At Punggol Jetty, the boulders on the shore were very much alive!
The large boulders on the shore were covered in living animals at the low water mark. These encrusting animals are food for nudibranchs and it was intriguing to find many signs of nudibranchs here.
It was great to see many people enjoying the shore at Punggol on this first day of the Lunar New Year.
Kids swimming in the sea.
Kids playing in the sand.
It was a relief to see a variety of
sponges on the rocks. During our last survey here in
April 2019, I didn't see many sponges.
There were also other encrusting animals that resemble plants: orange
Knobbly soft coral, and
bryozoans that resemble yellow ferns and
Glassy branching bryozoans.
The most abundant encrusting animal was an orange colonial ascidian - probably the
Lobed orange ascidian. I saw it on almost every hard surface near the low water mark.
Sponges and other encrusting animals are food for nudibranchs. So I wasn't really surprised to come across many (more than 15) egg ribbons probably laid by nudibranchs. They were laid just above the low water mark. But I couldn't find any nudibranchs near them.
James found this nudibranch - probably the
Rose nudibranch. It wasn't near any egg ribbons. So we are not sure if this kind of nudibranch laid the egg ribbons.
I was relieved to see two small
Burgundy anemones, James saw one more. Punggol is the stronghold of the intriguing anemone, it is not found in large numbers elsewhere. As usual, there were also many
Lined sea anemones.
Worm snails (which are snails and not worms) were still common. There were some
Onch slugs, as well as
Spiral melongena snails and
Drills, with many of their egg capsules laid on the rocks. But I didn't see any sea urchins.
Many rocks had small mussels growing on them. Some of them were young
Green mussels. Others were a small black mussel that I have yet to identify. I've been seeing this small black mussel on this shore for some years already.
Sadly, I didn't come across any seagrass today. On the positive side, I didn't come across any fish traps either.
This shore lies opposite Pasir Gudang, a major port in Johor.
Large vessels pass the shore regularly.
Let's hope this shore stays safe until we can survey it again.
More photos of the survey by
James Koh.
