A glorious sunset at the end of a survey of the southern side of Beting Bemban Besar, a really huge submerged reef off Pulau Semakau.
It was great to see the seagrasses are still doing well, teeming with a variety of marine life. Reminds me of Cyrene! We also saw Giant clam, large Knobbly sea stars, 'Nemos' and Alex our skipper saw sea turtles around the big boat while we were out surveying.
We land under a blue sky and end with a fiery sunset! Here's a glimpse at what I saw on our survey.
So nice to see a blush of green over a large area in the middle of the submerged reef. But the seagrasses still form sparse sprinkles, with a few small patches that were more dense. Much of the seagrasses were heavily covered in epiphytes. I sense the situation is somewhat similar to our last survey here in
Mar 2017. This year in
Aug 2018, I saw good seagrass growths on the northern end of Beting Bemban Besar too.
I saw patches of
Spoon seagrasses with small and large leaf blades. I saw few
Tape seagrasses and most were cropped. I saw
Sickle seagrass,
Needle seagrass and some
Noodle seagrass too.
It was great to see many of the animals typically found in good seagrass meadows. Like several
cerianthids, a
Fire anemone,
Upside down jellyfish,
Common sea stars, Hammer oyster,
Noble volute,
little hermit crabs, several
Big synaptid sea cucumbers, many Moon snail
sand collars.
I saw a small patch with many of these mussels, mostly dead. I get a bit alarmed nowadays when I see many mussels, after
the mussel invasion I saw at Kranji. But these mussels don't seem to be the ones I saw at Kranji.
As is normal this time of the year,
Sargassum seaweed is 'blooming' forming thick golden brown carpets over the reefier parts. This is normal and nothing to be alarmed about.
Among the sargassum, I found two nudibranchs! The
Orange spotted nudibranch and
Jorunna nudibranch.
Some of the larger colonies had pale portions. I saw a similar situation on the Pulau Semakau (South) shore nearby last month in
Oct 2018.
Most of the hard corals I saw seemed alright. I couldn't really survey the reefier edge due to the sargassum bloom. On our last survey in
Mar 2017, I saw a greater variety of corals.
I came across a variety of small
leathery soft corals. As well as some
Giant carpet anemones, the rest of the team saw clownfish in them. I also saw one small
Frilly anemone. I saw a few
Asparagus flowery soft corals, some of which seemed rather pale.
The rest of the team explored a larger area than I did and found some amazing animals. Jianlin Liu found this
Fluted giant clam.
While Richard Kuah found this
Ramose murex that we don't see very often.
Richard also saw this enormous
Knobbly sea star, while Lisa found a few more.
A gaudy
Halloween flatworm, by Jianlin Liu. While Liz Lim shared a
Very Long ribbon worm.
Gina shared this tiny octopus that they saw.
As usual, we had a closer look at the barge at the fish farm situated here. Looks like the stacking of equipment is neater than on our trip here last month in
Oct 2018.
When we got back to the boat, Alex said he saw several sea turtles while we were out surveying. But no dolphins this time.
More photos by others on this trip
Jianlin Liu
Richard Kuah and also on
his blog.
Liz Lim
Gina Tan
Jesselyn Chua
Adriane Lee
Lisa Lim
Juria Toramae
Others on this trip: Juria Toramae, Shawne.
