The shallow transect.

The deep transect.

Thanks to Yan who organised the trip, and Zi Wee, Darryl, Rachel, Kee Seng and Eunice for volunteering!

Cheers, Jeff

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

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

The shallow transect

The deep transect

A school of three Many-spotted Sweetlips (Plectorhynchus chaetodontoides). I was told later by the fish surveyors that another two were under the coral head below these three.

Two HUGE Ceratosoma nudibranchs.

A fairly uncommon Lemon Damsel (Pomacentrus moluccensis). Last time I saw this was in 2003, I think.

NUS had a research project there are Satumu, using fiberglass modules as substrate for corals to grow on. The results, I would say, speak for themselves (at least for this site):

And despite Satumu being so far away from the mainland, you can still this, which I removed.

Gunny sack wrapped around a coral.

More stories and photographs on the Satumu dive at Chay Hoon’s and Hui Bing’s blogs, and also pictures on Raffles Lighthouse itself (OK, just the one, actually) and the underwater fauna that call it home at my Pulau Satumu set on Flickr.

We’ve been having some trouble with our website and emails lately. The website issues have mostly been resolved, thanks to our web magician Jacki, but email is still a bit cranky. Some of your emails to the “.bluewatervolunteers.org” email accounts might not get through, so, alternative email accounts to write to are:

Reef Walk: reefwalk@gmail.com
Reef Friends: reeffriends@gmail.com

I’ll post again when our problems are all sorted out.

Cheers, Jeff

Here are the results of the coral reef survey at Sisters on 19 Jul 08.

The shallow transect

The deep transect

The visibility wasn’t great today, about 2.5m, but manageable. With only 5 of us today (and one not trained at all), we had our work cut out for us – Jun and myself tackled the shallow, while Chay Hoon, Yan and Wei Yong tackled the deep transect. The coral transect went relatively smoothly – there were some large colonies there and it made the data recording somewhat easier.

A large Symphyllia coral … the slate is about 15cm long.

I did notice quite a few overturned corals (11, to be exact) and fragments of plate corals. I also observed some aluminum frames (probably from NUS experiments) scattered across the reef, like a hurricane gone through. After the survey, while swimming back to the boat, I found out why – I found the remains of an anchor, still attached to its chain and a significant length of the rope, spread out across the reef! Lacking the cutting tools to remove the rope, I had to leave the remains there. But it should not be difficult to find the anchor again – a job for another time.

An overturned coral head. Lifting it to shallower waters was not possible, but at least I managed to push it back upright.

During the fish survey, right at the start of the 4th transect, I spotted a fish I had never seen before on our reefs – a Bumphead bannerfish (Heniochus varias)! Fish survey forgotten, I managed to snap a series of blurred photos of the fish.

First in a series of blur, sediment-filled photos of the bannerfish.

The second blur shot of the bannerfish, at a slightly better angle.

The third blur shot of the fish.

This is the 3rd fish that the Reef Friends surveys have encountered that are “new” to Singapore, the other two being the Barramudi Cod (at Semakau – can’t find the link, sorry!) and Janss’ pipefish (at Jong and Hantu).

My elation at spotting a possible new record was somewhat squashed when I checked with our local fish expert Kelvin (from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, NUS), since this fish had been recorded from Singapore before. The upside is that the older record was from a fish market, which makes this the first known record of a live fish on our reefs. I was also cautioned though, that this fish might be a released specimen (by someone bored with his marine tank, perhaps), but there is no way to verify this.

We managed to complete all our surveys by 3pm, and I even managed to turn some of the overturned coral back upright, in the hopes that they would recover from their trauma and continue to survive.

All in all, a good dive – but then again, my philosophy is that every dive is a good dive

Cheers, Jeff

Shallow transect at Semakau site S4, conducted 28 Jun 2008.

Deep transect at Semakau site S4, conducted 28 Jun 2008.

Cheers, Jeff