ALLIED COWRIES! Ever since that fateful dive I did with the Hantu Bloggers where I saw my FIRST allied cowry, I have been fascinated with them!



THEY ARE SOOO CUTE!! I have no idea what species this is, but allied cowries in general are rather fascinating. For example, some allied cowries can get their shell pigments (and even vary their shell sculpture) from the substrate in which they live and feed on! So if they're transfered to another whip/soft coral of the same species, they'll eventually take on the colour of their new home! Amazing eh? Here's more pictures... I bumped into TWO that dive at Raffles Lighthouse! =)




Close up...Awww isn't it so adooorraaablllee?? =)



Oooh and here are some OTHER things I bumped into...





Hmm... actually I realise what made my work diving that day were all the TINY TINY creatures! And it is SO worthwhile when you actually SPOT one! And there are just LOADS in Singapore waters! You just have to keep you eyes peeled and know where they like to hide! I went back to the EXACT SAME SEAWHIP the next day to show Tse-Lynn the allied cowry again! It was STILL THERE!

Hmmm if only our waters were clearer, doing dive guiding here would be OH SO FUN and OH SO REAL! CLEAN OUR WATERS!  ¶ 2:23 PM 2 comments

  Free XXX Photos: Corals in action! WOOOH....It was a hot and steamy week at Raffles Lighthouse 26th March to 3rd April. It was GETTING HOT as Debby from the Hantu Bloggers puts it.

Terrific terrific teerrriiiifffiiiiccc fannntaasstiiccc week of diving when the corals put on a live show and had an orgy of a good time out there on the reefs of Raffles Lighthouse. With a STUNNING 6 M VIS!

In this campout, a group of people from NUS, NUS Marine Biology Lab, NParks and the Hantu Bloggers came out to witness the miracle, almost sacred for those of us who so love the marine environment, of coral spawning.

Dr. James Guest a.ka. Dr. Coral Sex from the Marine Bio Lab set up some transects days ahead and, roughly after sunset, we dived in and swam along these transects, recording and documenting any corals that was spawning.





It started out slow. The first few nights there were none but a couple of early spawners. One, two...bits of egg bundles floating here, there...nothing much. Not exactly what you'd expect after seeing the BLUE PLANET video on coral spawning about 10 times.


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Although there wasn't much coral spawning action, that doesn't mean there was NO action at all. Other critters were up and about! IT WAS SO FANTASTIC! It was, as Debby said, diving the Manado house reef! It's seriously NOT what you expect diving in Singapore would be. Especially NIGHT DIVING in Singapore. It was like WAHHHH....NO words can really describe it...AWESOME!

CRABS CRABS everywhere! Porcelain crabs, spider crabs, decorator crabs! SHRIMPS! Gorgonian shrimps, urchin shrimps, anemone shrimps...FISHES! Almost everywhere you shine your torch at, you'll see BIG FISHES! SMALL FISHES! All KINDS of fishes! Seriously unlike what you'd expect from Singapore! Debby & Jeff (NParks) even saw a NURSE SHARK on the night dive I didn't go...ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Proof, you ask? GO SEE HER BLOG!



















EVERYTHING just makes it WORTH it to clamber down the damn breakwater. The kind of breakwaters you see lining Singapore's coasts, making it possible to draw most parts of our shores with a ruler.

It's more like a rock wall, or whatever you call it. It was akin to combining rock climbing and diving...Isn't that just great, an extreme sport you can do just at your door step. I think I've gained more leg power from trying very very hard not to slip, trip and fall. Luckily, noone got injured.

The only major injury I had was from walking out of my house half asleep the morning of the campout. Somehow, I managed to fall along the pavement on my way to grab a cab. I was standing one minute and on the ground the next with a sprained ankle and a bloodied knee.

The funny thing was, there was this primary school kid that was walking towards me. And as I was falling, and even as I had fallen, the expression on his round little face didn't change a bit. I was down on the ground as he walked straight past me, wind in his hair. He didn't even GLANCE AT ME. It was thoroughly amazing. What's even MORE amazing was that I got into a cab with my bloodied knee, cleaned it and gave it some first aid in the cab, and the cab driver didn't say A WORD. What can I say...at least he didn't throw me out...But it's amazing how good Singaporeans are at ignoring things...

