Back Guiding at Chek Jawa

Today was the first time I guided at Chek Jawa after the mass death that happened at the beginning of the year. Though I've visited it several times for the past few months for either NParks events, Team Seagrass sessions or Kok Sheng's study, I was still kind of excited to be back guiding here again :)

And fortunately, it turned out to be a great day too!



Even before we stepped onto the tidal flats, we saw this juvenile black spitting cobra trying to swallow a toad! This snake is venomous, and thus whenever we see one, we would always treat it with respect and watch from a safe distance. Well, if we don't disturb the snake, the snake won't disturb us too! Let's face it, it has better things to do, like looking for prey which can better fit into its mouth. They swallow their prey whole, you know?



And here's a shot of the group before we got onto the sandflats. All smiles and energetic!



There were many mudskippers just under the boardwalk. This fish could survive out of water by storing water in it's mouth and gill chambers. It could breathe through its skin if its wet too.



Walking along the seagrass lagoon, I spotted this little pink sea cucumber among the sea grass. Do you know that sea cucumbers breathe through their anus?



Here's a much bigger one - the sandfish sea cucumber. This sea cucumber is edible, but must be properly treated before they can be eaten, as it contains toxins.



There were lots of striped hermit crabs among the seaweeds and seagrasses.



We saw several mangrove horseshoe crabs too. Horseshoe crabs are actually not true crabs, but are more closely related to scorpions and spiders.



There were many sand dollars too, and most of them were burrowing just beneath the sand.



Near to one of the hunter-seeker stations, we found this swimming anemone among some seaweeds. Unlike most other sea anemones that attach themselves to the substrate or other hard surfaces, this anemone is free-living and can actually swim around by pulsating itself!



Our hunter-seekers found us this sea star which I wasn't really sure about the ID, though I was pretty sure it's not a biscuit sea star (Goniodicaster scaber). Sijie had also asked me about this sea star some time back. Thought it resembles a Gymnanthenea laevis the most after checking through "A Guide to Sea Stars and Other Echinoderms of Singapore". This sea star can usually be identified by spine-like tubercles on the central radial plates, and the bottom surface is covered by bivalved pedicellariae (little oval-shaped structures) which you can't find on a biscuit sea star.



Such oval-shaped structures can also be found on the bottom surface of cake sea stars (Anthenea aspera), and for a while I thought it could be a juvenile cake sea star. But then spines on the top surface were not typical of cake sea stars, so most probably it's a Gymnanthenea laevis or a related species.



There were lots of brittle stars stranded on the sand bar.



Lot's of beautiful peacock anemones were spotted in the various tidal pools too!




And as it got a little darker, the sand stars started emerging from the sand like magic.



And yet another special find for today's trip - 2 file snakes found by our hunter-seekers! Unlike the black spitting cobra we saw earlier, this snake is not venomous, and thus we were more than eager to get close and personal with them :P



Here's fellow CJ guide, Chay Hoon, posing with one of the file snakes.



And one of the visitors from my group had a go too!



And here's a group shot before we finally had to leave the sandflats. Still all smiles and energetic.



We headed back onto the boardwalk, and as we walked towards the mangrove area, we noticed that the fiddler crabs were really out in full force!



And after making a quick loop around the mangrove boardwalk, we finally climbed up the 20m tall Jejawi Tower, which was named after the Malayan Banyan tree growing next to it.

Certainly, it was great to be back guiding at Chek Jawa. Although we didn't managed to see the knobbly sea star like the previous walk last month (the water was too murky for our hunter-seekers to find them), we still saw lots of interesting things, and that just shows that Chek Jawa is recovering well from the mass death, and still has plenty of things to offer!

Exploring Semakau on 28 Oct 2007

I heard the news reader on the radio saying it would rain in the afternoon just as I was leaving my place yesterday.

Shucks! Don't tell me every time we go for our own exploratory trip, it will rain!

When we reached the shores, the sky looked strange - half of it was blue sky, the other half covered with dark clouds.

Hmm...

Anyway, we went on with our exploration. The tide was still quite high, as we decided to come earlier to take a look at the mangroves which we had often neglected.



One of the first few animals we spotted - a cute little ladybird on a sea hibiscus leaf.



A perepat tree has hundreds, if not thousands of cone-shaped roots. I was always extra careful whenever I walked among these roots. Can't imagine what will happen if I were to slip and fall. In fact, most of the time I try to avoid wondering among perepat roots.



