Punggol Point, Aftermath of the Monsoon

Hello Everyone,

Upon seeing the short non-rainy window on sunday, and after convincing my father that the weather was great, and after consulting the weather and tide guru, which showed an approximate 1.0m low tide, we managed to reach Punggol Point...

 So here, it's obvious that the the skies are really really cloudy... a foreshadow of a rain maybe? :P

 The usual scene: the black boulders and sand. The tide was receeding at this time... Was on the verge of rejoicing when I noticed a number of people, bending over and picking up "something"... Wanted to approach them but they didn't seem friendly so I scrapped the idea...

 The monsoons seemed to have washed up tons of mangrove seeds! The beach was littered with them! Took a rooted seed home to try my luck at growing a mangrove at home. :P

 Now, this is an interesting one. Remember fighting over that white, oval-shaped thing in your Ice Kachang? Yup, its the ATTAP CHEE or NIPAH PALM. The ATTAP CHEE (CHEE = Seed on Hokkien) actually comes from this fruit that you are looking at. The white thingy is actually embedded within this woody seed pod. So, if you ever see any of these do try to grow them! :D

 There were also lots of BEAD ANEMONIES. The squirt water when you touch them!

 A badly eroded cowrie that was possibly a OVUM COWRIE. Would have been a beauty if it wasn't eroded...

 These few men were actually collecting VENUS CLAMS and GREEN TUA TOWS... They actually collected a huge plastic bag of them... tragically, they were not the only ones searching for the animals...

 Look! some of the common residents did not fail to disappoint!The GUAM FALSE LIMPET was the most common of the 3 (or 4) shells in the photograph.

 A BURNT MUREX! What a rare visitor! We usually do not see these shells along this coast... The last time i saw one was in BINTAN (do refer to my previous few post on Bintan... :) ) Tragically, he's really eroded... (Sorry, addressed it as a "he" for fun's sake! )

Another unusual visitor, the SURF CLAM. They are usually found in high densities along East Coast Park or Changi Bay...

 And our local representative shell!!! The SINGAPORE KEYHOLE LIMPET (Diodora singaporensis... :) )

 Oyster-farmers harvesting oysters along the rocks... This is good if you actually look at the density of oysters along this coast... totally freaky

 The sun sets... Dark arrives...

 And a DOG CONCH! Another injured (I mean, eroded) citizen of our shores... Btw, they are edible. :)

 Johore Industrial Region... There"s also Serangoon Island in the background...

 Punggol Point jetty... Usually the setting off and returning point for those going to OBS (Outward Bounds Singapore) ... I've been there! ;P

 

Well, although it did not seem like a really good trip, at least I managed to obtain some specimens... :) Hope that the next trip will be fruitful!

Floating Land

Hello!

As promised, I will set this blog post more for mangroves. So here it is. Went to visit a "secret place" in Singapore. It is in the middle of the Johore Straits and thus, no seashells. :( However, there were numerous mangroves around and so were their seeds. :) So here is a small intro on the days activities!

 So here's the only shell found today! The African Giant Land Snail. found it along the grassy patch near the carpark and it was clean of residue.

 halfbeaks that are near the harbour. They can also be found elsewhere with the archer fish.

 Archer Fish and green chromide lazing about near the harbour... these are the salt water species.

 The dock. Behind is Coney Island. It is slated to be a nature reserve soon! Majority of the plants would be the rhu tree...

 These live drills were found along the side of the harbour walls. I guess it was low tide when I arrived.

 Coney Island again, this time while we are on the boat!

 The Country Club.

 Punggol beach/park. The whole stretch here is lined with cages of granite rock.

 The western wing of Punggol Park, this is the stretch which i usually visit for my shelling trips!

 Eastern Wing. Much more sandy beaches.

 Nightmare and Sweet dreams, OBS Harbour. this was the harbour we mistook as the one we were supposed to dock at and ended up getting everyone chised off... :)

 Pulau Ketam. This whole island is covered in mangroves and is split into two islands during the high tide!

 More mangroves...

 Ah Ha! The rhizophora sp. mangroves. This is probably where most of the seeds collected were from. Look at the impressive root mat of the plants!

 Some of the mangrove seeds that were found. I think most of them were rhizophora but will have to check again. I will probably create another blog post to that has their identities. :)

 Beautiful. Pulau Ubin in the background. I actually kayaked past this area during OBS but never had the chance to snap a photo. Well, tha place was so relaxing it felt like a dream. Everything is so slow and calm. The dogs there were also very friendly too. :)

 Hee hee! A boat named as this! CHIO BU!!! Maybe if i had a boat i would name it chiobu too.

 So here are the mangroves. I have separated them by colour and shape. the ones second from the left on the top row have a squarish cross section. Rhizophora sp.

A close up view. this photo is snapped in my room.

I really enjoyed the visit there today! It was like a quick retreat after being bombed by poor results from the past exam... T_T Still, enjoyed the family time with my family, Ah Kong, Ah Mah, Xiao Yi, Pa, Ma, Hannah etc... I will probably be going back there again so hope to bring more interesting stuff the next time! :)