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.

Johor on red alert as floods hit

Meera Vijayan and Farik Zolkepli, The Star 6 Dec 07

JOHOR BARU: Continuous rainfall over the last 24 hours has caused floods in five districts in Johor.

As at 2pm Thursday, over 1,000 victims had been evacuated in Johor Baru, Segamat, Batu Pahat, Kota Tinggi and Kluang. The Meteorological Services Department has also upgraded its heavy rain warning from orange to red for Kelantan, Terengganu and northern Pahang, and advised the people to be on alert for floods.

The red stage warning refers to tropical storm or typhoon with sustained wind speed of at least 60kmph accompanied by moderate to heavy rain, while orange stage means moderate monsoon rain is occurring and expected to continue for several hours.

A bridge from Labis to Segamat near Sungai Karas has been cut off and was accessible only to heavy vehicles.

Johor Police Chief Dep Comm Datuk Hussin Ismail said that police had opened their 24-hour flood operations room as of 8am on Thursday.

“We are prepared for the floods and all our men are on standby,” he said.

State Women, Family and Community Development Committee chairman Dr Robia Kosai said that the Welfare Department had already sent out food and emergency supplies to all districts as of Wednesday.

“The supplies have even been sent out to the islands off Mersing and interior areas like Kampung Peta in Endau-Rompin,” she confirmed.

For more information, the public can contact the police hotline at 07) 221-6393 and the Fire and Rescue Department hotline at 07) 224-7444.

The Meteorological Services Department also issued a first category warning on strong winds and rough seas for the coastal waters off Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, east Johor, Sarawak and Sabah. The first category warning shows strong northesterly winds of 4050kmph with waves up to 3.5m.

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Will Chek Jawa tide through this series of monsoon storms?

More recent reports:
7/12/07 3,200 flee Johor floods
7/12/07 Johor, Pahang on red alert as rivers breach danger levels
7/12/07 Johor floods recede, except in Segamat

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.

Return of common sea star

Photo taken by Ron Yeo on 25 November 2007.

Elated to find out that common sea star (Archaster typicus) has returned to Chek Jawa. They were missing since the mass death early this January.

Read more about Ron's account at his "A Rainy Day at Chek Jawa" post from The Tide Chaser blog.

A little more about these creatures fom Ria's Wildsingapore online Chek Jawa guide page and also at this gallery.

Now for the exciting part, will there be any changes to the huge mussel bed population after the sea star's return?

Getting wet and out of time

A day after our monitoring session, I was out with the Team Seagrass gang to Chek Jawa again. And this time, I did not intend to help them with the monitoring as kindly approved by Siti, but decided to tie up any loose ends, do up unfinished work from previous days, redo some wrong stuffs, and many more housekeeping work.

Everytime when I want to do housekeeping work like checking out my points and tidying up my transect start and end points and also anemone markers, something will crop up. Unfortunately, this time either. Was happy when I set off on a sunny weather, but only to realize dark clouds over Changi and Ubin before we we set off. On the bumboat ride, rain poured like nobody's business and we were waiting at the jetty for a hour before we could finally reach Chek Jawa.

Thinking the rain's over, we all cheerfully started work. Yet again, I saw another dark cloud patch looming from Johor, now with more thunder and lightning. And what happened next was another hour plus of rain and getting trapped in poncho standing in Chek Jawa, unable to do any work. So I ended up doing a bit of seagrass monitoring with Ria. Wow, waterproof datasheet works wonders. Will try to get them for December rainy season's trips.


And finally, after the long long wait for the rain to be over, I was only left with less than 45mins to complete 3 hour plus of job. All the stress made me having to run all over the place again. Thank God that Sijie, Gaytri, Marcus and Jerald volunteered to help me out.

Above: Photo of Chek Jawa after rain.


Another photo of Chek Jawa after a rain. Leads me to think of the pre-mortality scenario where rain kept pouring down nonsense and if it coincides with a series of low spring tides, salinity will be much lower than usual, affecting the osmoregulatory systems of the marine creatures.


I had to really go and only had time to re-monitor a couple of carpet anemones to check for errors.


Close-up of these squares that were positioned for future counting of tentacles.

Sijie was kind to climb up the Jejawi tower to take a panoramic photo for October. Below are a series of photographs taken from July to October for comparison of any major changes.


Above: Taken on 15th July 2007.

Above: Taken on 16th August 2007.

Above: Taken on 28th October 2007.