Many of the seashore pandan were also fruiting. The fruits always remind me of pineapples. This is a very useful plant - the leaves were sometimes used to weave into basket or mats, and the fruits were used by fishermen as floats. Essential oil extracted from the male flower is used by North Indians for cooking or even as a perfume.

My attention soon drifted to the rocky areas near the mangrove. According to the "Guide to Sea Stars & Echinoderms of Singapore", a type of sea star which I've only seen at Pulau Tioman so far, Cryptasterina sp, can be found on Semakau's rocky shore. And Luan Keng told me that she had seen it before!

Thus, one of my main objectives for this trip was to find it!

I started randomly turning over rocks along the shore as I walked towards the western end of the intertidal area.

And finally, after searching for about half an hour, I found them!



At last! And now, the types of sea stars we've seen on Semakau in the intertidal area add up to 5! We have the sand-sifting sea star (Archaster typicus), knobbly sea star (Protoreaster nodosus), cushion star (Culcita novaeguineae), crown rock star (Asterina coronata), and now, the cryptic rock star (Cryptasterina sp.)!

I managed to find 6 or 7 of them before I stopped flipping over every other rock. The colour of the ones I found was somewhat different from the ones I've seen at Tioman and in the guide book though. So I'm not sure if it's just a colour variation or a different species.

It soon started drizzling, but fortunately it wasn't that bad and we managed to carry on with our exploration.

Finally, we reached the far end of the mangroves at the mouth of the river.



This was certainly a special moment to remember - my first time coming to this far end of Semakau!



And on the rocky area near the end of the stream, I found a giant top shell, ultra well camouflaged among the rocks. I've seen giant top shells several times before on some of our southern islands, but this is the first time I've seen it on Semakau!

Following the stream, we reached a seagrass meadow and several sandy patches here and there. I saw a shell moving and decided to pick it up. It's a striped hermit crab. But wait! There's something else...



There's a chiton at the opening of the shell! It's that oval-shaped thing in front of the hermit crab's pincers. Can you see the eight plates on its back? A chiton is a mollusc, related to squids, clams, and snails! This was the first time I saw a chiton in Singapore! Heard from Angie that she often saw them while diving though. The last time I saw one was in New Zealand. They were much bigger there though.

My second objective of this trip was to find the sand dollars. We knew that there were sand dollars on Semakau from Zeehan, but we were not sure where.



As we walked further out into the seagrass meadow, I came across a sandy patch and saw many circular prints on the sand. So, here's where they were hiding! And there were so many of them too!



And just nearby, there were lots of sand-sifting sea star. This one only has four arms, unlike the usual ones with five arms.

And just then Luan Keng shouted something and caught everyone's attention.



She found a juvenile knobbly among the seagrass! (Note: Pai seh, found out from July's blog that Helen was the one who found it, though Luan Keng was the one who shouted to me.) This was the second juvenile knobbly we'd seen on Semakau. The previous one was found during the public walk. Too bad we wanted to explore the reef edge, and thus did not spend more time to look for more of them. I'm sure there will be many others in the seagrass lagoon.

And heading towards the reef edge, we spotted several sea cucumbers.



Two shorter ones on top were the stonefish sea cucumber (L) and the dragonfish sea cucumber. The longer ones below were a synaptid sea cucumber (L) and a long thorny sea cucumber which we'd never seen on Semakau before! It's probably as long as, if not longer than my arm!

We also saw a few carpet anemones with nemos. While I didn't managed to get any clear photos of the nemos, I got this instead:



An anemone shrimp in a cup-size carpet anemone! Looks really cute :)



We also found a grumpy looking moon crab among the seagrass.



And this discodoris nudibranch was the only nudibranch I saw for the day.



Nearer to the coral reef, I had another special find - a giant clam! It hasn't grown that big yet though, perhaps about 15cm long.



There were several noble volutes too, and one of them appeared to be feeding on a spiral melongena. Felt so pai seh because I didn't know it was feeding and picked it up. It dropped the snail which was engulfed in its foot immediately. It appeared that there was hardly anything left in the melongena shell though, except a bit of blackish soup. I quickly put the volute back down on top of the mostly eaten melongena. Hopefully it would continue its meal.



And just not far from the volute, 2 squids. They look really cute when they were hunting. They swam near the surface of the water, with their arms opened up to two sides, looking like the blades of a pair of scissors, and their two tentacles tried to snatch any passing fishes. But guess they weren't too successful, probably because I was there watching with my torch shining around.

All too soon, it's time to go back. Semakau was just too big, and I think I had hardly even covered 5 percent of the intertidal area!

Sure want to come back here again to explore!

:)