Southern Line Islands Expedition

Recently, I found an article on the National Geographic website about the Southern Line Islands Expeditions. What is this project about? Well, participants in this project study the ecology of healthy coral reefs, in hope to learn valuable clues that will help save the world's reefs.

In February and March 2009, the Southern Line Islands Expedition will travel to remote central-Pacific islands like Flint, Vostok and Malden to continue the reef studies done in the Northern Line Islands in 2005 and 2007.

I hope that the project will be a success and the participants will find new ways to save the coral reefs.

You can read more on: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/field/projects/line-islands.html

28 Dec: Chek Jawa Boardwalk

The Naked Hermit Crabs will be organizing a boardwalk at Chek Jawa on 28 December. If you have the time, do go for the boardwalk as it is very interesting and you will get to see many different types of wildlife.

Time: 3 p.m.

Venue: Meet at Chek Jawa Information Kiosk

Duration of walk: 2 hours

To find out more, visit: http://nakedhermitcrabs.blogspot.com/

12 Dec: Sentosa Shore Walk

On 12 December, we went to Sentosa for a shore walk. Here are some interesting things we saw during the walk:

This is a coral skeleton.

Look at this mosiac crab!

Here is the flag used by the Naked Hermit Crabs to mark a spot where there are things for us to see.

Look at this gigantic tire! Although it is a piece of rubbish in the sea, there are wildlife growing on it!

This is a swimming crab. 

Can you spot the hairy crab?

This is the flower of the tape seagrass. We also saw the fruit!

This is a polka-dotted nudibranch. Isn't it pretty?

Corals!!! :)

At the site where we had the walk,the water was amazingly clear and we could see the marine life clearly in the water. I did not expect to see so many different types of marine life, and hope that people will stop polluting the seas so that we will be able to conserve these animals and plants. 

S'pore Coastline Getting Dirtier

I woke up this morning and to my disppointment there was a newspaper article in The Straits Times about Singapore's coastline getting dirtier.  Apparently the coastal cleanup in September found 3,448 pieces of trash, which weighed 9,755kg in total!  The trash included 39 tyres, refrigerators, and the usual rubbish items.

Top 5 Rubbish Items:

1. styrofoam pieces

2. plastic bags

3. cigarette/cigarette filters

4. food containers/wrappers

5. straws/stirrers

Top 5 Dirtiest Beaches:

1. Lim Chu Kang

2. Kranji

3. Pulau Ubin

4. Changi

5. Sembawang

This article reminded me of the 2 big items I saw during our Sentosa Interdial Walk on 12 Dec 08.  

... a giantic tyre

... a beach chair

It seems that our efforts to advise the public on not throwing litter into the sea have made little progress.  I hope that with this post, some of you might change your habits and save marine life. At the same time, do help to spread the message around.

Registration for 2009 International Coastal Cleanup will open in Mar 09 at the website http://coastalcleanup.nus.edu.sg