Cyrene briefly: signs of dugong, stars and more!

We make a brief visit to Cyrene on the last evening tide of the cycle. Right opposite the site of the Pasir Panjang Terminal where the Jun 2024 oil spill occured, we saw thriving marine life.

A green turtle was sighted! And we are delighted to see dugong feeding trails, a bloom of sidegill slugs. Also many Knobbly sea stars, Giant clam and more.

We are glad to have on this trip, some amazing advocates from Lepak In SG and Singapore Youth Voices for Biodiversity 

As usual, the patch of many (about 40) large Knobbly sea stars were the highlight. They were resting on top of dugong feeding trails!

With so many sharp eyes we spotted all kinds of marine life. Beginning with a green turtle just as we were landing! There as also a bloom of Forskall's sidegill slugs - many large slugs, one laying egg ribbons - we  haven't seen this for many years! The corals soft and hard seem to be doing well. I didn't see any that were bleaching. We also saw some sea anemones, all healthy. We saw the large 40cm Giant clam and she seemed fine.

Shortly after the Pasir Panjang oil spill on 14 Jun 2024, we visited on  27 Jun 2024 because Uncle Tony ODempsey shared with us this chart. Which suggests the oil escaping from the accident site spent some time over Cyrene. Fortunately, we didn't come across any smell or signs of oil on the shore.  But sadly mass coral bleaching seems to be getting worse here. At that time we estimate about 50% of hard corals and 70% of leathery soft corals are bleaching. We returned in Nov 2024 and saw a lot of dugong feeding trails, many Knobbly sea stars, and most of the corals seem to have survived the mass coral bleaching.

Although it lies in the middle of an industrial triangle and major shipping lanes, Cyrene has some of Singapore's most amazing shores. From our brief look today, it seems Cyrene is back to normal! Hurray!