A small team surveys this shore that lies just across from the site of the 400tonne
Pasir Panjang oil spill on 14 Jun 2024, about two months ago. We covered the whole shore from Resorts World on the eastern side around Tanjung Rimau Beacon to the western side at Rasa Sentosa.
We are relieved to see no large oil spill impacts. The seagrasses are doing well, rocky shores and sandy shores are still lively, and the rare trees on the shore still thriving. Corals seem okay despite mass coral bleaching.
The rest of the team spot more interesting marine life. Common nudibranchs (some super tiny) and our first sighting of
Thorunna furtiva - spotted by Tammy, ID thanks to Chay Hoon. There were lots of cowries and other usual life under the stones. And the usual anemones and large snails commonly seen here. There were also gobies, a carpet eel-blenny (fish are more shy in daylight) and a
Black long sea cucumber. The team also saw corals like
Carnation coral,
Anemone coral, and
Disk corals - mostly not bleaching. The shore is definitely not dead!
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Photos by the team.
Links to their albums below. |
I closely checked and did not see large oil spill impacts on any of the seawalls or natural rocky shores and cliffs from east to west. The only signs of oil was at the seawall at Rasa Sentosa (western most part of the shore). Throughout the rocky areas, there were living algae and the usual snails, crabs, sea slaters, tiny anemones, slugs commonly seen here.
There are sandy slivers among the rocky areas in the western side. There were sand dollars, burrowing snails and crabs, tubeworms and worms commonly seen here. On the wide sandy eastern high shores, there were burrows of ghost crabs.
Throughout the shores, there were patches of healthy well grown sponges.
There have never been a lot of corals on this shore. But there are still a variety of common corals, mostly boulder-shaped ones. When we checked for
mass coral bleaching here in
May 2024, most of the corals we saw were alright and only about 2% were outright bleaching. Today, I also didn't see many bleaching corals. Most of the very large colonies here had some white patches, but I did see many small colonies that were fine. Still, a few seemed to have recently dead portions.
As in the past, I saw many
leathery soft corals colonies of a wide variety, most were medium-sized. I didn't see any that were bleaching. Other cnidarians can bleach too so I looked out for those. We saw many Haddon's carpet anemones in the eastern shore and all expect one was okay. Giant carpet anemones were also alright, although a few Frilly anemones were bleaching. We also saw some healthy Feathery soft corals.
The natural coastal forest that cloaks this natural cliff has some of the last of Singapore's now rare coastal plants. Among them is
Nyireh laut which is Critically Endangered in Singapore and we probably have only about 7 trees on our shores. The mother tree and her older daughter tree nearby are still alright - although she has yellowing leaves, this is not unusual for the species. Her younger daughter growing near the pill box is still fine and has fresh green leaves. The lovely surprise is No. 4 tree, which I last saw as a sapling in
Apr 2014. Today it has grown really tall with fresh green leaves!
On the eastern shore, there are still many clumps of long
Tape seagrasses as well as some
Sickle seagrass. Dense cover of
Spoon seagrass (tiny leaves) cover most sandy areas among the rocky shores. On the western shore, seagrasses are still lush on the mid water mark on on the western shore. Lots of Spoon seagrasses, some
Needle seagrass (narrow and broad leaves).
Tape seagrasses are still widely present but many of them are cropped short (under 10cm) or only moderately long (to 20cm). Near the seawall at Rasa Sentosa, I saw long Tape seagrasses and the patch of
Sickle seagrass there is still doing well.
Let's hope these shores stay safe until we return for our annual checks.
Photos by others on our surveyLonRichard KuahLiz LimTammy Lim
