The morning low spring tide season has started and we survey Cyrene at first light.
We saw dugong feeding trails, many large Knobbly sea stars, several Giant clam. The corals seem to be doing well. While the seagrass situation has not recovered, we sense an improvement. Kelvin and Russel flew drones today and got lots of interesting new perspectives of our favourite shore.
Here's a video of highlights of what I saw today at Cyrene.
The seagrass cover on Cyrene has grown very thin compared to the past. Despite this, I saw some furrows that look like they were made by feeding
dugong in the seagrasses facing Pasir Panjang Container Terminals. The trails were obvious even at first light! These trails are formed when dugongs chomp up seagrasses including their roots, leaving a shallow meandering furrow of about equal width and depth. I saw similar trails on our last survey here in
Sep 2022,
Dec 2021 and
Aug 2021.
We found at least 3
Fluted giant clams. I saw two near the beacon which we have seen before: a huge one about 40cm nearer Pulau Bukom, and a smaller one about 30cm nearer Pasir Panjang Container Terminal. Kelvin saw the one on the Western end nearer Jurong Island. Will have to wait to see photos uploaded by the team to find out whether other individual clams were seen.
Today, the team combined saw several clusters of
Knobbly sea stars. I saw about 40 near the beacon, about twice the number I usually see here. The rest of the team also saw clusters on the Western end and middle of Cyrene.
There's never been a lot of hard corals on Cyrene since we first started surveying it. But there were some, and they seemed alright. Mostly boulder shaped species, some were very large (nearly 1m in diameter). I didn't see any that were bleaching. This is similar to what I saw on our last survey in
Sep 2022.
I saw many medium-sized to large colonies of
leathery soft corals of various kinds. And some large
flowery soft corals as well as one
Leathery sea fan. I didn't see any that were bleaching.
There was still good seagrass cover on the Eastern end of Cyrene facing the container terminal. Mostly
Spoon seagrass and other shorter seagrasses.
Tape seagrasses were few and far between, with cropped leaf blades. This is similar to what I saw on our last survey in
Sep 2022. Chay Hoon spotted
Sickle seagrass flowering! While Tammy spotted clusters of
White sea urchins.
There is a small but deep pool in the middle of Cyrene (stick in the middle marks the pool). It used to be thick with long Tape seagrass. These disappeared about 10 years ago. Today, there is thin cover of a variety of short seagrasses. But no long Tape seagrasses.
Kelvin's
drone view shows that indeed, there is good seagrass coverage in the deep pool!
The rest of the team saw other amazing marine life and will upload their photos soon. Although it lies in the middle of
an industrial triangle and major shipping lanes, Cyrene has some of Singapore's most amazing shores.
Photos by others on this surveyLoh Kok ShengJianlin LiuChay HoonTammy LimRussel Low's
drone videoRussel LowRichard KuahKelvin Yong's
drone viewsKelvin Yong
