There are lush patches of seagrasses at the mouth of Changi Creek. This morning, I saw one
dugong feeding trail there!
There were no bleaching corals or cnidarians, and no bleaching seagrasses. Although the sponge diversity is very low, there is still a wide variety of echinoderms on the seagrassy areas.
The seagrasses look fine today. I didn't see any that were bleaching. On our last survey here in
Jan 2020, I saw large patches of seagrasses bleaching.
Spoon seagrass (with large leaf blades) is the most common. There was a small patch of
Needle seagrass (with narrow leaf blades) in the middle of the lagoon. The seagrasses are dotted with a variety of colourful animals.
Changi is echinoderm heaven! As usual, there were lots of sea cucumbers on the seagrass meadows. There were a lot of
Pink warty sea cucumbers, I only saw one small
Thorny sea cucumber. There were also many small
Garlic bread sea cucumbers, many
Ball sea cucumbers. I one
Orange sea cucumber, one
Beige sea cucumber and one
Smooth sea cucumber. There were a few small
Sponge synaptid sea cucumbers on the Melted chocolate sponge. Other sea cucumbers seen by the rest of the team include a
Plasticky sea cucumber and a small
Sea Apple sea cucumber.
Today, I saw a few
Biscuit sea stars - two large ones and many tiny ones. I also saw one
Cake sea star and one
feather star. The rest of the team also saw
Sand stars, a
Spiny sea star and an
Eight-armed sand star. I didn't come across any sea urchins but the rest of the team saw a
White salmacis sea urchin.
There seems to be a 'bloom' of
Hairy sea hares - I saw many tiny to small ones among the seagrasses. I also saw one large
Spotted sea hare. I saw a few
Fan shells but no outbreak of mussels.
In the murky waters were all kinds of fishes. I saw a small Blue-spotted fantail ray, a small
Brown sweetlips that resembles a leaf, many tiny
Twig-like half beaks that resemble floating twigs. I saw a small
Milk-spotted pufferfish and a
Fan-bellied filefish, but didn't manage a photo of them. There were also many crabs busy in the water.
There is news of
mass coral bleaching sightings on our Southern shores in June 2020. So I also check on how the corals are doing at Changi. People are often surprised to learn we have corals on our Northern shores.
Zebra corals in fact commonly encrust rocky intertidal areas of our Northern shores. Here's my sightings, shared for further study by others.
I came across several
Haddon's carpet anemones and they were not bleaching. Many of them had
Tiny carpet anemoneshrimps living on them.
I also saw several
cerianthids, some
Flowery sea pens, a
Sea pencil, some
sea fans and many patches of
zoanthids. None of these cnidarians were bleaching.
Unlike our last survey in
Jan 2020, today most of the rocky shores were coated with
Melted chocolate sponge, with very few sponges of other kinds. I didn't come across any nudibranchs, though the rest of the team saw some.
Sightings by others in the team
Jianlin Liu
Kelvin Yong
Loh Kok Sheng
Marcus Ng
Also surveying Changi today
Toh Chay Hoon
Abel Yeo
Dayna Cheah
Richard Kuah
