Hi folks,

Hantu was surveyed by a mixed team of BWV old-timers and newbies. Thanks to everyone’s enthusiasm, we still managed to complete our work in a timely manner. The results of the coral surveys follow:

Cheers, Jeff

Hi everyone,

We’ve been quiet for a while now – many of us a struggling to juggle work with studies and volunteering, so we’ll have to let things develop at their own pace, for now.

That being said, some BWV members managed to get a paper published in Nature in Singapore on some new fish records, observed while doing coral reef surveys. The article can be found here (it’s number 12 on the list).

Ever efficient Ria has already reported its publication

Cheers, Jeff

When:
Theory: 11, 16, 18 and 23 Dec 08
Practical: To be decided on the first day of the course

Time: 7pm to 10pm

Location:
Classroom 4, Botany Centre, Tanglin Core, Singapore Botanic Gardens

What will the course cover:
- What is BWV all about?
- What is the Reef Friends survey about?
- Basic coral reef facts
- Survey techniques

Cost:
The course will cost S$100. This will only cover admin costs (training materials, room bookings etc). It will not include costs for the practical sessions (there will be a minimum of two practical sessions).

Sign up:
Please sign up here.

Reef Friends Coordinators

With all the data in and checked, here are the results for the coral reef survey at Raffles Lighthouse on 11 Oct 08. Pretty awesome numbers for coral cover – along with the photos of animals we saw during the survey, makes this one of our best sites.

The shallow transect

The deep transect

A reef walk to Kusu, in the middle of the pilgrimage month, is fraught with obstacles, from road closures, to hordes of people at the jetty, to uncooperative (or maybe just disorganised) ferry operators.

Luckily, the road closures to Marina South ceased by early afternoon, but the hordes of people at the jetty meant that getting our reef walkers organised to board the ferry was messier than normal. It didn’t help that the ferry operator provided us with a 80-seater ferry when we had 90 people. It was a good thing that the “extra” people could hop on board a second ferry, also headed for Kusu.

The horde (not all of whom were reefwalkers).

Reefwalkers boarding the ferry.

A second ferry to Kusu? you might ask. Apparently, there was to be a traditional performance at the temple on Kusu that very night (Monkey and Duck were in attendance there, although duck wanted to go on the reef walk instead) – hence the horde of people at the jetty.

The confusion of the ferry operators continued, when they informed us, upon arriving at Kusu, that our ferry would leave at 9.30pm, instead of 8.30pm as we had originally planned. We wondered about this, since the ferries that brought us here didn’t go anywhere after they dropped us off, and were tied at the Kusu jetty. I suppose there must have been some cosmic reason for the later departure that mere mortals like us would not be able to fathom.

In any case, with the extra time on our hands, we could then take our time for the walk, and I must say, it was quite a walk. Two groups headed off to the south lagoon, while the other 6 went to the north. The south lagoon, as most of you might know is a bit smaller than the northern one, and muddier, but there was no lack of critters to see.

An octopus-in-a-bag.

And a cuttlefish.

An upside down jellyfish (this is normal behaviour – the tentacles are held up to feed off plankton).

The group I was guiding asked if I could bring them to the northern lagoon, which I agreed to. Apparently other groups had the same idea – as my group was leaving the south lagoon, another group was crossing over from the north.

There were some interesting things to see at the north lagoon as well, despite the fast rising tide.

An anemone, paralysing the tiny fish startled into range of its tentacles by our footsteps. And in the same anemone ….

… An anemonefish (Amphiprion ocellaris) trying to hide in its tentacles.

And further up the lagoon, a dead/dying ghost crab that, upon closer inspection, had a cracked carapace.

This raised an interesting discourse on the impact of our walks on the lagoon – from watching where you step, to minimising the impact by spreading out the groups, and even to the length of time between walks. It also allowed us to get a few photographs of an otherwise elusive creature.

The walk finally ended at about 1030pm, when we waved good-bye to the tired, but hopefully happy, participants at the jetty.