Underwater Rugby in Singapore, Season 2

After an exciting first season where the sport kicked off in Singapore, the schedule for the next few months of training is out! 

***********AUGUST******

- 2nd August 2014
- 9th August 2014
- 16th August 2014
- 30th August 2014

********SEPTEMBER****

- 6th September 2014

- 13th September 2014

- 27th September 2014

*******OCTOBER********

- 4th October 2014

If you are interested to join, check us out on facebook:  FAT UWR - First Asian Team Underwater Rugby (Singapore) and drop us a note! 

Doesn't matter what level you are, newbies welcome! Fins, mask and snorkel are available for

rent at a small fee if you don't have your own. 

Come join us! 

Lady Elliot Island

A short while back I wrote about my experience with Project Manta, and now I have to write about the place where it takes place (most of the time), because it is one of the most gorgeous places I have ever been to, with an abundance of marine life, and an extremely well-run (I feel) Eco Resort.

An aerial view of the island

Lady Elliot Island is a coral cay on the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. On my trips out here, I have seen manta rays, whales, dolphins, turtles (loggerhead, green, hawksbill), big fish, small fish, beautiful reefs, sharks (tiger, nurse, black tip reefies, white tip reefies, guitar, leopard) and stingrays.

Two bull rays swimming with a school of big eye trevally

Freediving with several of barracuda almost as big as me!

Every time I have been to the island, I've had at least one mind-blowing experience. This June, it was a whale encounter. 

Yes... it was THAT close!! 

Last September, I swam with a dolphin (to see a video of it, see my previous post here). 

Last June, I was lucky enough to see a feeding chain of about 70 mantas... maybe more! And the few trips before that, each time I dived with a manta was enough to take my breath away (and still is!)

With so many things in the water to see, Lady Elliot Island is the perfect place to dive (both scuba and free, or just snorkel)! There is easy access to the dive/snorkel sites which are an easy swim off the shore (though for scuba, you will take the boat out) most of the time, except in bad weather.

Guitar shark

If that happens, there's always the lagoon on the southern side of the island where I have seen encountered countless friendly turtles and black tip reef sharks.

A massive loggerhead turtle

Besides its rich waters, Lady Elliot Island is a haven for terrestrial wildlife, supported by lush vegetation. A large part of the forest is a rookery for white-capped noddies, that return to the island in the hundreds (possibly thousands) in the evening after a day of feeding at sea. Other birds commonly seen are buff banded rails, sea eagles and mutton birds. At night, it's not uncommon to bump into a few green tree frogs that like to hang out around the bathrooms.

A pensive (or bored) -looking Green tree frog

Noddies returning to the island 

 The resort is run in the most eco-friendly way possible, in order to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. Another extremely important Eco aspect is education, which the Activities Team takes good care of. Most of the activities on the island, such as guided reef walks, glass bottomed boat tours, snorkel safari, nighttime talks are centered around educating visitors on the ecosystem they are in and how to help conserve it.

Schooling big eye trevally

Interested in visiting this awesome island? Check out their website: http://www.ladyelliot.com.au/. I would highly encourage a visit! If you would like to be part of Project Manta's research expeditions to the island, have a look here: http://earthwatch.org/expeditions/project-manta. Enjoy your trip! ;)

Rays of the setting sun, underwater

PS. I've got many underwater videos from this island that I putting together, including footage of whales, sharks, turtles and of course, mantas... stay tuned! 

Project Manta

Last month, I had the privilege of going to one of the most amazing little islands I've ever been to (Lady Elliot Island) to volunteer with Project Manta.

The charismatic manta ray

Project Manta is research program based at The University of Queensland, Brisbane. It was founded in 2007 to find out more about the population of manta rays along the east coast of Australia. Because despite the interest in manta rays from divers, very little was known about them. (Though we know more now, thanks to this project and others like it, there's still much more to find out!)

I first got involved with Project Manta in 2011 as an Earthwatch volunteer. At that time, I had never dived with mantas before and was attracted to the prospect of diving with and contributing to research about them at the same time. And I wasn't disappointed! I fell in love with these charismatic, gentle fish the first time I saw them underwater. Being in the water with these guys is simply breathtaking!

