Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Appeal for help: Have you seen them?


Have you seen them this year?

Species-wise, Chek Jawa has been recovering well. Most of the key missing species have returned including the knobbly sea star, common sea star, flowery soft corals etc. However, there are some more candidates that has still been missing, from my observations. Below is a list of them that I've gathered.

keyhole sand dollar (Echinodiscus truncatus)
peanut worms (Phylum Sipuncula)
Crown sea star (Asterina coronata)
Neptune's cup sponge (Phylum Porifera)
Flatworms (Phylum Platyhelminthes)
Cake sea star (Anthenea aspera)
Synaptid sea cucumber (Family Synaptidae)
Sea apple sea cucumber (Pseudocolochirus violaceaus)
Melon or Baler Shell (Melo melo)
Fan worms (Family Sabellidae)

If you have seen anyone of these marine animals at Chek Jawa after Feburary 2007, (for example during guided walks), please leave a comment in this post. If you want to add on to the list of lost animals, please also leave your comment in this post. One thing to note, please also leave your name behind too.

Your help is very important to help me document recovery in Chek Jawa. I believe that there are some species which have returned, but no one has found them only, since Chek Jawa is big.

A big thank you in advance :-)

Photos of collage belongs to Ria Tan from her online guide and virtual gallery.

http://chekjawa.nus.edu.sg/ria/index.html
http://www.wildsingapore.com/chekjawa/index.html

Updated List of "found"s

Pencil sea urchin (Prionocidaris bispinosa)
Sea squirt (Polycarpa sp.)
Hard corals (Order Scleractinia) sea pencil (Cavernularia sp.)
Gong-gong (Strombus canarium)

It is to note, as advised by Ria, that many of the "lost" fauna as stated in the list are already rare in the first place before the mass death. Therefore, species-wise recovery has been successful.

This is not the end of the story though as Northeast monsoon has started.

1 comment:

Life is a Maze said...

Hi, I know this post is pretty old, and I'm not sure if my info is out of date or anything, but a brown lined flatworm HAS been found at one of the seagrass pools, on 19 December 2009, during a night walk.