Semakau with Team Seagrass

On the Sunday that just passed, I joined Team Seagrass on its monitoring trip! It's been a while since I've been out to the field or monitored with Team Seagrass. I'm glad that there was still space! :)

Upon arriving on the pier, I met the family (Philip, Catherine and Lucas) whom I had sold a book to! After chatting a while, I found out that they have been reading my blog posts too! It was nice to see the whole family joined on Team Seagrass and even the Mega Marine Surveys, to have a better look of our shores. The trip had quite a fair bit of newbies who joined us for the first time. It's heartening to see enthusiastic youths and volunteers joining us for monitoring.

On arriving Semakau, the weather held up and the skies were clear. I had unfortunately not brought a cap, hence got sunburnt. The first thing that caught my attention on the shores were these white 'styrofoam' bits! They were floating everywhere! Though small, these white bits play important roles on the seagrass meadows.


These white bits are in fact, the male pollen packets from the tape seagrass (Enhalus acoroides). My first experience of this 'spawning' was in Bintan and second at Labrador beach in Singapore. The mechanisms of such spawning are rather fascinating. The male fruiting bodies of E. acoroides are found at the base of the plant, and since these pollen packets are light (and negatively buoyant), they float straight up to the surface!

In this next photo, you see the female flower. Low tides are essential in aiding the process of male pollen meeting the female flowers. As the tides recedes, the waves causes the female flowers to bob up and down on the surface. As the male pollen packets floats with the waves, the female flowers will 'capture' the packets via the bobbing action! Very cool huh! I didn't manage to get a video as the tide went down too quickly...


As the tide recedes, the pollen packs gets stuck on the blades of E. acoroides.


I didn't manage to find an intact male fruiting body but only this uprooted one (see photo below). You can see some of the white stuff remains...


After monitoring, the volunteers were out and about searching for animals! We were fortunate to be graced by large birds on the trip. We spotted the white-bellied sea eagles and several grey herons.


Some of my own sightings included the 'not-so' upside down jellyfish...


Juvenile swimming crabs...


Starry flatworm swimming amongst the grass...


A fat and juicy Jorunna funebris... Kok Sheng found a pretty slug - Hypselodoris maritima! Stay tune for his finds on his blog.


As always, we are looking out for fish traps and here's one that has been abandoned for a while. Such traps are a hazard to reef animals as they may get trapped or injuries from these abandoned traps.


Also on the trip, Siti and her student were conducting some 'walking' experiments. This is an interesting photo showing Wei Ling and Nor Aishah directing the volunteers while Siti supervises from afar. :)


Great trip and I'm glad everyone had fun! :)