Registration for 18 Oct ReefWalk @ Kusu is now open!

It's the last day of September and unfortunately, our lovely Blue Water Volunteers website is currently down due to some IP issues. However that does mean that we're not having our usual activities! Intertidal ReefWalks @ Kusu island and Reef Check surveys with ReefFriends are still ongoing!

Sign up details are under the cut ^_^
1. Kusu ReefWalks on 18 Oct


The evening Kusu Island ReefWALKs are back. The next walk will be on 18 Oct 08 (Sat) 5.30pm - 9pm and it cost $15 per participant. To register, please email reefwalk@bluewatervolunteers.org and provide the following details:

Name:
Contact Number:
Email:
Number of participants:
Ages of children (if any):
Emergency contact details:

Should you have any queries (or would like to join us as volunteers), please email reefwalk@bluewatervolunteers.org.

Cheers,
ReefWALK Team
*****************
The last two walks for 2008 would be on 15 Nov 08 (Sat), and 14 Dec 08 (Sun). Registration details would be posted up nearer the dates.

EDIT: if you have problems contacting us with the above email, try reefwalk@gmail.com

2. ReefFriends surveys


For those of you who dive, and would like to lend a hand in collecting scientific data for the monitoring of our local reefs, please email reeffriends@bluewatervolunteers.org for more details on joining. We would be glad to have you onboard the team!

EDIT: if you have problems contacting us with the above email, try reeffriends@gmail.com

p/s. Three cheers for blogs and RSS feeds that can act as our backup(s) when things go wrong with the main site ^_^

Click for the rambling...

ReefAlert 2008 @ Dayang

To wrap up this month of April, I bring you photos from last weekend when moggi and I went with the SMUX divers to Dayang to help facilitate this year's ReefAlert. The theory sessions were conducted at the SMU campus last Monday to Thursday. (photo courtesy of Moehadi) Would love to do my usual long babbling long entries with details on all we saw but that's gonna take too long, and I'll be up early tomorrow to head over to Sedili Besar with a group of fellow volunteer guides..... So without further ado, here's a slideshow of the entire ReefAlert process from training to the actual surveys to the fun we had in between. New friends made, new knowledge gained, newly inspired budding volunteers..... Do feel free to click on the photos and head over to my Flickr set to comment and all.

What more can you ask for? The sun, the sand and the sea.... Marine critters galore, and dive enthusiasts being inspired to do their bit in monitoring the state of the reef at Dayang. Do hope that some of them end up joining RF in doing our local surveys too! Was also lucky enough to catch a solitary Goniastrea colony spawn (nope, no mass spawning when we did the night dive last Sat), and observe a Chromodoris coi doing the nudi version of the can-can with the constant "skirt flipping".... With a number of friends planning to go for dive courses, and me doing my rescue some time this year, guess will be back at Dayang soon enough. Until then~~

===================================================
More photos here:
taken by Moehadi
taken by Zach

Click for the rambling...

ReefAlert 2008 training (part02)

So with 2 days of training under their belts, the SMUX divers still weren't scared off by us, and continued to come back for more punishment the evening classes we had last night and today. Last night sessions saw us completing ID training, with the fish survey. The "module" that took away all my marks when we had our RF training and test last year. moggi can be kinda a nag at times but he does go through the fish survey methodology in detail and shares all his little stories with us too! First on the importance of fish in the coral reef ecosystem, that fish and coral are inter-dependent on each other. Then some tricky things about fish surveys. You need to be able to estimate 3D distances, then those little buggers keep moving (not to mention hide in cracks and crevices)... and to top it all off, you need to be able to estimate a numbers in one huge school as it swims across the survey "corridor"! (yesh, I know I'm supposed to be juan-fish, do like fish both in the sea and on my platter, but I don't really appreciate the finer points of actually doing a fish survey... *bleah* And to further complicate matters, only certain fish are supposed to be counted. So in that short period of time that you detect a fish, you need to (1) ID it, (2) count the numbers, (3) judge if it falls within the survey area, (4) look into hidey-holes for more fishies, and (5) still follow the methodology of waiting for 3-5min every 5m, swimming/trudge the 5m taking at least 30 seconds... All underwater where your reactions tend to be a bit slower already... Talk about multi-tasking and challenging! So of course, you would need to do more detailed readings. These are all great fish reference books to help. The Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide is more of a general introduction to all sorts of marine life. The Reef Fish Identification - Tropical Pacific is spendidly detailed, with the fish categorised according to where they are normally found (bottom dwelling, pelagic, etc.) and their overall typical bodyshape. My favorite of the lot! Reef Fish in a pocket is basically a super condensed version of the Fish ID book, and is actually waterproof so you can keep it in your pocket for quick reference when you go diving/snorkelling! Don't like the Marine Fishes book at the far end of the table as it only contains drawings of the fish (no photos), plus "groupers" are spelled as "gropers" (can't imagine those grumpy looking little fishies turning ecchi and molesting divers/snorkellers....). Just goes to show how common names can be troublesome when there's no standardization... Armed with the books, our insipid students were assigned groups to find out differences between snappers-emperors, groupers-sweetlips, rabbitfish-goatfish, butterflyfish-angelfish, and parrotfish-filefish... Of course, with a little help from moggi, our resident fish expert ^^ Realising that the obvious traits (except for the usual exceptions) are easy to remember, though not always easy to spot, everybody's all smiles. ^_^ We're almost there, guys! So today, after a re-cap of the different surveys we need to carry out for RC, it's exam time! And we're glad to say that everybody passed and we're all set for the actual thing at Dayang!

