This very rocky shore is just a few hundred metres from Sentosa and its western shore is part of the Sisters' Islands Marine Park.
The Fluted giant clam is still there, and seagrasses continue to flourish on the western shore. The waves of rain made it challenging to survey, we finally gave up when lightning came dangerously close.
The
Fluted giant clam is still there. It was retracted in the rain. We couldn't find the larger one that was seen on our last survey in
Aug 2021.
Richard came across the shells of a dead Giant clam...oh dear
Button zoanthids continue to cover large stretches of the eastern rocky areas. There also remains a lot of
Long black sea cucumbers as well as
Giant carpet anemones and
Giant top shell snails. I also saw a
Spangled flatworm and a
Wiggly reef star anemone.
Also super abundant on this shore are
Frilly anemones, they seem to really like the pebbly areas.
The route that I surveyed doesn't usually have much corals. There are a few very large colonies, they seemed alright although some had many dead portions.
There are a few large Boulder pore corals on the shore, they were nice and brown. There were many small to large colonies of common
Merulinid corals. Some had pale patches, but most were alright. I also saw one
Anemone coral, one
Crinkled sandpaper coral and and one
Cauliflower coral.
Today, I continue to see many small colonies of
Leathery soft corals of various kinds.
The western shore of Pulau Tekukor is part of the Sisters Islands Marine Park.
There are good growths of seagrasses on the shore that faces the Sisters Islands.
Sickle seagrass covers a large area of this shore, with fresh green leaf blades.
There were also sprinkles of
Spoon seagrass with small leaf blades. The patch of
Tape seagrass had male flower bracts (I didn't see any male flowers) and leaves were longish (about 20-30cm). When I last saw it in
Nov 2020, this patch was also producing male flowers. Overall, the seagrass situation is very similar to what I saw in
Aug 2021.
From the start of our survey, waves of rain battered us on and off. We persisted but finally gave up when lightning started dangerously close to us.
Let's hope the shore stays safe until we return again.
Photos by others on this survey
Richard KuahChe Cheng NeoKelvin YongVincent Choo
