A fishy tale

  catfish small 

Early on Friday, a dementedly hardcore remnant of the 70+ strong troupe known as TeamSeagrass gathered at the edge of the Rasa Sentosa Resort. Earlier we had discovered that entry to this happy island is free during the children's hour. Munching on springrolls and eggtarts from the nocturnal shop by the junction of Desker Road and Jalan Besar, we waited for the dawn and dimming tide. Meanwhile, Ria wandered off to a doomed shore where large growths of coral and everything else that lives around it will soon be dredged and dumped for the sake of an underwater world amenable to dice-throwing dinks. When these reefs and their fringing cliffs are gone, only this patch of seagrasses and coral rubble by the resort's seawall will remain of Sentosa's once lush natural coasts. Ditto the island's fragmented coastal woods and their feathered fliers, as gardeners who fail to see the woods for the trees descend upon the forest and play God in the name of a different deity in green.

  butterflyfish

All geared up in pink, Andy, Helen, Siti and my duck descended onto the shore and proceeded to trample every seagrass in sight survey the resident Enhalus acoroides and Halophila ovalis using a secret random methodology where we blindly shotputt the quadrats at each other and hope for the best. After the work was done, the sun was still barely up and that proved to be an excellent time to stalk resident fishes still groggy and gong gong from their slumber. Many inch-long copper-banded butterflyfish (Chaetodon rostratus) were darting between the coral outcrops and seagrass clumps. These pretty and sought-after aquaria specimens are easily recognised by their dainty snouts and false eye spot and are remarkably common in local waters, subject to the healthy presence of corals and other reef invertebrates on which they feed.

  jorunna funebris

We found also three separate schools of juvenile striped eeltail catfish (Plotosus lineatus). These fish gather in tight balls for double protection in the safety of numbers as well as a phalanx of venomous spines that threaten to skewer seafood-seeking ducks. Siti tried to split up one group with a ruler but they counterattacked and made her beg for mercy stubbornly refused to disassemble. Both soft and hard corals, along with lush seaweeds, grow in abundance here and support a good range of other sessile as well as mobile creatures that rely on the reefbuilders for shelter and sustenance. A black sea cucumber waved its tube feet in our faces, while a hairy crab glared at our gazing chins. Just a stone's throw away from the shore, we saw a polka-dotted nudibranch (Jorunna funebris ) sliding over a finely branched seaweed with countless minute arthropods. As the day broke, a few early-risers from the resort peered at us, musing aloud in foreign tongues. Some came down to the beach as well, and even started to fill bags with organic souvenirs until Siti came upon them and gently dissuaded them with soft words and a steely stare.   

  rocky shore with tower

Is it too late to save Sentosa's corals from the Integrated Resort? It's still worth a try though (click here to see Wild Singapore's presentation to REACH and Genting), to at the very least raise the cry that a wealth of life thrives at the very doorsteps of the Underwater World, a centre that claims to champion marine conservation. Would not such mantras be exposed as mere spin and splatter when ancient reefs within sight of fibreglass tanks get no reprieve from Singapore's limitless drive to reclaim and remake its shores in the name of precarious profit?    

Comments

[tscd]

Umm, so are you doing some sort of organic census? What do you do with all the information you gather?

I like that picture of the butterfly fish - I'm never fast enough with my camera to capture a shot like that.

[budak]

It's part of a research programme monitoring seagrass habitats worldwide :) see:
http://teamseagrass.blogspot.com/
http://www.seagrasswatch.org/home.html
http://www.seagrasswatch.org/Singapore.html

The butterflyfish are normally twitchy as bats. But early in the morning, they are still not quite awake and alert and so still long enough to be snapped.

[tscd]

Is this a hobby or do you get paid?

[budak]

if this were paid, I'd do it every day!!