Click for the rambling...

ReefAlert 2008 training (part01)

This is certainly a busy busy period~~ First with ADEX, EARTH DAY(!!!), coral spawning, various intertidal activities, and I find myself involved in training up and bringing a group SMUX divers for their annual ReefAlert at Dayang. Think this is their 3rd year heading to Malaysia to do ReefCheck surveys, and Gill Divers has been organising these annual ReefAlerts and getting BWV ReefFriends involved as well. They had their pool session on sunday, and the RC theory started last night and would continue on until Thursday before we leave for Dayang on Friday night.

papajeff kicked off the series of theory sessions with a quick introduction to our local waters and reefs, as well as an overview to the different tasks buddy pairs would be assigned. Followed by a quick demo on tape laying, or as much as can be demonstrated on land, with the usual 'do's and 'don't's like keeping the tape straight, don't let it twist about etc. Then it was time for the students to try it out for themselves, with the classroom furnishings acting as pseudo-corals and various reef structures. Seems rather easy on land, doesn't it? Wiat til you try it out while diving, and at an actual reef where it's more complex environment than what chairs and tables can provide! And for some reason, moggi's amused but all that's happening, even while holding on to the clothes pegs that we use to secure the transect tapes to the reef... Simple straightforward introduction for the first session. Tonight's session was a little more mugger-ish with the list of mobile invertebrates (aka backbone-less critters) and benthic codes to remember and identify. While waiting for the latecomers to make their way in, moggi starts with a quick re-cap with more tips on tape laying. It really is quite simple once you get the hang of it but (to use moggi's words) sometimes divers leave their common sense behind on the boat.... Things happen, such as shallow and deep transects crossing despite the fact that they are supposed to be approximately parallel and laid at a constant depth. And also how we need to deal with the not-so-classroom-perfect real world where the reef is non-linear and/or the reef profile is extremely bumpy with many crevices and boulder corals. Good for the fish and other critters but can be a pain for us humans trying to make sense of the larger scheme in life. And since tape laying is basically the backbone for any kind of reef survey, you need to get it right. (or end up delaying everything since the tape needs to be relaid....) E1 continues by introducing the 7 mobile invertebrate groups that the folks at RC HQ are interested in, namely, sea urchins (Diadema, collector, pencil), crown of thorns (Acanthaster planci), giant clams (Tridacna sp.), tritons, sea cucumbers (prickly red, greenfish, sandfish, cowfish), banded coral shrimps, and lobsters. Then I had a go at going through the biotic (hard coral, soft coral, nutrient indicator algae, sponges, others) and abiotic (rock, rubble, sand, silt/clay) codes for the benthic portion of the survey. Quick sum up by moggi and we're done for the day night. Hope we didn't scare off too many of them since we still have to go through the fish groups tomorrow, and have they take the "final exam" on Thursday!
And on a totally irrelevant note, I get to collect my regulator set tomorrow. Can't wait!!! ^_^

Click for the rambling...

Reef critters in action!

Flickr has just gone the way of Photobucket and launched video hosting, so I decided to give it a try with some of my better underwater videos of our local critters in action. Quality's not too shabby, so may consider this as an alternative for my shorter videos. Stuff more than 90 seconds short long would still need to find their way to Youtube.
First up is this video of a banded sea krait hunting in the shallow of Hantu waters. How did I end up there? Got distracted while in the middle of searching for my buddy's lost mask during RF training early last year.


Don't blink lest you miss it! More feeding in process. These are barnacle feet grasp tiny zooplankton from the waters. Yesh, those feathery things that keep popping in and out are barnacle feet, while the barnacle's head is firmly burrowed inside the calcium carbonate skeleton of this Galaxea sp. coral

Click for the rambling...

commensal crazy in Kusu!!!

