Once again Team Seagrass heads out to monitor our seagrasses, and this time we spent an afternoon at Pulau Semakau where there is a very healthy population of Tape seagrasses (Enhalus acoroides)!
With us today were many "newbies", which was really heartwarming to see! Warmest welcome to Yuan Chun, Jacyln, and Man Nga, friends of mine who were here for their very first Team Seagrass monitoring session! It was nice to see Yi Shyuan and Jocelyn again, and Andy, whom I haven't seen for sometime.
To get to the monitoring sites, we had to walk through a muddy stretch in the forest (where ferocious blood-hungry mosquitoes lurk). Ria had herself almost totally covered up - literally - but really, those mosquitoes are not to be meddled with!
Lo and behold! The sight that greets us when we're out in the open! :D
Ria led the way to our monitoring sites. She took the many "newbies" under her wing today, while I was allocated Site #2 together with Yen Ling, Regina, Gaytri, Jerome, and Yi Shyuan. As Site #2 has the highest water depth compared to the other Sites #1 and #3, we waited for the tide to turn out, meanwhile checking out the living communities right below us.
On the sandy bed were lots of these yellow stuff which could possibly be a kind of algae..
Yen Ling found this crab which could be the Arrow-head spider crab (Menatheius sp.). This little creature had collected debris (including what looks like some seagrass) as camouflage for itself!
We couldn't find the marking stick for our transect, so Yen Ling and I spent quite sometime determining the best possible spot for it. This also means we started our monitoring the latest! Nonetheless we worked as efficiently as we could in the hope that we could free up sometime to explore the shores later.
Over here, the last ever shot I got from this trip before we started surveying.. and before it rained :(
Unfortunately for us it started to pour when Yen Ling and I were at our last survey quadrant! We had to quickly finish up our monitoring and leave the shore :( I must say it was really quite a bummer that we didn't get the chance to check out the wildlife, but thankfully the rest of the Team Seagrass members managed to get some cool sightings! Among their finds were a seahorse, cuttlefish, flatworms, the Common seastars, anemones, etc. Yi Shyuan managed to capture a really cool video of an octopus swimming away and changing colour in flashes each time it rested at a new spot! Yuan Chun even caught the rare sight of a noble volute together with her egg case which looked like a beautiful chandelier!
So we had our last Team Seagrass monitoring session for the year.. I can't wait for more of such trips next year!