Anyway, that's besides the point. I felt like CRAP and all I wanted to do was go home after a night on the island. I didn't manage to finish my work (setting up my RECRUIT RACKS, see previous blog entry) during the day dive and the currents were crap. It didn't help that everyone threatened to hold me down and OPSITE my wound. If you've never felt OPSITE on an open wound before, give me a ring, I'll gladly introduce you to it. After 3 years of OPSITE-ing my wounds during expeditions, I didn't react to it kindly. Not if I have an alternative. I did go home, and treated my bloody pussy wound...with a much less painful, and more effective way.

The next couple of nights, the dives were more action packed! MORE SPAWNING! But that meant that I didn't have time to take photos of the other marine critters out and about!







Last year, we had a campout at Pulau Kusu to observe coral spawning too. And all I saw was these Acroporas (staghorn corals) spawning...But this year, I managed to witness the variety of ways corals spawn! I think spawning Acroporas is analogous with constipation, gross but true. You SEE the eggs, you SEE IT, but it takes SOOO damn LOONNGG for it to get pushed out. But when it IS released, it's WOW! FANTASTIC! Like...Aaaahhh......relief.

These spawning Acanthastria corals:



They remind me of RIPE ZITS being squeezed out. If you've squeezed your pimples before, then you'd know what I'm talking about. If not, use your imagination.



Then, there's also the spawning Favites corals that actually remind me of little sugar coated candies being dispensed. You know, the NERDS sweets made from the Willy Wonka factory thing...go look for it 7-eleven or sth. I ain't kidding you! Mmmmm.....sweeettsss....









These egg bundles you see are actually packets of sperm AND eggs all mixed into one. Later on, they will separate, get mixed and matched, to become a soup of coral larvae...Ah, the miracles of life!





Not much time to take photos of other things doesn't mean NO time at all! I saw a moray eel, 3 octopis (or whatever the plural for octopus is!), flatworms, feather stars aplenty, crabs and many more in addition to whatever I saw the night before!















The subsequent couple of days, there were EVEN MORE spawning activity! There were EGG BUNDLES EVERYWHERE! Mushroom corals spawned and the big massive boulder coral spawned too, along with many others! It was intensive work trying to note down all the corals spawning! I didn't manage to in the end, it was just WOW! TOO MANY THINGS GOING ON MAN! There were EGG BUNDLES EVERYWHERE! I said it before and I'll say it again, EGG BUNDLES EVERYWHERE! It was AMAZING! WAS JUST LIKE THE BLUE PLANET VIDEO! I felt like crying underwater...I think my mask got foggy for a short while...it was such a breathtaking moment just to see all that coral spawning and egg bundles in the water...Sigh, WOW, even with my bloody pussy knee, I wouldn't have traded that dive for anything!



















FANTASTIC NIGHT! That was the night I also saw an eel blenny:





After that, it was quite downhill, the vis started getting not as good; probably due to all that larvae and planulae in the water along with the change in currents...

I didn't see much on April Fool's night...nothing much at all...................................

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EXCEPT FOR A SPAWNING ANEMONE!!!!! WOOOOOHH!! IT WAS SO COOL!

The story goes as such. I was taking photos of a sleeping anemonefish...You know, when else can you get these fishes to stay still for once!













EXCITING NIGHT! And it was about to get EVEN MORE EXCITING! At about 6 am, the WIND started to really pick up speed...I was sleeping in a hammock under the coconut trees, so the thought of having one of the coconuts getting loose and falling on me really woke me up. And the thought of a rain storm on its way was also not very appealing. Also, Jeff told me stories of waves crashing above the breakwaters of Raffles Lightouse and washing gear and equipment away, so I was really expecting the worst. The lighthouse keepers were up and about too...they told me the wind will blow the rain past the lighthouse...

THE WIND WAS AMAAAZIINNNGGGLY STRONG... look at what happened to Jame's tent:





In any case, rain or not, falling coconuts don't equal a good night's sleep, so I moved into a tent after Dr. Peter Todd, from the Marine Bio Lab (who was unfortunately stuck on the island with me that dark, cold and stormy day...), secured the tents down.

And guess what, IT RAINED. IT BLOODY RAINED! And the TENTS were not WATERPROOF. IT WAS LEAKING! From seams, from zips...from god knows where! My tent was slowly flooding...I used some of my dirty shirts and rashguards and hammock to act as a barrier and kept on sleeping, inching bit by bit as more water flowed into the tent. I didn't have a sleeping bag, so it was just me and my sarong. Until I was cornered, literally, to the last few inches of the tent, did I move out to seek the bench under the lighthouse in the work area...I wanted to go home right then and there. BRRR....





