excavator was seen yesterday ripping out old pipes there, probably causing extensive damage to the shore. Marcus and Kok Sheng checked it out today and saw many injured Ball sea cucumbers. These sea cucumbers are usually buried.
Photos by others on this trip
On 28 May,
Loh Kok Sheng and some of the team visited this shore at Changi and saw some awesome marine life!
Jianlin Liu and
Jesselyn Chua were also on the trip.
Victor Toh was also at Changi. And saw traces of oil in his footprints.
On 31 May,
Chris Wong surveyed Changi bay next to the Ferry Terminal and shared what he saw.
