Pulau Semakau

I had wanted to help out with ProjectSemakau in 2010 and attended their training. Unfortunately a job acceptance took me away from all these activities. I sincerely hope I may be able to help them some time in the future perhaps.

Anyway I did a classroom lesson with them and 2 survey trainings.

The first one was a Biodiversity survey training at Pulau Semakau on 31 July (Sat) 5am-12pm

Thus I took a cab in the wee hours to reach Marina South Pier. Being my first assignment cum on the job training, I am totally clueless. This is a hunting trip where we are each allocated a portion to analyse the living specimens and its population in that area. And because of the superb hunting skill of my partner, I saw plentiful actually.

E.g. corals

crabs

sea star

nudibranch

Oh my partner of the day clicks with me as we do share similar interests. She dived a lot, run marathon (she was wearing the bay run tee thus that's how the conversation started) and was a contestant for ultra-marathoner too though she did not participate as she felt she did not train much. In fact she has a friend who is also doing the race in Sahara Desert, fund raising for the Singapore. This lady friend is much more impressive who has participate lots of events and won some.
The second one was a Monitoring survey training at Pulau Semakau on 14 Aug (Sat) 5.30am-12.30pm

This is more tedious as you were walking and investigating the state of health of the seagrass and living specimens in your area based on the marker planted in the shore.

At first all we saw was just sea grass.

Then someone who had finished came over to see our progress and spotted the crab.. woot.. something different to report finally.

Then is back to more grasses 

On the way back, we caught sight of a horseshoe crab...

Other group's unidentified specimen.

I know it is cruel to bring the specimen back. Is really an issue of do we want to conduct further study and understand better at the expense of the caught specimen's life? Sigh too complicated. I can only say in the name of science!