wild shores of singapore: Cyrene quieter than usual

26 July 2025

Cyrene quieter than usual

Although Cyrene lies in the middle of an industrial triangle, it still has some of Singapore's most amazing shores.

A full team surveys at predawn and although the sandy areas seem quieter than usual, they find four Giant clams, baby cushion stars, Knobbly sea stars, dugong feeding trails!

The special find of the day: Kok Sheng encountered an Ovulid snail on a Leathery sea fan. Our first encounter in the South and on this sea fan. These snails are commonly seen in the North and feed on the sea fans! We also see 'Nemos', and well camouflaged Estuarine moray eel and other fishes. Chay Hoon spots a tiny green filefish the shape and size of a seagrass blade! Jonathan shares the shorebirds that we all miss because we seldom look up. There were also the usual nudibranchs plus one that was laying eggs. A variety of crabs, hermit crabs and prawns were also encountered.

The team together found 5 live Giant clams. 4 Fluted giant clams: One 40cm, two 30cm and one tiny 3cm. And 1 tiny Burrowing giant clam 3cm. The shells of a large dead Fluted Giant clam was also seen.

The highlight of any trip to Cyrene are the large Knobbly sea stars. I saw about 20 near the beacon, similar to what the team saw in May 2025 and in Nov 2024. The team also some other clusters of these sea stars in other parts of the reef flat.

The team saw Knobbly sea stars at various parts of the reef edge. Many were quite large! Kok Sheng photographed 20. The team also saw two juvenile Cushion stars about 6cm across. Juveniles are flatter (not puffed up into a near globe like adults), more star-shaped with more obvious (but short) arms. These are usually well hidden among and under rocks and stones and often overlooked. So far, Cyrene is where we most often encounter young Cushion stars.

There's never been a lot of hard corals on Cyrene since we first started surveying it. Most of them are boulder shaped and there are some large colonies. I had a brief look at the corals on the eastern end today. In Jun 2024, we estimate about 50% of the hard corals here were impacted by mass coral bleaching mostly the smaller hard coral colonies were outright bright white bleaching. While larger ones seemed alright. Similar to our last survey in Nov 2024 and May 2025, today I didn't see any bleaching.

Near the beacon and around the eastern tip of Cyrene, there remains a lot of large Leathery soft corals. Similar to our last survey in Nov 2024 and May 2025, today I didn't see any leathery soft corals bleaching. I also saw flowery soft corals, zoanthids, Leathery sea fans and Giant carpet anemones - they were also fine.

Today I saw some dugong feeding trails at our landing point north-westward facing Pasir Panjang Container Terminal nearer Jurong. These trails are formed when dugongs chomp up seagrasses including their roots, leaving a shallow meandering furrow of about equal width and depth. I didn't see many distinct trails elsewhere. It seems every survey since 2021, we see dugong feeding trails on Cyrene. Yay! Today, I got distracted chatting with the TeamSeaGrass folk doing monitoring on the shore, and I didn't take a closer look at the seagrass situation.

The huge and long sand bar seems very quiet even at pre-dawn. In the past, we used to see special snails, sand dollars here. I only saw a few commonly moon snails, olive snails, Cake sand dollars and even crab burrows were few. I saw a few star shaped impressions but no Common sea stars. I will update with the finds by the rest of the team later.

The sandy shores were rather quieter than usual. Altogether, the team only saw a few special snails: one Egg-white moon snail, some China moon snails. There were many Oval moon snails and some Olive snails which are commonly encountered. As recently as our last survey in May 2025, Grey bonnet snails were seen. None were seen today. There were also very few Common sand stars and even Cake sand dollars seemed much reduced in number. There were signs of Sand bubbler crabs after sunrise.

Since Kelvin's awesome drone views during our last survey in May 2025, I noticed the middle of the reef flat is now almost completely bare of sand. Along the edges, there is now a very long and narrow and tall sand bar along the western and extending to the southern edge of the shore facing Pulau Bukom. In the past, there was only one obvious sand bar at the western end. This shows in a comparison of Google Earth views of Cyrene through the years.

The team came across three large fish traps (bubu) laid on the reef and were high and dry at low tide. One near the beacon was already broken. There was a fish seen in one trap.

Although it lies in the middle of an industrial triangle and major shipping lanes, Cyrene has some of Singapore's most amazing shores. We had surveyed in Jun 2024 for impact of the Pasir Panjang oil spill a few weeks prior and did not see any signs of oil. Today, Cyrene to have pulled through both this oil spill and mass coral bleaching that happened last year. Let's hope it stays safe until we return!