A dawn survey at Cyrene and I saw Burrowing giant clams here for the first time!
Although it lies in the middle of
an industrial triangle and major shipping lanes, Cyrene has some of Singapore's best shores. The rest of the team saw lots of Knobbly sea stars and other wonderful marine life.
I was excited to see not one but two
Burrowing giant clams! This is our first sighting of this for Cyrene.
The reefy part of Cyrene appears to be doing well. Similar to what I saw on our last survey in
Apr 2018, I saw many large hard corals. None of them were bleaching.
Many of the small corals were whole, without bald patches. They were mostly
Pore corals and
Merulinid corals of various kinds. There were a few
Disk corals, some
Anemone corals, and some
Cauliflower corals. All of them looked well.
I even saw a
Red coral crab in one of the Cauliflower corals.
I also saw many large
Leathery soft corals of various kinds. None of them were bleaching.
I saw many
Flowery soft corals and they were all not bleaching. There were also some sponges, including one small
Barrel sponge that looked alright. I was relieved to see this since we saw dying Barrel sponges at
Sentosa Serapong in June 2018.
Today, I was trying to help Nicholas Yap to find special anemones. We came across various sea anemones including the 'Hat anemone', a
Common peachia anemone,
Frilly anemones,
Giant carpet anemones, while the rest of the team found
Snaky sea anemones.
I didn't really get to explore much of the seagrass situation. But the areas I covered seemed lush, although
Tape seagrasses are still cropped.
There were lots of Olive flatworms today. Nicholas spotted a
Very long ribbon worm. And there were other worms like the
White spiral fan worm.
Cyrene has living sand bars with all kinds of marine creatures.
Today, we came across several
Ramose murex snails. In the sand, there were many special snails such as the
Eggwhite moon snail,
China moon snail, and various
Olive snails.
The only nudibranch I saw was this
Jorunna funebris which looked like it just laid the egg ribbon nearby. I also saw one
Spotted sea hare.
There were lots of
Common sea stars. And Cyrene is one of the few shores where I see smaller males, on top of larger females.
I didn't go to the part of the shore where all the Knobbly sea stars were gathered. But Abel and the rest of the team did and it seems they are still alright.
As the tide rushed in, I noticed the
Huddling hermit crabs were clustered near the waterline. Probably getting ready to hide in the sand from incoming predators?
On the steep slope of the sand bar, I also saw a living
Pink-speckled shrimp-goby sticking out of a hole face out, and a living shrimp in a hole butt up. Not really sure what is happening.
The tide was really rushing in! Here's the first group on the big boat taking shots of the second group with barely any shore still sticking out of the water.
We arrived before sunrise, with a huge plume of emissions hanging over Pulau Bukom. On Jurong Island, I notice large piles of sand near the waters' edge that I first saw in
Apr 2018.
Despite these pressures, the shores of Cyrene remain alive.
Photos by others on this trip
By
Abel Yeo
By
Marcus Ng
By
Jonathan Tan
Russel Low
Others on this trip: Jose Hong, Aidan Mock, Siew Men, Nicholas Yap.
Meanwhile, other shores were surveyed ...
Chay Hoon
Loh Kok Sheng
