Tropical Marine Science Institute celebrated its 10th birthday on St John's island! The setting up of TMSI goes a long way back in the 1990s where the idea was first conceived by several professors in NUS on having an offshore marine laboratory. In 2002, TMSI premises on St John's island were officially opened by the Minister of Trade and Industry BG George Yeo on 3 October 2002.
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| Welcome banner! |
My personal experience on TMSI started out as an undergraduate student working for my UROPs in early 2007. I can't believe that I have been working on and off at TMSI-SJI for almost 5 years long! And yes, I have been on the giant clam project since then. :) It gives me great pleasure to showcase the other works done on TMSI-SJI.
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| Itinerary for the day |
To commemorate TMSI-SJI's anniversary, the facility was opened to all guests, especially the family and friends of the current staff. On usual days, the TMSI-SJI is out of bounds so it gives everyone a great opportunity to not only have a look at our workplace, but also to understand our work. Also, a series of seminars were also in placed, where researchers associated with TMSI presented their current research around Singapore's marine environment.
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| Coral reef transects |
Within TMSI-SJI, there are at least 5 different research groups, looking at a variety of topics: from marine algae to giant clams, from floating buoys to ship hulls, from coral reefs to the intertidal flats. Numerous research groups presented their works in colorful displays and posters. It was great fun to visit around the facility and talking to everyone. Individual research groups also showcased their organisms and they were definitely interesting to everyone who visited.
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| Keeping up with water quality - freshwater and marine |
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| Giant clam team! |
Here's a photo of us working at the outdoor aquarium. We put up our giant clam specimens and other poster displays for the visitors. It was a whole lot of fun interacting with everyone, but also a whole lot of sunshine through the day. (I caught a cold from too much heat... bleh...).
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| Shell chart and our juveniles |
We also launched our first information sheet about our giant clams of Singapore! :) A big thank you to Wan Ting for designing this. (P.S: A friend of Wan Ting knew right away that this was done by her!)
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| Info sheet! |
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| Kareen explaining to the visitors |
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| Fish involved in the Hep A project |
With us on outdoor display, the fishes were out and about! As part of a bigger endeavor with the blood cockles, this project hopes to use the fish as transport vehicles for the vaccination and infect the blood cockles with the vaccine, preventing Hep A transmission! How cool is that?
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| RARA boys |
At the sheltered outdoor aquarium, the first booth is by the RARA boys who does work on Beting Bronok. They also had a dummy photo quadrat demonstrating the importance of cataloging the substratum. A friend of mine, Nicholas studies the species diversity and distribution of jellyfishes in Singapore! The others in his lab like Chee Kong and Swee Cheng study molluscs, seastars and sponges!
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| Nicholas' Jellies! |
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| Stuffed jelly toy |
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| Information posters |
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| Chee Kong explaining what are echinoderms |
Also in the aquaria, numerous marine taxa were represented: the cnidarians, ascidians, sea fans, soft corals, bivalves, gastropods, echinoderms, etc...
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| Coral tank! |
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| Nice aquaria setup... |
Lionel and team re-created a seawall in the tanks! :D One of the project's aims is to look at the long-term survivorship of these organisms on the seawalls, and the possibility of artificially enhancing biodiversity on the seawalls. It is analogous to creating a garden on the seawalls!
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| Enhancing biodiversity on the seawalls |
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| Biofouling projects |
Some of the projects looked at the effects of fouling organisms on substrates such as ship hulls. In the process, the biofouling community is a huge array of different organisms as well...
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| More displays! |
Unfortunately I didn't have much time to sit in for the talks but Ria has kindly shared with us on her
posts about what she has learnt from the talks, including the
mega marine survey!
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| Seminar room area and the publications |
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| Souvenirs! :D |
It was an awesome day out (though I'm slightly burnt and sick) and that everyone we met at the openhouse were really supportive of the research conducted on TMSI. I hope that TMSI-SJI has another 10 more years to go with all these great marine science research! :)
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