Anyway, COMFORT ARRIVED! In the form of Abby and Zee! They quickly turned the wet dingy day around and we had a GREAT FUN TIME!





After breakfast we went snorkling! And saw so many things! I didn't manage to photo them all though...it's MUCH harder to stalk and photo something when you're so buoyant!

We saw so many gobies and shrimp pairs and ghost shrimps and octopus and small baby damselfishes and blue runners and wrasses and crabs and shrimps!!!!







And the HIGHLIGHT of my night dive was THIS WHITE ALLIED COWRY! IT WAS SOOO COOOOLLL!!!!!!!! I couldn't get enough of it! MY SECOND EVER ALLIED COWRY!!! My first was at Hantu!



Diving at Raffles Lighthouse is absolutely wonderful! At 12m, you get WALL DIVING with critters you'd normally find at depths of 30+m elsewhere! It's thoroughly AMAZING!

On the 3rd of April, we were to leave the island...I was both glad and sad. I was glad that I'd get to sleep on my dry bed again, but sad that as I'll be leaving all the great diving and cool marine creatures behind...

But as we were transporting all the tanks and camp stuff to the jetty, Danwei alerted me of a high pitch noise. He cooly told me that he thinks Abby was calling me. AND SHE WAS! SHE SAW THE METER LONG LONE BARRACUDA SWIMMING BY THE JETTY!!! I didn't manage to take a snap of it, as my camera wasn't handy...but it was HUGE AND LOOKED MEAN BUT OH SO MAGNIFACENT AT THE SAME TIME!!!!!! WOW!!!

And we also saw HUGE PARROTFISHES (the water was clear enough for us to see the reef flat area...) and a PAIR OF THE FOXFACE RABBITFISH, Siganus vulpinus, A NEW RECORD FOR SINGAPORE IN A LONG TIME!!!!. It's only been recorded in our fish markets in the earlier part of LAST CENTURY. So it's technically not a NEW new record, according to Kelvin Lim of the RMBR, but now, we have a definite locality record! According to him, these fishes don't usually occur in silty waters...BUT IT WAS THERE AND WE SAW IT! AHAHAHA! NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT!



ALL IN ALL, this was an AMAZING CAMPOUT!! The surprises of diving in Singapore. DEFINITELY REWARDING! Good bye Raffles Lighthouse, good bye night dives... hope to see you again next year...Hmmm....Good luck to all the baby corals!



  ¶ 10:26 PM 5 comments

  WORK IN PROGRESS: Studying Coral Recruitment If you've recently dived at Pulau Hantu, you might have noticed (or swam into) some new structures that have popped up recently. They might look a bit like THIS:



What are these? Is it rubbish some people have just thrown onto the reef? What is it for?

I'm sure these are just SOME of the questions that pop into your mind when you see these odd man-made structures underwater.

Well, for starters, these are what I call RECRUIT RACKS. They were placed there for research purposes by the Marine Biology Lab for studying coral settlement and recruitment.

What is coral settlement and recruitment?
Well, in essence, it's when small baby corals (coral larvae/planulae) floating about in the water column decide to SETTLE down on something (e.g. rock, dead coral, my terracotta tiles...hehe). These newly settled baby corals are sort of new RECRUITS to the reef and helps to build up the reef itself - just like when a new recruit joins the army...etc. I think you get my point, right? Heh...

Then, what sort of coral recruitment study are we doing?
There are a couple of things we want to find out. Firstly, we want to find out what is the angle of inclination of an artificial substrate that coral recruits like best - whether it is a horizontal, inclined (30 or 60 degrees) or vertical surface. This is the reason why you would probably see a cluster of 4 RACKS set up with these 4 angles.

Secondly, we want to find out at the different coral recruitment rates at different REEF ZONE - reef flat, reef crest or reef slope. This is why you would see my RACKS distributed at these 3 reef zones. You'd probably see it any zone with CORALS in them. You gotta dive deeper down if you want to escape my racks! Heh...

Thirdly, we want to find out the angle of inclination of a surface is most suitable for each reef zone, or whether there is any difference at all.

These are the main things we want to find out...

WHY do we want to find these things out?
This is a very important question. WHY. WHY indeed...WHY WHY WHY...No, it's not the fact that I like to hammer things in underwater and spend weeks setting them up, bolting them in, whether in strong currents and surge, or in slack water...