One thing that is obvious from a quick scan and comparison of these three photographs chronologically will be the increase of algae cover over Chek Jawa from July to October, which is most likely due to algae bloom season.

Heartening recovery of Chek Jawa

On a bright sunny Saturday, a team of 11 enthusiastic friends who volunteered to help out with the project arrived at Chek Jawa in the afternoon. This time, we were monitoring the recovery of different groups of charismatic macrofauna or marine animals. The last time we came, it was a predawn operation, so this time was easier to conduct in terms of coordination. However, doing monitoring during a hot afternoon made us realize something important... which will be talked about in a while below.


The first team featured in this post will be the peacock anemone team- Bingquan and Liana. They were setting huge quadrats to monitor the peacock anemones within it.


And viola! The quadrat has been set up. After which, it was the time the team did some searching and measuring of the colourful peacock anemones.


We were also monitoring button shells, or snails that are named as the "jewels of Chek Jawa". These animals are doing abundantly well in the northern sandbar and we have Robyn and Alex working conscientiously with these snails. It's no mean feat because there are hundreds of them in a 15 by 15cm quadrat. And surprisingly, they arranged it in the grid of the tray very neatly though I didn't told them to. Big thank you :-)


And here's Yilin and Demin with the sand dollar work. Work became harder for the couple when they approached the northern sandbar with really a lot of sand dollars. Basically, we were trying to measure the density of sand dollars within a quadrat to tell the story that these animals are back and recovery is going good.


Why is Justin and Siyang so unhappy in the photo?? This is because almost all the sand stars that they were assigned to search and measure went hiding in the scorching afternoon. They were like searching for a pin in the haystack for most of the time. It was only after about 6.30pm those sand stars started showing up like nobody's business. And then, they had to hurriedly start the real work. Will take this into consideration for the next afternoon-evening tide monitoring session.


Nevertheless, I "forced" them to smile in front of the sun. Haha.


This photo was taken when the sky started darkening and sand stars showing up. Interestingly, a flower crab decided to join into the photo by crawling in. Also found within is a peacock anemone.


Sunset glow in Chek Jawa is fabulous. And poor Nicholas has to work all alone with the mussel beds. Nevertheless he did a great conscientious job on these invasive species. Apparently, the mussel beds are still going strong. Will they stay for good? Only time will tell.


Last but definitely not the least, we have the most experienced team-the carpet anemone team. Most experienced because Ria and Yuchen decided to help again, despite their busy schedules. This time, with the number of tenacle squares to monitor increased from 2 to 8 and also other bits of new work to do, that explains the frowning or hysterical faces. Haha. Apparently, some anemones went missing! Either they died or they migrated elsewhere. Nevertheless, the carpet team is the most efficient. Hooray!

Now to the second part of the post which shows the rich diversity of fauna that Chek Jawa now has, which reflects also the recovery of Chek Jawa from the mass death early this year.


National Parks Board had a public walk that day also and I chanced upon some of their finds for the visitors to see. That includes a small baby horseshoe crab, sponge crab, brittlestar, sea cucumber etc.


More of the hunter seeker's find includes a small jellyfish, ball sea cucumber, moon snail, egg collars etc.


A close up of the sponge crab. It's the first time I see this in Chek Jawa.


And amazingly, they also found the copperbanded butterflyfish and also two juvenile kite butterflyfishes. They are beautiful fishes.


To the star part- the biscuit seastar is more common, and they not only reside in the coral rubble, but I saw them also in the seagrass lagoon.


And the find of the day-WELCOME BACK knobbly seastar. This one here is 15-20cm in diameter, an adult size. None of these charismatic seastar were seen in Chek Jawa after the mass death. This is the first one and indeed we celebrate its return.


And many more thriving in the recovering state of Chek Jawa.


Siyang, while searching for the hidden sandstars during the day, saw quite a few interesting animals. He found this close to 1cm length nudibranch (Cerberilla asamusiensis) in the sand and it is indeed exciting to see beautiful nudibranch near the sandbar and seagrass lagoon.


The second find of Siyang was this pair of crabs, apparently making love.


And the third find that intrigues me will be this seapen where the really tiny porcelain crab reside within. In fact it was also a first-time for me seeing this cute little crab.


Over at the coral rubble, while I was doing some photo-monitoring task, saw that lots of sponges returned! During the mass death, almost all were disintegrated in black.

What was even more exciting will be the return of flowery soft corals, found attached at the pillars of the boardwalk.


