I made a quick visit to Cyrene and saw LOTS of dugong feeding trails in the seagrass meadows in many places!
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| Dugong feeding trails with Jurong Island on the horizon. |
But not many Knobbly sea stars seen. I had a brief look at reef areas, corals seem alright.
Although it lies in the middle of
an industrial triangle (Jurong Island, Pulau Bukom and Pasir Panjang container terminals) and major shipping lanes, Cyrene has some of Singapore's best shores. Here's dugong feeding trails with Pasir Panjang Container Terminals nearby.
Here's dugong feeding trails with Pulau Bukom and its petrochemical plants.
There is good seagrass cover in the usual places, but much of the
Tape seagrass is still cropped short, and some larger seagrasses (like Sickle seagrass) had burned leaves.
Today, I didn't see many
Knobbly sea stars. Usually, we find 10-20 clustered together. Today, I saw only a handful. Theresa and her sea urchin team were also on the shore and they didn't find any sea urchins!
We went to the reefier area briefly and the corals I saw along the way were alright. There were also some leathery soft corals which were alright.
It rained briefly providing dramatic landscape views. At Cyrene, you can see the whole sky, 360degrees!
The reclamation we saw in our
Jan 2019 survey is still going on. Although it is supposed to end in May 2019.
This is a large area on Jurong Island (Ayer Merbau Basin) - area outlined in red in this map on the MPA website.
From Port Marine Notice
109 of 2018, these reclamation works have been going on since Jan 2018 and expected to be completed in May 2019. I had noticed the reclamation during our
Apr 2018 survey.
Thanks to Jeanette for organising the trip and working to feature Cyrene and our shores.
