February Transect Day 1

Time passes fast, and its time for the last series of transect for my study at Chek Jawa. This time, we are doing something special with the help of Yikang and his team. On top of doing our usual quadrat monitoring, we are also testing the sediment type of each quadrat location so as to better understand the substrate types of the study area.


On a sunny afternoon, friends from all over the place come together at Changi as we set off for Ubin. It was a weekday yet many took leave or special time off to volunteer for today's transect.


Arriving at the jetty of Pulau Ubin, we proceeded towards Uncle Chu's van. We also noted by the rocks by the sides of the jetty are covered with layers of mussel beds which has been persisting for quite some time.


Reaching Chek Jawa, we settled the logistics and off we went to the shore. As usual, July here is carrying the research in progress signboard which is important to inform the public of why we are down at the flat.


Day 1 of transect usually mean we will head north and finish the last 4 lines first. The greenish patch you see from this photos are the coverings of the algae on top of mussel beds.


After a mock up briefing, it was time to start setting up the transect line. And wow, this task was indeed challenging since the weather was extremely windy. The lines were easily blown aside and setting a straight line means lots of tug of wars.


Nevertheless, the garang team managed to set quite decent lines with the aid of the huge colour flags that ensured line of sight from the start points to the end points that were permanent. After a few rounds of trying out, most of us managed to figure the best way to lay lines with the windy condition, and hope these improvements can be of great use for day 2 later.


Meanwhile, while working, lots of Lesser-crested terns (Sterna bengalensis) can be found feeding and resting at the tip of the sandbar.


They are very shy, like most birds, and will fly off when I tried coming closer to them.


Flying higher and higher.


The tide was not very low but thankfully just sufficient for us to conduct the transect.


Unfortunately, Chek Jawa is too big to be sampled with justice over a short tide window period. This photo shows an example of a non biased sampling method that may not capture the animals we want. This carpet anemone was just a few centimeters away from our designated quadrat. If we just put the quadrat showing the carpet anemone, it will be biased.


Some of the other animals found include this small clump of mussels stick on the sand substrate instead of the usual hard ones.


These sandfish sea cucumbers usually start appearing when evening comes.


The seahare season was not over yet, and many of them can still be spotted.


Chek Jawa also is home to a rare seagrass, Halophila beccarii which was named after the intrepid Italian botanist-explorer, Odoardo Beccari.


More marine creatures: sea cucumbers, razor shell and sandstars.


Amazingly, I spotted a few dugong feeding trails like how Teamseagrass saw them during the mass death last Jan 2007. Dugongs are still present around Chek Jawa waters and indeed seagrasses are important food staples for them. It's fascinating how these trails appear during the mass death as an encouragement that life goes on and now towards the end of my study, Chek Jawa is indeed doing well recovering.


The teams worked hard and I am deeply thankful for their effort. This is one of the two teams with Denise, Ron, Siyang and Yong Jian (left to right).


Also, not forgetting to mention Pui San, Adeline, Jing Kai and July from the other team.


Here we have the geographer, Yikang, doing the sediment collection from the quadrat sites.


That involves digging out of a thumb size of substrate, which then we will bring back to the lab to test. More work.


Soon, the sun sets and it was time to leave.


Here's a last photo of July pointing to something in the cloud.

One more day to go...

Chek Jawa survived the monsoon period

On 22nd January 2008, many friends and I returned to Chek Jawa for a monitoring health check. First thing we can all happily declare (at least for now), Chek Jawa has survived the monsoon period. There was no mass death occurence.

This time, I had the honour to bring with us a team of three mediacorp personnel: namely the producer, soundman and the funny cameraman to share with the TV audience in near future about Chek Jawa, our work there, and a little more on myself.

That also means I had to also leave most of the people to do the monitoring tasks as I tried my best to share with the TV crew the facts and stories throughout the trip. Interestingly, I chanced upon a marine professor, Prof Chris Todd, from University of St Andrews. Went to approach him to check whether he had a permit to get down to the flat and I slowly understood he is doing marine work and writing an intertidal book. Exchanged contacts before he left.

During my time away with the crew, I am glad to have several trusty people that did their job well. Ria the carpet anemone head with her team-mates: Sam and Wei Ching. They did the checks for the remaining less than 20 carpet anemones as more and more went missing over the months. They are able to uproot themselves and move with the current so either they died or they migrated.

Ron, July and Alicia are those who worked on monitoring peacock anemones where we went back to the five 10x10m fixed quadrats to search for them and do measurements. We also have the intrepid and longsuffering team doing the mussel bed mapping consisting of Alex and Audrey. Armed with a GPS set, they worked the boundaries of the patches of mussel bed so that we can later find out the relative positions of these invasive species patches changing over months. One covered the northern Chek Jawa and the other southern.

Last but not the least of course, we have the salinity checks done by Yikang and Chun How. Well, from their measurements, we are relieved to know that the salinity is normal at about 28ppt, which is norm for Chek Jawa as the salinity is affected by its proximity to the river mouth of Sungei Johor. They also did the photographing of the above bird's eye view and also the other 19 photographs to compare with those taken before the mass death in Chek Jawa.

I apologise for lack of enough photos as I didn't have time to take photos due to work with the crew. Thank you Yikang for the 2 photos in this post.

To end off, share with you a photo of the crew and I. :-)



Other blog entries about the trip

• Ria's wildfilm blog
• July's discovery blog
• Sam's blog ramblings of a peculiar nature

Christmas monitoring with the volunteers

On 25th Dec 2007 Christmas Day, a gang of enthusiastic volunteers and I took a bumboat, not a cruise. We arrived at Pulau Ubin and off we went, together with Uncle Chu's van to Chek Jawa.


