This morning, I was amazed to see lots of seagrasses on the artificial shores of East Coast Park.
Living among them was a large
Baler volute, considered Endangered and now rarely seen on our shores. Other interesting encounters included
Diadema sea urchin, a
juvenile batfish, and a rather large
Copperband butterflyfish.
We started at a smaller but still lush patch of seagrasses growing at the mouth of a canal. This beautiful lagoon is believed to be the proposed site for a
new sea burial site. I hope they do a proper EIA for the proposed construction and that they consider building in such a way as to allow more marine life to settle naturally there.
Once again I tried taking videos in the dark. Seagrasses are nurseries of our shores. I came across many juveniles such as j
uvenile Penaeid prawn,
small swimming crabs, and many juvenile fishes. A nice surprise was to see a
Diadema sea urchin and a
juvenile batfish. But the seagrass meadows seemed rather 'empty' as usual, like a beautiful mansion with few inhabitants. And I did not see the
Knobbly sea star that we saw on our last survey here in
Apr 2017.
The most abundant were
Spoon seagrass, both large and small leaved;
Needle seagrass, both broad and narrow leaved. There were dense patches of
Noodle seagrass and about 6 clumps of
Tape seagrass, of which one clump had female flowers and another had fruits. I also saw
Sickle seagrass which I here in
Apr 2017. For the first time, I saw
Serrated ribbon seagrass. I didn't cross the canal so didn't check on the
Smooth ribbon seagrass that I saw there on our last trip in
Apr 2016.
Second seagrass meadow
We then quickly moved to a nearby shore to check it out while the tide was still low. What a lovely surprise to see that the seagrasses appear to have spread over a larger area! The seagrass meadows appear to have expanded greatly since I was last here in
Jul 2017. The species were mostly
Needle seagrass (with broad and narrow leaf blades) and
Spoon seagrass with large leaf blades.
Here's a video of views of these meadows with
Haddon's carpet anemone,
Pink warty sea cucumber,
Copperband butterflyfish and a large
Baler volute!
There were lots of large
Fan shell clams. I saw a few large
White sea urchins and Frances saw an octopus.
The seagrass is growing almost right to the seawall!
Living sand bar
As I had first noticed in
July 2017, the sand bar appears to have changed in shape, to become shorter and broader, compared to our last survey in
Feb 2016. The sandbar is teeming with burrowing life. I saw several
Grey bonnet snails, some
Ball moon snails and many
Weasel olive snails. There were also abundant living
Button snails, as well as abundant small
Cake sand dollars. But I didn't come across any
Fig snails.
Two people were fishing at the first site we surveyed. We didn't come across any traps or nets. Alas, the second shore we surveyed was still littered with lots of golf balls and some large trash.
Let's hope these marvellous shores stay well until we can check up on them again in a year's time.
Thanks to Frances Loke for the company and these finds and photos. She runs the awesome
Little Green Men channel.
Meanwhile,
Jianlin Liu surveyed a Changi shore.
Alas,
Victor Toh saw a net which trapped horseshoe crabs when he surveyed these shores the next day.
