Sunday, December 9, 2007

Checking Chek Jawa out

This time, Justin and Ivan joined me to Chek Jawa to check out how is the health of the shore after all the Johor floods and monsoon rains.


As commented by Ron, there are an increase of baby horseshoe crabs in CJ. He shared that before the mass death, he only recalled seeing one only. Changes in environment means changes in ecology balances and changes in populations.


This catfish was doing fine at tidal pools.


Warty sea cucumber by the edge of the seawater.


One of the changes will be the increase in runoff towards the sea. While checking out my transect poles, that some gone missing, realized that recent increase in rain has led to more freshwater input from Ubin, the rain itself and also from the huge Johor river mouth.

We checked the salinity over different areas of CJ and realized they were as low as 19.9-23.4ppt as compared to average 27-29ppt in July. Of course, we have to factor today's rain, but imagine how low salinity can be and how it can affect the marine community.


Behind the forest front in above photo, I saw A LOT of rubbish!


Photos of Justin and Ivan trying to take salinity readings from boardwalk as tide today was not ideally low.


And the probe goes down.


Lastly, something off topic, they have cleared the way up to the rear CJ beacon.

3 comments:

Ria Tan said...

Among my photos of past documentation at Chek Jawa, in Jun 03, I came across many baby catfishes similar to one in your photo. They were among the seagrasses on Chek Jawa.

Ron Yeo said...

Thought I better clarify that while I'm seeing more juvenile horseshoe crabs these days, can't really confirm if it has anything to do with the mass death :P

Don't know if there's some breeding season for horseshoe crabs, so it could be just pure coincidence.

Talking about the catfishes, about one month after the flood, we saw many of them too in a tidal pool at the coral rubble area.

Kok Sheng said...

thanks Ria and Ron for your input on the catfishes.