It's wonderful to see the seagrasses in the artificial lagoon at Seringat-Kias are still doing well. Although we saw signs of a recent oil spill, which probably explains why the meadows were rather quiet today.
I explored a small seawall and short reefy area on the other side of the island which was much livelier.
While the rest of the team explored Lazarus and other parts of Seringat-Kias with interesting sightings like a cone snail and more!
Seringat-Kias was created by reclaiming the submerged reefs of Seringat and Kias. One of the touted features on this island is the C-shaped 1km long artificial lagoon. Here's more about
what was done to create Seringat-Kias. There's marine life on the artificial shore as well as on the natural shores of Lazarus Island.
The Southern arm of the large lagoon on Seringat Kias was densely covered in
Smooth ribbon seagrass on the low water mark. With dense coverage of
Spoon seagrass and
Needle seagrass on the higher shore.
In the middle of the lagoon facing Kusu Island, I saw healthy
Noodle seagrass sprinkled with some
Tape seagrass.
On the Northern arm of the lagoon, there was a patch of Tape seagrass with long leaf blades that was flowering!
Here's a video of some of the seagrasses in the lagoon.
I notice the litter on the shore was covered in oil as I started walking towards the Northern arm of the lagoon.
At the Northern arm, there was a layer under the sand of what looked, smelled and felt like oil. Perhaps that is why we did not see any soft bodied animals on the seagrasses that we saw on our last survey in
Jan 2019. Like Common sea stars, sea cucumbers, carpet anemones and slugs.
But there were still many snails: Lots of
Bazillion snails with sprinkles of
Dubious nerites, Moon snails with their
sand collars,
Gong gong snails and
Black lipped conch. I saw one
Spotted moon snail, one
Olive snail and a few
Fan shell clams.
We did see one
Knobbly sea star in the lagoon but I didn't see any other echinoderms. On the other side of the island facing St John's though, I saw a live
Thick-edged sand dollar (and many dead ones), one
Common sea star and a
White-rumped sea cucumber.
I had a quick look at a short stretch of reefy area on this artificial shore facing St John's Island.
The short sea wall had lots of healthy
Asparagus soft coral, small
Leathery soft corals and some healthy hard corals, mostly Merulinids. On the rocky area at the low water mark there were more hard corals including some well formed plate corals.
There were also several
Giant carpet anemones, while on the short sandy stretch, there were several
Haddon's carpet anemones with
Peacock-tail anemone shrimps.
On the seawall, lots of
Jewelled chitons were crammed into the crevices just above the mid-water mark!
Meanwhile, Jonathan explored the smaller artificial lagoon where he saw lots of Upside down jellyfish and other marine life. The rest of the team also checked out Lazarus Island where Kelvin saw a cone snail, Jianlin saw lots of nudibranchs, and more!
The future of Lazarus and Seringat-Kias?
The cluster of Kusu, Lazarus and St. John's Islands has been recommended by the Singapore Blue Plan 2018 for elevated protection status.
The Blue Plan highlights that Lazarus, St. John’s, and Kusu Islands are established sites for coral nurseries as their shoreline offers ideal sheltered areas for growth of corals. Designating these islands as No-fishing Areas can bolster their rehabilitation. Protecting a larger cluster of islands means zonation plans for use can be implemented to manage tourism and human impacts.
DOWNLOAD the Plan, SUPPORT the Plan! More on the
Singapore Blue Plan 2018 site.
Photos by others on this trip
Kelvin Yong
Jonathan Tan
Marcus Ng
Jianlin Liu
Liz Lim