Was out doing our modified ReefCheck with ReefFriends today, and I must say, this was one of my most fruitful dives at Kusu!! As expected, was relegated to doing LIT with coral genera ID for the deeper transects along with MS. Sadly, when compared to Semakau, the reef slope here hardly has any live coral cover. It made our work a little easier since we could finish the LIT with relative ease and look for stuff to photograph. =^-^=

Haven't really had to explore Kusu underwater recently, so it was really a pleasant surprise to see all these sea fans and whip corals all over the place. Even more amazing were the number of crinoids EVERYWHERE!! Poor HB had to count/estimate the number of crinoids for the mobile invertebrates survey.....


Then there were the HUGE seafans that were sticking out of the slope. I narrowly missed swimming right into one when reeling back the tapes... *phew* That would have been one BIG guilt trip for me man!!

And this was the first time that I have seen SO many brittle stars curled around whip corals. All those little bumps on this whip Gorgonians aren't some kind of disease. They're all little brittle stars!!


BUT, the dive was not just filled with enormous Gorgonians, the REAL highlights of the dives were the macrolife =^-^= Namely, whip gobies, gorgonian shrimps and allied cowries that live commensally on seafans and whip corals. These creatures have absolutely amazing camouflage, and generally, it would be near to spot them if you were just swimming past and they keep incredibly still. Rather difficult subjects to photograph using a point-and-shoot since they are skitterish on top of being tiny and well camouflaged. The first of the many that were pointed out was a pair of sawtooth Gorgonian shrimp (Tozeuma armatum). This fella was probably the largest (or rather, longest) of all the commensals we saw.

Then there were all these tiny tiny shrimp scurrying all around. I only have nudibranch and fish books to help me in ID-ing photos, so will need a little help here in getting these guys ID-ed. Any suggestions would be more than welcome! ^^


Contraty to what I intially thought, it seems like whip gobies are rather common in Singapore. First spotted (and tried to photograph them) during the RF survey trip to Semakau last month. Managed to get a somewhat blurry shot of THREE of them on a single whip coral. And today I actually managed to get a better shot of one when I was in search of more allied shrimps!! *yay*

And then there was another one that was camera shy but seemed to like playing peek-a-boo at the same time. See him/her?


Didn't spot as many allied cowries but here was one really pretty one that MS pointed out. This one's a spindle cowrie.

Sure looks different from the usual roundish cowries that most people know of. Allied cowries (aka egg shells) are closely related to cowries, and they DO belong to the same superfamily. What does this mean to all those non-biologists? Simply put, allied cowries and cowries are kinda like cousins. Unlike their cowrie relatives, these small allied cowries are masters of disguise! They have adapted to look like what they eat (yes, they feed on softcorals and Gorgonians), and there are even some that have polyp-like extensions that resemble the feeding polyps of their host soft corals!!

But soft corals aren't the only ones with their little creatures living on them. Hard corals do too!! Like this coral shrimp (Vir philippinensis) that's living among the bubble-like tentacles of this bubble coral (Plerogyra).


The main reason why I saw as many as I did is my buddy, MS, who is simply AMAZING!!! How he can spot all those little critters on the whip corals and sea fans is really beyond me. Really thankful for his eagle-eyes. woceht has also benefited from his sharp eyes, and they saw wonderful macrolife at Hantu in April as well!! Click here for woceht's account on the experience. ^^

Of course, no dive in Singapore would be complete without nudibranchs!! The Phyllids were just EVERYWHERE on the reef and there were also a couple of blue dragons (Pteraeolidia iathina) out posing for me.

This particular phyllid even looked like it was winking at me with one rhinophore (those stubby stalky looking things) up and the other retracted. ^^


And things just keep getting better!! Wonder what MS is so intently photographing in that hole..

LOBSTER!!! Poor guy was probably freaked out by us swimming up and down and flashing at him while taking photos... Not too sure which rock lobster it is but *think* it may be a painted rock lobster...


Here are also a coupld of interesting things that I simply can't figure out... Anybody know what these are?
(1) Funny looking blobby thing at the tip of the whip coral

Update: possible ID with Nigel's help
Seems like this rather funky looking thing may be a Tubularian, and is actually a kinda of hydroid!!! So hydroids DO come in all shapes and sizes, including some that deposit a calcium carbonate skeleton (i.e. Millepora aka CME that LIT-ers should be familiar with). The very clear close-ups on the following sites do seem to confirm that this is a Tubularian hydroid. Interesting that one of the species is actually "common throughout the British isles". Perhaps this is yet another proof of Singapore's colonisation by the British!! They even brought it along with them to SEA? *okies, am starting to crap here*
New Jersey Scuba Diver
Tubularia larynx
Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole

(2) Anemone-ish looking thing


Yep, we definitely went home a happy troop of people!!

Click for the rambling...