Day 2 at Chek Jawa

Today, I was back at Chek Jawa again. My assistant was Demao, who happened to be my neighbour working as a temp staff for NParks! Used to bump into him in the lift when he was a small kid. How time flies, and now he has already finished his NS!



On our way to the shore, we saw many fruit trees, including the starfruit above. There was a kampong here last time, and thus many fruit trees were planted by the people who used to live there.

To make it easier for me to gather the group, I decided that we need a group name, and told my visitors that we would name our group after the first animal we saw.

The first animal we saw happened to be a vinegar crab, but most of the kids in my group didn't want to be called crabs. Thus, we decided to call ourselves after the second animal we saw - the mudskipper!



Have you eaten ice kacang before? The attap chee in the dessert came from the nipah palm, and you can find a whole forest of them at Chek Jawa! The above shows the fruits of the nipah palm, forming a huge ball. Each fruit contains an attap chee.



We soon got onto the sandy shore, and saw this bigger-than-your-face carpet anemone.



The children were quite fascinated by the sand dollars with its tiny spikes.



There were several sandfish sea cucumber too. This sea cucumber can be eaten, but must be specially treated first to remove its toxins.



We also saw many striped hermit crabs! Hermit crabs need a shell to protect their soft body. So please don't pick up shells from the beach, or the hermit crabs will have to run around naked without any protection from its predators!



Here two caring parents showing their daughter how to gently handle a sand star.



Here's a sponge crab in a tidal pool at one of the hunter-seeker stations. This crab usually carry a sponge or colonial ascidians trimmed them to the right size. And all this while, the sponge or ascidian remains alive!



We also saw several crab moults. The above was the moult of a flower crab. As crabs have hard external skeletons, they need to shed it to grow bigger. The old shell is called a moult.



There were plenty of brittle stars too!



And in some of the tidal pools, we found a few pretty peacock anemone.



This sole fish is so well-camouflaged that if you don't look carefully, you will think that it's part of the sand!



One of the visitors found this little leaf slug covered with silt.



There were also huge clumps of mussels growing on the pillars of the pontoon.



And here's a group shot of my visitors for the day!

All in all, it was definitely a great day out!

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!