14th July 2010
Cyrene Reef, Singapore
I miss those days whereby I would religiously hit the shores every month during the intertidal period, be it ungodly hours of 3 a.m. or 7p.m. Unfortunately after I left my permanent job, I actually got even busier with life and it's such irony... Upon returning from Project Orion, I was checking through my emails and saw 'Cyrene' in one of the headings. Without any hesitation, I checked whether was there any slots left. Sadly it was full but dear Ria always have a way to make me happy. She hooked me up for a guiding trip for staff from Jurong Town Council (JTC) and I took it up immediately. It was surprising refreshing to go on field trip again in the wee hours of the morning.
My pentax camera sucks at taking moving objects and night shots, so this is probably the best shot of what I can on board the rocking boat.
The submerged reefs of Cyrene remains as alluring as ever, just like the extraordinarily beautiful Cyrene in the Greek mythology.
And with an energetic and enthusiastic group of people from JTC, it made the trip even more fun.
The first thing that was noticeable was the bleaching of the both soft and hard corals. This is probably due to the temperature fluctuations nowadays. Corals usually contain zooxanthallae (microscopic, single-celled algae) which gives its colour. When there is mass loss of zooxanthallae, the polyps are colourless and the underlying white skeleton shows through. Thus large patches of the colony appear white or 'bleached'. Without the food provided by the lost zooxanthallae, the polyps will be stressed and prone to diseases. However, once the cause of the bleaching is removed, the corals may recover.
Cyrene Reef sits right in the middle of our busy shipping lane with many huge tankers passing by everyday.
It also doesn't help when it is also near Singapore's oil refineries.
However, despite all that, it is possibly one of the best piece of submerged reef in Singapore. The biodiversity it hosts is amazing. There are so many creatures here that you can hardly find elsewhere. And this reef may be hosting the only sustainable population of Knobbly seastars (Protoreaster nodosus) in Singapore. Chee Kong and I was previously studying the population here and found at least 300 over individuals, including many juveniles, hence indicating a striving and breeding population.
I sincerely apologise for the lack of photos as I was concentrating much more on finding interesting stuff for the visitors than to think about what to take for the blog post. I conveniently ignored all the common stuff including the Knobblies... For more photos, do visit WildSingapore's blogpost.
Sadly, being a rich reef means a good source for fisherman. We found a total of 7 fish traps which ensnared many crabs and fishes including rabbit fish, stingray, file fish, tusk fish etc. Unfortunately, some were already dead by the time we found the trap. In order to deter the fisherman, we stomped and trampled every single trap, leaving a trail of destruction as a warning to them - we will destroy every trap you set.
Photograph by Lin Juanhui
Cyrene is definitely my favourite, and I would love to see it preserved for the future generations to admire. Hopefully it does. So I can still find my Knobblies. =D
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