Stranded jellyfishes were spotted too and this one looks really like a miniskirt.


Not forgetting also this jellyfish that is so huge, yet yucky looking, that looks like the vomit of Yuchen.


Well, it was really a great trip and we look forward for Chek Jawa to return to its glorious state. Let's pray hard that this coming year end's northeast monsoon will be so as dramatic as the previous and no more mass mortality event that will further disrupt the ecosystem and ecology of Chek Jawa. Meanwhile, we have to also take efforts of protecting this precious, yet fragile shore. It can be as simple as not littering when you visit the boardwalk.


The team worked hard and as the sun sets, we wrapped up our work and here we have a lovely photo of everyone that helped out.

Thank you everyone for making the difference!

What caused the mass death?

15 October is Blog Action Day and everyone is encouraged to blog about the environment on this day. I thought I can make this opportunity to share something related to environment changes.


Chek Jawa, an intertidal flat with six ecosystems within one kilometer square area, is found east of Pulau Ubin, an offshore island to the Northeast of mainland Singapore. Being a fascinating getaway from the concrete jungle, it holds a special place in the hearts of Singaporeans. Fortunately, Chek Jawa has escaped the verdict from being buried by slated reclamation through the ten year deferment.


On January 2007, an incident of mass mortality was reported at Chek Jawa by volunteers on blog posts.

Posts about the mass deaths at Chek Jawa
1. Mass Death at Chek Jawa, 18 Jan 07 on the ubin volunteers blog
2. First TeamSeagrass Field Orientation at Chek Jawa, 20 Jan 07 on the teamseagrass blog
3. Death note from Chek Jawa, 22 Jan 07 on the wildfilms blog
4. After the Chek Jawa Massacre, 22 Jan 07 on the tidechaser blog

More links to various blog posts about the Chek Jawa situation at http://www.wildsingapore.com/news/20070304/070325-1.htm compiled by Ria Tan.

Ria has also kindly posted her photos on Wildsingapore's flickr account with regards to the mass death event.

Prominent macrofauna that were affected included the carpet anemone, sea cucumbers, noble volute, sea stars and sponges.

So the BIG question is, what caused the mass death. Of course everyone pointed fingers to the heavy downpour that rain like mad during the rainy season. Because marine creatures need saline conditions to thrive, if there is too much rain, salinity will decrease, and animals more sensitive to salinity drop will take in water due to osmosis till a point they burst and die.

But the bigger question is, is the drop of salinity the cause of the mass death? This is because algal bloom, change in sea temperature, toxins, pollutants, disease or de-oxygenation also can kill the animals.

After a visual assessment at Chek Jawa in February 2007, Dr. Dan Ritshoff, of Duke University, suggested in his blog post, "Will Chek Jawa Rebound?", that salinity change was the culprit, “the easiest animals to assess at Chek Jawa are the sessile or virtually sessile signature animals. All these animals are sensitive to low salinity because they conform to the environment around them- carpet anemones, peacock anemones, sea cucumbers, and button shells. These have all been more than decimated. I saw two (20 cm diameter) small very healthy carpet anemones, several dozen Peacock anemones, two sea cucumbers and no button shells. Hopeful signs, the peacock anemones were clearly healthy and there were three new 3 cm carpet anemones.”



Last December and January, the northeast monsoon was intensified twice in 17-20 December and 11-14 January due to strong surge events over South China Sea. According to Malaysian Meteorological Department (2007), it was due to strong convergence and cyclonic wind events emanating from high pressure system over Siberia. Therefore, Kota Tinggi experienced serious flooding (picture from this link).



Then another question, if the rain is so bad, is there mass death, say at Semakau? at St John Island? at Kusu Island? Why?

In fact, not only does the rain played a role, the locality of Chek Jawa made matters worse that induces the mass death. In red is Chek Jawa on Google Earth.



In pink is Sungei Johor or Johor River. Can you compare the catchment size with the size of Singapore?



From a consultation session with Professor Wong Poh Poh, a coastal geomorphologist from Geography Department, National University of Singapore, we concluded that most the flood water gets discharged directly at Chek Jawa if you follow the suggested red arrows. The effects were emphasized as Tekong reclamation made the channel for output of river flow narrower.

In the event of a low tide and the excessively heavy rainfall, the volume of freshwater from the river, amplified by the rains will gush out and into the Straits. it is possible then that Chek Jawa will turn into a "swimming pool" of freshwater, inundating the marine creatures long enoug to pose an osmotic challenge, and even killing off the less adaptable ones.

