Tuesday, 16 December 2008

Sentosa with the SWA folks ^_^

While the usual bunch were having their overnight at St John's Island last weekend, divejunkie was kidnapped asked to help guide a bunch of Scouts at Sentosa's intertidal.


Not sure about the details of why they were here in Singapore for a few days (naturescouter was the one who got me into this spot of unplanned guiding ;P), but it's a nice cozy of group made up of 3 Thais, 1 Malaysian, and 3 Singaporeans. EDIT: Did a quick search, and this small group of Scouts were exploring Sentosa's intertidal as part of their 3 day Scouts of the World Discovery Workshop, with them focusing on the environment. Seems like it's a rather large international award for Scouts, though I seem to be only starting to know about stuff like this via diffusion from SJ.....

Sentosa's rocky shore is quite a but of an adventure to explore. And we certainly had fun exploring all the naturally eroded caves and holes, even posing for some "refugee" shots! ^_^


Even trying out some creative poses with the scenery ^_^ Real glad that the weather held up despite the overcast sky that evening.


With the algae in full bloom, some of the parts were tricky, and slippery, so it took a bit of teamwork and hand-holding (with a few minor slips) to get us through the entire route.


Here's some of the critters we saw....Didn't snap all, most of these were taken after we met up with SJ at the hunter-seeking area where he and Jerald were looking for critters for the Scouts to see.


First off, 2 differently coloured egg crabs, as well as a swimming crab.


The last time I was at Sentosa, it was octopus frenzy, with a number of small octopus(es) all venturing out as the sun set, and on Sat, we were also fortunate enough to come across at least 2!


And of course, me favouritest of all.... the sluggies!! The one on the left is the Jorunna funebris aka chocolate chip nudibranch/Oreo cookie nudibranch. They seem to be in season at the moment and are regularly seen on our local intertidals, and in recent months, the young 'uns seem to be venturing out and about! The one on the right is a first intertidal spotting for me, well, actually my first in Singapore. Usually see this Phyllodesmium briareum while diving. It's been spotted by some of the other local divers before at Hantu, whilst I have been seeing them at the Tioman and Dayang dive sites in Malaysia.


Of course, since the Scouts were there as part of a workshop, they had to do a report of sorts, so many of them were armed with cameras (of course, for taking fun people shots too!), and at least one of them had a notebook to take down the names of the critters we came across. Notice that there's also a plastic bag full of stuff. No, we weren't collecting anything for a dinner BBQ. One of them actually had spare plastic bags for collecting trash, so we also did a little bit of a shore clean-up as we trooped along. Good thinking, dude!


More photos on Facebook:
Jun's shots
Scouts' photos

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