Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Exploration @ Tuas Coast

I'm out again today to catch the low tide over at the coastal area at Tuas behind a manufacturing plant. The seagrass team from the plant is ready to perform transect right behind their work place at Tuas Coast. Although the tide table showing -0.1m at 6.05pm, the water level however is at a rather high level throughout the whole evening. We didin't manage to walk to the beacon without getting pants and shirt wet. Must prepare to swim over or allow the sea water level to reach chest hight before can reach the beacon. Well, Ron did managed to reach the beacon after multiple attempts towards the end of our walk, but is too dark to see anything with the high water level.
This Sand star was rather skinny was spotted by Helen and is the only sea star we saw for this trip.

Sea pen.

This jelly fish is beautiful. Is small but very energetic, never want to slow down for us to take a nice shot of her.

Since theere is no sign that the water level is going down further, we continue the walk with the water at knee high and most photos were taken under water. This is also my first experience of having a tidal exploration in the water for the entire walk. Luckily with the technology, now most camera are equipped with water proving ability without having to add additional casing.
There are lots of thunder crab roamming freely in the water. The photo on the left showing a female crab with thousands of egg.

Close up shot on this beautiful sea anemones

There are lots of sponges too, this one looks like a honeycomb.

Softcorals are out for feeding too

There are lots of hydroid and sea squirt too.

Not forgetting hard corals, softcorls and sponges of all kinds and colours.
Suprisingly, we didn't see a lot of swimming crabs as compare with other southern shores in Singapore. Those that we have spotted (only 4 or 5) mainly about 4 to 6cm. Managed to take this sea fan about 1.2m under sea water.

Helen was shouting something swim below to hide under a rock! I quickly aim my camera and take the photo. I didn't see any thing at that time and only realised is a toadfish after uploaded to my PC.

Before we end our walk while on the way back, we saw this pink sea cucumber. With the water at knee hight, we also spotted alot of blue spotted fantail stingray. We will come back again when the tide is really low to visit this hard to reach coastal of Singapore.

Thanks to Sheryl, Helen & Haniff for the arrangement and guide.

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