The World is My Oyster

Back to Singapore for a bit, a few weeks ago I went with Blue Water Volunteers for a ReefWalk at Kusu Island. Seriously, I need to write this up NOW otherwise I’ll start forgetting the details! (already started happening)

We met up at Marina South Pier (near Harbourfront) to catch a ferry to the island at 5am in the morning! Yea it was still all dark. I’ve never been to this Pier before, it looks pretty cool, reminds me of the Southern Cross Station in Melbourne.

We were divided into 4 or 5 groups with about 10 participants and 1-2 volunteers each. Not long after, we got into the ferry. Took us about half an hour to reach the island.

While we were in the ferry, it started raining. Great. Things to remember for your next outdoor activity: BRING SOMETHING IN CASE IT RAINS! Be it umbrella, poncho, parachute jacket, hat, whatever. Anything to help than to have nothing at all. We all thought that it wouldn’t rain that day because it was raining heavily the whole day the day before that. You’d think the clouds had run out of water, but noooo. Lucky I grabbed my disposable poncho just before I left the door, I was really going to leave it. But the rest of the party had almost nothing. Among the 12 people in my group, only me and my friend Callista brought disposable ponchos (who later she gave to Joice, my housemate), 3 people who were all ready with their comfortable strong parachute jackets, and another 3 girls who shared 1 big poncho like a tent. Oh, Joice brought a small umbrella which she lent to the rest of the people (all 4 of them). So yea they got pretty drenched at the end. Don’t forget that wind on beach can be COLD! Rain and wind with wet shoes… you can imagine. But anyway before we get to that part, we had very nice time, which I’m going to start now (nuff with all the complaints).

When we got to the island, it was almost pitch dark. And great thing was they forgot to tell us to bring torchlight in the prep email. So to emphasize how dark it was, I have to show you this:

That pathetic light is the one torchlight we had in the group which one of the volunteer brought.

Talking about volunteers, our group went with June (right below) and Regina (left below). Oh right, I have to tell you that all the pictures starting from this point were taken by Waiming, because I didn’t bother to take my camera out of the ziplock with the rain and all.

I found the girls nice, knowledgeable, and quite professional. It’s always nice to see people passionate about what they’re doing. June is actually a graduate from some kind of Marine Biology degree, so it’s her area. Regina assisted June. I saw her studying some papers on the way to the island. She either studied about the reef walk or exam :).

We waited under the shade for around 15 minutes before finally deciding to embark to the wilderness of the beach. The rain got better by that time although it was still showering. But we got no choice, it’s either walking under the rain or no walk at all. This kind of reef walk can only be done once a month, in early morning, during low tide. A few people were reluctant to go and get drenched, but everybody decided to go ahead at the end.

So this is the very early shot of seaweed we found all over the sand. I remember there are a few types: green, red, black? I almost forgot everything they told me by now :(.

It was pretty dark for the first 20 minutes or so, so it was quite hard to catch anything with bare eyes and no torchlight. But it brightened after a while and the view was great.

There were a lot of this purplish ‘thing’. It reminds me of cloth you use to clean kitchen. A bunch of clothes. By the way those shoes in the corner are mine. So obviously I just stood around pointing to things which I think Waiming should take pictures of.

I call this the baby purplish thing:

Some kind of alien-like object:

Take notice of that diving shoe in the corner. That’s the best shoes you could wear during this kind of activity. I saw some at the army market before and they were pretty cheap too (~S$20). But I guess the quality and prices always range.

I feel like I’m supposed to at least know whether the stuff I’m showing here animals or plants, because our guides kept asking us that trivia. They later explained things to us. But now I’m just blank like a white paper. I mean of course I know crabs are animals, but how about that purplish thing and that alien-like object? I have no clue. My wild guess will be plants.

Joice kept asking the guide whether so and so can be eaten or not. Any sea creatures must watch out…

This was what we did almost the entire time. Looking down. Searching for something interesting. When somebody found something, they’d first ask the guide, if it was truly interesting. If it was, then the guide would ask everybody in the group to come closer and pay attention while they were explaining why it was interesting. Not seldom that we had false excitement over a plank of wood or some dirt in the sand.