It is because, once we find these things out, we might be able to mitigate some of the horror that has been done to our reefs. Notice that all of my RECRUIT RACKS are set up at RUBBLE AREAS.

Rubble, as the name suggests is defined as loose pieces of dead coral. Our reefs are characterised by the high percentage of RUBBLE cover we have on our reefs. And previous studies have shown that these RUBBLE areas take VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY long to recover and get covered by corals. A scientist have even dubbed rubble areas as RUBBLE KILLING FIELDS. 'Cos the reason why these rubble areas take so long to recover is because when baby corals settle on the rubble pieces, they more often than not, DIE.

WHY DIE? Because the rubble pieces are LOOSE, not fixed. The tumble and turn, causing abrasion of the baby corals. When the rubble pieces turn, they can smother the baby corals too. They can get covered with silt very easily as well (as you would probably have experience with if you dive in Singapore). And they can roll off the reef into the deep abyss (or the not-so-deep abyss, but deep anough) where they can't get enough light, and DIE.





Sad cycle of death. Corals in Singapore are getting stressed by all sorts of factors. Siltation/sedimentation, boat groundings, improper anchoring practices, and illegal collection among others. And if the rate of degradation of the coral reef is not balanced by the rate of recruitment and recovery, the reef will eventually die off. And I'm SURE none of us want this, right?

And to find out how to BEST mitigate these affects, and help give our reefs a PUSH (maybe even a SHOVE), we need to know WHAT corals like, how they behave (in a way) and essentially BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE so as not to do the wrong thing and waste more time. With enough information, we can hopefully specially cater to the rehabilitation of Singapore's reefs. Each reef is unique and so is Singapore's.







Hopefully, this study, along with others in this REEF RESTORATION AND REHABILITATION project, can provide background information not only about Singapore's reefs, but also reefs similar in nature in other parts of the world. Local data for global use.

THEN, WHY HANTU?!?!? OF ALL PLACES?!!
The reasons why I chose Hantu West as one of the two locations for my research (the other is Raffles Lighthouse reef), is because, 1) coral spawning has been documented there before, meaning there is a SOURCE of baby corals, 2) Survey results show a drastic almost 50% decrease in live coral cover at this particular stretch of fringing reef (see report on REEF FRIENDS HANTU SURVEY). This site is also dive often by many divers and hold BOUNTIFUL MARINE LIFE! (as you can see from the HANTU BLOG and we would like to find out whether it's recovering and how we can help it recover faster too.



SO WHAT DO YOU DO IF YOU COME ACROSS THE RECRUIT RACKS?
Well, you can... LEAVE IT BE, for one. I would greatly appreciate if you do not touch it. WHY? Because it is, after all, an experiment and by touching it (especially the tiles), you are introducing bias. And you could be removing small microscopic BABY CORALS from the tiles!!!!!




It's a DAMN PAIN to set them up and don't get me started about that. My nails are TOTALLY gone, there's scars on both my hands and diving everyday doing WORK when the VIS IS SO BLOODY FANTASTIC is SOOOOOOO ARGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Not that it's bad. I mean beats doing work in 20cm VIS. But but but... ARGHHH it's so TEMPTING to just swim off especially when you see huge schools of yellowtail barracudas, frogfish, nudibranchs and all things SO SO COOL aplenty around you. And they ALL seem to show up when I'm doing work and have no time to photograph anything!



Also, if you happen to be diving and see any of my racks upturns, upset, destroyed, uprooted, cracked, broken, disturbed, PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO EMAIL ME!

I also have sediment traps and temperature loggers deployed there so please do not disturb them either yah!

All these racks would hopefully be removed after 4 months unless they are of further experimental of rehabilitation use for the reef. Until then, please please... do not disturb them.

I hope I've answered MOST of the questions that you had in mind... and I hope you understand my explanations. I would have written more if not for the fact that this thing is getting too LONG and you might not even GET this far into the blog....hehehe...

I'll leave you with this photo of an ICON STAR that I came across when doing work at Hantu... This sea star is so ICONIC (geddit geddit) to Hantu... PRETTY AIN'T IT! =)



OH OH OH OH OH ONE MORE THING! If you happen to have FREE TIME and WANT TO BUDDY ME for my work dives, EMAIL ME TOO.  ¶ 9:52 PM 1 comments