My favourite Changi shore is still alive! Just last year, it was impacted by a
300-tonne oil spill in the East Johor Strait in Jan 2017 and a huge excavator was working on the shore in
May 2017 removing large pipes.
Today, I was delighted to see lots of seagrasses including a patch of
Smooth ribbon seagrass. And all the usual animals plus large clusters of
Black sea urchins.
Changi is rich in echinoderms. As usual, colourful sea cucumbers were abundant on the shore. Mostly
Pink warty sea cucumbers with many
Thorny sea cucumbers. Also
Sea apple sea cucumbers,
Garlic sea cucumber,
Ball sea cucumbers,
Orange sea cucumbers.
Plasticky sea cucumber appear to be more abundant now compared to my last survey in
Nov 2017.
There remains lots of sea stars of all kinds too: There were many tiny to large
Biscuit stars, a few small
Cake stars, one tiny
Eight-armed sea star,
Painted sand stars and
Plain sand stars. I saw one
Common sea star and Marcus saw more. We saw these for the first time in
Nov 2017. I also saw a few large
White sea urchins.
Just as during our last survey in
Aug 2017 and
Nov 2017, there were lots of
Blue feather stars! And a few
Black-and-white feather stars.
There were lots of large Swimming anemones, many
Big hermit hitching anemones. a few
Tiger anemones, and one
Haddon's carpet anemone. I saw one
Common peachia anemone and one
Striped sand anemone.
There were a few
Common cerianthids some with
Black phoronid worms, and some other kinds of cerianthids too.
There were many
Sea Pencils, some
Flowery sea pens,
Spiky sea pens and
Slender sea pens.
I saw a few tiny
Ball flowery soft corals and a colony of what looks like flowery soft corals.
I saw 5
Mangrove horseshoe crabs, of which 2 were paired up.
Changi has lots of
Big-head seagrass octopuses. Even though they are heavily harvested by fishermen to be used as bait. Although well camouflaged, the octopus often reveals its presence as it 'breathes'. This tiny one is hiding in a set of clam shells. This is why we should not take any shells home. Not just snail shells (which are used by hermit crabs) but also clam shells.
There were a few of these Swimming crabs which Marcus has identified as
Charybdis anisodon. There were also many
Flower crabs, most were heavily encrusted with barnacles.
There were small
Penaeid prawns among the seagrasses, and I saw some clusters of egg strings laid by the
Geographic sea hare. The rest of the team saw the sea hares.
The meadows were mostly
Spoon seagrasses (large and small leaf blades). I also saw some
Needle seagrass (narrow leaf blades). I didn't come across
Fern seagrass. Kok Sheng spotted a patch of
Smooth ribbon seagrass during our
Jun 2016 survey. This morning, it was great to see a small patch of
Smooth ribbon seagrass where the pipes used to be. But I didn't see dugong feeding trails today. We had seen such trails in
Aug 2017. Today, there is a bloom of
Scalpel seaweed (attached to the ground) plus what looks like
Beehoon seaweed (which washed up in large amounts on the shore), with sprinkles of a variety of other seaweeds.
There were lots of
Zebra corals on the small cluster of rocks on the shore. Most seemed alright except for a small patch. But there were not many sponges on the rocks today. There were lots of sponges here on my last survey in
Nov 2017.
It's great to see that the shore remains lively.
Photos by others on this trip
By
Sunny Tan
By
Marcus Ng
By
Nathaniel Soon
