Reef Friends - Little Sisters corals look great!

After our last exploratory trip, we are back to work! Our second last survey of the year, we headed off to Little Sisters coral reefs... There were slight currents but definitely not as bad as Raffles Lighthouse! The reef survey went smoothly with a small team of 6 divers...

Along my transect lines, I first spotted the halved mushroom coral on the left... Later as I swam a little upwards, I found the other half! Jeff says that it is possible for the corals to still survive as a fragment on its own... I wonder if they move on their own now?


In the deeper waters, bryozoans were more common since they do not rely on sunlight... First look at this colonial organism, you would think that it's a 'skeleton' of some coral. Bryozoans come in different forms, and the usual intertidal ones are found on seagrass leaf blades, while the subtidal ones tend to be solitary (below).


Some other invertebrates of the trip included the 'sessile' ones that lives on the sea fans. At Little Sisters, the slopes are very colourful! Red, yellow, purple, pink, orange, ... you name a colour, they probably got it! Many of such sea fans act as anchors for brittle stars (far left) and commensals such as the white shrimp (center) and even basket stars (far right).


Slug variety was few (maybe I'm just bad at finding them)... Two nudibranchs: Glossodoris atromarginatus (top left) and Tambja sp. (top right). The Elysia ornata leaf slug (bottom left) and flat worm, Pseudoceros sp. (bottom right).


Just the other day, we spotted a different swimming anemone. I realised that subtidally, there are also a variety of them! Oh my!


Moving onto the corals! For many divers, we tend to like to see the fauna of the reefs such as shrimps, clams, octopus, etc etc... Very few really do appreciate the corals as they appear to be the 'lawn' of the seas. While they are analogous to the grass on land, corals are all animals! Each of them have polyps that feed individually, just that they are too small for our naked eyes...

This trip, I decided to showcase our corals and they are very healthy, and it's good to know since they had experience a stressful bleaching period late last year...

Soft corals are octocorallia... Instead of calcium carbonate structures, they possess sclerite structures.


For our reef surveys, we classify hard corals in their respective forms. Note that the following classification given is based on the corals observed. Different species of corals may have different forms and does not apply to all. :)

Here shows a Acropora sp. that is considered branching form (code name: CB).


The next form is encrusting (CE) that includes the Lithophyllon sp. and Ouslastrea sp.


Foliose (CF) includes Pachyseris sp. (concentric rings) (top), Echinopora sp. (center), and Podabacia sp.

Submassive (CS) - Galaxea sp. (top left), Goniopora sp. (top right), Pectinia sp. (bottom).


Finally, massive forms (CM) includes Diploastrea sp., Favia sp. (note the flatworm!), and Platygyra sp.

Thanks to Chay Hoon and Jeff for the opportunity to join Reef Friends, I have learnt how to identify corals better now! :) It's been almost a year since I first joined Reef Friends, and it's a great learning opportunity for volunteer divers on our reefs and its neighbours... Continue to stay tune and I'll continue to show you more about our reefs! :)