There is a shallow lagoon at East Coast Park which has slowly been taken over by seagrasses. Today, I return for the first time in 5 years to find a lovely seagrass meadow teeming with marine life. And saw possibly some dugong feeding trails!
We also quickly checked up on Bedok Jetty earlier.
My first time back to this shore since
Jun 2016! There is now a long and wide sand bar next to the canal mouth. Which seemed to have formed a calm shallow lagoon for seagrasses and other marine life to thrive.
The sand bar is quite wide, nice and sandy (not silty) with lush growths of seagrasses on both sides
Towards the high shore, the seagrasses are doing well. In fact, I saw some furrows in the seagrass meadows that might be
dugong feeding trails. How exciting!
Dugong feeding trails are formed when dugongs chomp up seagrasses including their roots, leaving a shallow meandering furrow of about equal width and depth. Here's a closer look at the furrow in the seagrass meadow that I saw today.
As on my last survey here in
Jun 2016, there were still lush growths of
Needle seagrass (both narrow and broad leaf blades) and
Spoon seagrass (large leaf blades). For the first time, I saw patches of
Serrated ribbon seagrass and a small patch of
Noodle seagrass - these two species are not as commonly seen on our shores. We first saw these seagrass patches in
Jun 2013.
I was delighted to see many of our favourite seagrass echinoderms here. The most abundant were
Tiny red sea cucumbers (which are not babies of bigger sea cucumbers and do not grow any bigger). There were only a few
Thorny sea cucumbers and
Pink warty sea cucumbers. There were many large
White Salmacis sea urchins and Kok Sheng found one with a Zebra crab on it. I saw a few
Passion sea urchins and one
Black sea urchin. We saw one
Common sea star and several
Eight armed sea stars. Kok Sheng also saw
Knobbly sea stars. While there were many
Flat armed brittle stars. There were some small
sand dollars too.
I was delighted to see a live
Rare-spined murex, which I indeed rarely see alive. There were also
Button snails in the sand bar, hunted by the usual predatory
moon snails and
olive snails. But I didn't see any
Fig snails today. There were not many
Fan shell clams - most were very small. I saw many shells of dead
Window pane clams but no live ones. I did see a small
Razor clam and a small
Large cockle. The only slug I saw were many
Ornate leaf slugs. There were also a lot of
Haddon's carpet anemones. Kok Sheng found MORE amazing marinlife including a seahorse.
There is a small rocky area near the seawall of the canal. There wasn't much there. Although there were a few sponges, some
Orange sea cucumbers and some small
Skinny sea fans with
Red spindle cowries on the seawall.
There were some people on the shore harvesting clams. I had a friendly chat with a young couple who let me photograph what they had collected - Fan shell clams (he only dug out the big ones and left the small ones behind, he said). Also lots of 'la la' clams that are found in the sandier parts of the shore. Some people had plastic bags full of 'la la'. There were big holes on some parts of the shore where digging went on.
Earlier, at dawn, we made a quick stop to check out Bedok Jetty. The legs are coated with marine life! We saw sea fans,
flowery soft corals with
ovulid snails, and other colourful sponges and marine life. Among them live colourful crabs.
We could only look at the first two sets of legs of the jetty. I imagine the many legs of this long jetty must harbour a great deal of life!
As we were leaving, a large barrel floated up and started banging against the jetty legs.
There is a large worksite right on the beach near Bedok Jetty (off Carpark F1).
From the
PUB website, it appears to be "Improvement to Bayshore Park Outlet Drain (ECP Service Road to the Sea)" Q2 2020 to Q1 2023.
What is the future of these shores?These living East Coast shores are precious because they
may be reclaimed in the
2013 landuse plan by the Ministry of National Development released in response to
2013 Population White Paper.
The blue outlined areas are "Possible Future Reclamation". The plans include massive reclamation along the entire East Coast.
Natural regeneration on Singapore's artificial shores and structures is already happening now. Unintentionally, with zero replanting. Can we plan coastal works to allow reefs, mangroves and seagrasses to naturally regenerate? Naturalise canals leading to the sea for a continuum of freshwater wetlands to mangroves? Imagine what's possible! Reefs and natural marine ecosystems at our doorstep, for all in the City to enjoy. More about this idea in my feedback to the
Draft Master Plan 2013.
Others on this survey:
Loh Kok ShengOther shores surveyed on the same day
Jonathan Tan checked out another East Coast shore