Therefore, mass death occured in Chek Jawa and not in the Southern Islands where the latter's salinity is higher with no river output near them.

How about other northern shores?

Beting Bronok, Changi and Pulau Sekudu were also affected, but to a smaller scale as compared to Chek Jawa. Why then? If you follow the suggested discharge direction as above, it is directly mostly at Chek Jawa due to the geography of the coastal layouts. Surprisingly, it was speculated that Beting Bronok was not as badly affected (due to its location away from the main discharge flow though it is geographically closer to the river mouth) as compared to Chek Jawa because Beting Bronok's knobbly sea stars still survived! Unfortunately, those in Chek Jawa were never seen again after the mass death, the last few or one was photographed by Ron Yeo in this blog post Death Note from Chek Jawa where the knobbly sea star turned black like ashes.

Now another big question. Is global warming the cause of it?

I read a preliminary analysis by Tetsuzo Yasunari (2007) mentioning that the heavy rainfall this Jan is due to the intensified Northeast monsoon season leading to strong cold surge events, where there were strong convergence and cyclonic wind events emanating from high pressure system over Siberia, thus causing the intensification in the northeast monsoon.

However, in terms of whether global warming is the cause of it, Tetsuzo Yasunari stated that there is no clear trend from past 40 years data of rainfall data both in amount and frequency with respect to the Malaysian Peninsula. However, in Vietnam and China, a trend could be observed.

I came across another article online titled "Rising temperature in Indian Ocean may have caused Johor floods" by Royce Cheah, on thestar online news webpage, describing about the disturbed Great ocean conveyor belt being related to the heavy rainfall, and this was likely due to global warming.

In response to the above two articles, Professor Matthias Roth, a climatologist with National University of Singapore commented on an email reply to me,

"I am not sure if you can draw conclusions from these 2 articles regarding what is happening in the Singapore region. More data ( i.e. longer observational time series) are needed to conclude that the intensified NE monsoon rains early in 2007 are related to atmospheric changes induced by global warming."

Nevertheless, Chek Jawa is on the road of recovery and we welcome and embrace it to return back to its wonderful state. It is alive and it deserves our respect to understand it as a place that does not deserve to be buried with sand for reclamation. There is so much we can learn and enjoy out from it.

Reference:

Malaysian Meteorological Department (2007) Report on the second heavy rainfall episode that caused floods in Johor and southern Patang during the period 11th -14th January 2007. Web publication http://www.met.gov.my/flood_report.pdf accessed on 20 August 2007.

Tetsuzo Yasunari (2007) Local to global scale atmospheric circulation features associated with the floods in Malaysia in Dec.2006 and Jan.2007- A Preliminary Analysis. National Seminar on
"Socio-Economic Impacts of Extreme Weather and Climate Changes." June 21-22, 2007, Kuala Lumpur. http://www.met.gov.my/ClimateChange2007/session1a/Keynote%20Lecture%201%20-%20Prof.%20T.%20Yasunari/K1%20Yasunari_a.doc accessed on 20 August 2007.

More links

Posts about shores near Chek Jawa or facing similar flood situations

Northern shores health check on Changi, 23 Jan 07 on the wildfilms blog
Tuas, 1 Feb 07 on the teamseagrass blog
Tuas Transect, 4 Feb 07 on the blue heaven blog
Pulau Sekudu, 18 Feb 07 on the wildfilms blog
Changi Beach, 5 Mar 07 on the urban forest blog
Pulau Sekudu, 23 Mar 07 on the urban forest blog3.

Posts during Feb-March about Chek Jawa after mass deaths

Back to Chek Jawa, 17 Feb 07 on the tidechaser blog
How's Chek Jawa, 19 Feb 07 on the colourful clouds blog
Chek Jawa and friends, 24 Feb 07 on the wildfilms blog
Will Chek Jawa Rebound?, 24 Feb 07 on the Dr Dan in Singapore blog
Hit and Run at Chek Jawa, 24 Feb 07 on the tidechaser blog
Getting high on CJ, 24 Feb 07 on the blue heaven blog
Chek Jawa update, 1 Mar 07 on the ubin volunteers blog

More similar Singapore flood posts found here at, kindly compiled by Ria Tan:
http://www.wildsingapore.com/news/20061112/061220-1.htm
http://www.wildsingapore.com/news/20070102/070112-2.htm