Nice view right? The rubbish-bag looking plastic we wore were the disposable ponchos. It was really annoying to hold it against the wind. Not advisable to wear it to the beach or anywhere with wind.

Another alien-like object. Looks like giant mushroom.

We (by we, I mean June or Regina) caught a few animals this way. They brought a couple of empty containers with them so we could temporarily catch them, show to everyone, have short talk or discussion about it, then free them back to the wilderness.

We got to see a couple of types of crab, which I can’t remember now. I think there were moon crab and another type. There was also hermit crab. But hermit crab is not exactly a crab. Well, at least not the crab that we usually eat. They’re the tiny crab-like creatures who use empty seashells for their houses. In my primary school time in Jakarta, some people sold these poor hermit crabs to kids, who often bought them home and fed them rice (including me). They’d usually die in a few days. Sometimes the pimp showed off their hermit crabs by having them pull tiny cart and all sort of other things. Now that I think about it, it’s really quite barbaric.

Another interesting type of crab is Fiddler crab, which has one claw much bigger than the other. On that beach they usually gather at one spot and we could see them from afar. Then they would look like they’re waving to us. But we didn’t get to see them that morning. Probably because of bad weather.

Unknown crab. Pretty big one. We also got one tiny one and when we released it back, the guides kept telling us not to blink. Apparently it dig a hole in the sand and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Coral that reminds me of beehive.

This is a good example of 2 organisms (the top dome and the bumpy things below it) fighting for space. Or whatever it was they needed in the middle. I think the dome was supposed to be winning.

View of the beach area. During high tide the water would go up to the mud line we see in the picture.

The greener side of the coast.

The poor fish was stuck on the dry land (only about the size of our middle finger). So we saved it. But before that we took picture of it first ;)

Group photo at the end of the day. As you can see most of us were pretty drenched. And for me the last half hour or so was very cold due to all the wetness and wind. My rubbish-bag-like poncho could only do so much. I can’t imagine the folks that were totally wet from head to toe. So message to all, be more prepared if you do any outdoor activity!

There can only be so many you can capture on camera. There were a lot of other things we saw that you didn’t see here. Snails on rocks. Small little fish. Oysters. Shrimps. Sea cucumber, which I touched for the first time. It’s long, black, and furry. Felt like touching big short snake with carpet-like fur. It looks like this (picture stolen from Naked Hermit Crab blog). Good way is to go see them yourselves ;).

We finished around 9am and sort of had to rush back to the ferry. It was still raining all the way through. I thought we would have time to go to the temple, which I heard had giant tortoise statues and ponds full of live tortoises. I did see one small pond with many tortoises inside (which I couldn’t take picture of, because of, again, the rain). I would want to go there again next time and take some time to explore the temple and other part of the island.

I know my post has not been the most informative about marine life. I found this blog quite comprehensive. I think he’s one of the volunteer for Naked Hermit Crab, another group of volunteers who lead this kind of nature walk at Singapore’s shores like Sentosa, Chek Jawa, Pulau Semakau, Kusu Island. The last few posts were on Sentosa, which I first thought couldn’t be so beautiful, but I could be proven very wrong.

Anybody who’s interested to go, here or other places, can ask me to go with you :). I love nature walk. Nature is fascinating.

1. The three types of seaweeds are green, red and brown.
2. Both the purplish baby thing and the alien looking thing are animals. (!!) The former is a type of soft coral while the latter is a hard coral.
3. The crab, that your guides had caught and shown the group, is commonly known as the flower crab. This crab can be eaten and the best way to cook it is to steam it, and dig the meat into light soy sauce.

Thanks Peter! :)

Reef Walk with Blue Water Volunteers
Kusu Island, Singapore
www.bluewatervolunteers.org/reefwalk

Time: 5am-9am
Cost: $15