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

Since Chay Hoon didn’t have enough time to take many photos, I thought I’d share these that I took while doing the general reef survey.

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.

HI everyone,

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: [email protected]
Reef Friends: [email protected]

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

Cheers, Jeff

A long overdue post (one of several).

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

The shallow transect

The deep transect