Greeting us in the intertidal flat were these great billed heron (Ardea sumatrana) and grey heron (Ardea cinerea). Apparently, the great billed heron caught a fish and the latter came trying to snatch the prized catch.


The tide was still receding while I was trying to show Liana where her peacock anemone study sites are. And along the way, we saw even more shore birds feeding and roaming about at the flats of Chek Jawa.


Recovery has been good. At first, carpet anemones returned mostly at areas where there are seagrasses or seaweed. It is heartening to see quite a number of new recruits at the sandbar now. Before the mass death, the sandbar was landmined with these carpet anemones. However, almost all of them on the sandbar were wiped out after the mass death this January.


Checking back to the transect 3 start point where the cake seastar (Anthenea aspera) was found the day before, we have realized it has moved about 100m away. Nevertheless, I marked its location temporarily for the volunteers to take a look after they finish their work at sunset.


Featuring the long suffering carpet anemone team, we have the good old usual strong team of Ria and Yuchen. Joining them for the first time are Sam (2nd from left) and Xiuli (extreme right).


This time, Yikang was my volunteer to do the salinity check from extreme north all the way to the House no. 1 jetty. The salinity was pretty normal at about 27 ppt, considering there was no longlasting rain.


I took the last opportunity to check the health of coral rubble extensively for this is the last of 0.0m tide till the end of my project.


Unfortunately, this fish apparently got chomped off by its predator.


The carpet anemones at the coral rubble area were as big as usual. Most are thriving well, however a few looked pretty puffed up and unhealthy.


Carpet anemone with Porites hard coral.


The mystery of the "coral" found in July has been unveiled as the super low tide uncovered the whole organism in dry land.


It is not a coral in closeup. They are zoanthids.


Quite a number of these adult sized noble volutes (Cymbiola nobilis) were spotted. And they are proliferating well. Check out Joseph Lai's flickr gallery where he posted many of his fantastic Chek Jawa photos including one noble volute laying translucent egg capsules.


A cleanup was done in Pulau Sekudu a couple of days ago. Pulau Sekudu is considered as part of the whole Chek Jawa bigger ecosystem. It is a seeding ground when Chek Jawa got impacted by the mass death. Indeed, we need to maintain these seeding areas which act as control. Another of such important shores must be Changi Beach. On Boxing day, we found many juveniles of all sorts of marine creatures on the shore of Changi. Changi is like a mini-Chek Jawa and indeed the surrounding northern shores are very interconnected. Destroying one will affect all.


At the edge facing Sekudu, there are many sponges growing well on the rocks.


The sponges come in all sorts of shapes and colours, slowly revealing the good old Chek Jawa before the mass death.


Not only does the coral rubble have the hard coral of Porites species, it also houses the flowery soft corals. This one in particular is very small in size, again showing that recovery is taking place and it is recent and ongoing at the same time.


More marine organisms thriving at the rich yet fragile coral rubble are the fanworm, colonial ascidians, warty sea cucumber and the Salmacis sea urchin (Salmacis sp.), from top left to bottom right.


Meanwhile, the volunteers are still working hard including Juanhui, having to help me take 19 specific landscape photographs.


Pausing from their conscientious work, the peacock anemone team posed for a group photo. From left to right: Liana, Shuyi, Peiya and Kenny.


I'm sorry I forgot to take a photo of the mussel bed monitoring team with Hamsa and Alex together. They had to work solo, covering the north and south of the mussel bed patches with the GPS. Alex, however pointed out to me that the shore birds were feeding on the mussel beds. As we have pondered, are the mussel beds friends or foes, I believe its a friend in this case, as food for migratory birds.


Cropping out from the above photos, I realized at home that opposite at the shores of Johor, there are groups of people at their intertidal areas too. Are they nature lovers or simply poachers? Being in close proximity and part of the interconnectedness, this mysterious Malaysia shore indeed is crucial for the ecosystem of Chek Jawa.


Juanhui pointed out to me that there are also many small sand dollars on the sandbar.


And they could be even as small as about 1cm in diameter. This proves to show that ecosystems are dynamic where the young replaces the old, with a turnover rate.


The last task for everyone will be to search for populations of sandstars after about 6.30pm. It is only during the evening then these Astropecten species of sand stars start to appear. Yuchen showed his dedicated hunterseeking skills by being on all fours.


It was nice to have many friends working together. Hamsa is on the extreme left of the photo.


Yuchen gamely and creatively used the sandfish sea cucumber and sand stars to show the Singapore flag. We as Singaporeans am proud and should continue to show to the rest of the world that conservation is possible despite developments only if we allow them to coexist just like Pulau Semakau.


We found plentiful of sandstars hiding beneath and above the sand. It is when you are bothered to look, then you will realize the natural heritage we still possess. If we dismiss everything is gone, we might just lose them forever.


With compliments to Ria, we toasted a Merry Christmas and happy New Year on the sandbar to everyone. This marks the last monitoring for 2007.

Thank you everyone for making this Christmas exceptionally meaningful. You've indeed made a difference.

Links of other blog posts related to these 3 days series of monitoring trips:

23/12/07

Sijie's nature scouters blog

24/12/07

July's discovery blog
Ria's wildfilms blog

25/12/07

Joseph Lai's flying fish friends blog
Liana Tang's nearly lucid blog
Ria's wildfilms blog
Shuyi's personal blog