On the trip, I helped take identification photos, enter data on sea and weather conditions and manta behaviour recorded when mantas were seen, and collect plankton for studies on their feeding behaviour. All this information is used to get a better understanding of manta ray biology, which in turn helps with their conservation (they are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List).

After this experience, I was hooked! So, when I got the opportunity to, I did my own research project on manta rays and got involved with Project Manta again. Since then, I continued to volunteer with them, taking photo ID shots on breath hold and then identifying the mantas/ - an experience I greatly value.

Feeding time!! Mantas swim with their mouth open to collect plankton, which is then filtered out by their gill plates. 

Besides Lady Elliot Island, Project Manta gets manta ID shots from North Stradbroke Island, another hotspot for mantas, and all the way up and down the coast of eastern Australia from everyday divers.

If you would like to get involved with the Project, see how you can help here: https://sites.google.com/site/projectmantasite/home/get-involved. The project relies heavily on "citizen science" (i.e. help from YOU). You might even get to name a manta!

For Manta conservation in other regions around the world, check out this website: http://www.mantatrust.org/

Diving Pulau Hantu

A few weeks ago, I did a reef walk at Pulau Hantu (Ghost Island in English, though it's name comes from the owls found on the island, not real ghosts!) as part of the Mega Marine Survey of Singapore, and I was pretty impressed by what I saw from the shore. This time, I took it one level deeper and went scuba diving at the same island with The Hantu Bloggers.

Some people say that it's not worth going diving in Singapore waters because the visibility is crap and there is nothing to see. While the visibility is pretty bad (usually ~2m, can be 5-6m on good days, best I've heard is 10m on a really good day) compared to elsewhere, there's actually plenty to see! For sure, it's no Great Barrier Reef, but we've got some pretty cool stuff down there.....

Feather stars:

Different fish:

Filefish

Scorpionfish

Butterflyfish

Sea fans:

Coral and other funky things:

 Nudibranches, in all shapes and sizes:

Ceratostoma

classic nudi pose!

Glossodoris atromarginata

Glossodoris cinta

Pteraeolidia ianthina, a stinging nudi!

Learn more about what these nudis munch on here! http://www.pulauhantu.sg/slugs-snails-and-the-things-they-eat/

Crabs: 

Sponge crab. These guys pick up sponges and attach them to their backs for camouflage. This one didn't have any though! 

 And..... Seahorses!

 Also.... Trash. This piece of newspaper was covering some coral before I removed it. Keep your trash out of the ocean, everyone!!!

 I've been told there's more to see, such as turtles, cuttlefish and even more diffent kinds of nudis, and other dive sites around the island. So, looking forward to my next dive here! 

An introduction to Singapore's marine life!

Recently, I participated in an intertidal reef walk on Pulau Hantu. This was the first time I had a good look at Singapore's reefs, and I was pleasantly surprised!

There was plenty of marine life to see as we picked our way carefully between the rocks and corals on the reef. Hard corals, soft coral, sea stars, sea cucumbers, different types of seagrass, eels, octopuses... just to name a few.

The lagoon at P. Hantu

Filefish

Unfortunately, our reefs have been very much affected by development along the coastline, including land reclamation. Since the 1980s, live coral coverage has been reduced by about 65%...

An industrial site in the background... 

A walking feather star!

Can you spot the octopus? We saw 2 that day! 

Coastal works have also caused the visibility in surrounding waters to be reduced from about 10m in the 1960s to the present 2-3m.

Amazingly though, Singapore's remaining reefs have about half the coral species as the Great Barrier Reef, even though our reefs are so much smaller in size!

Lots of seagrass... apparently there are dugongs around. I would love to see one!

Hairy crab

Cabbage coral

It was a great morning on the reef and I met some like-minded people with an interest in conservation. And now that I've seen the reef from above the water surface, I can't wait to get in and see it from below!

A feeding sea cucumber

The bright colours of a carpet anemone in contrast with the green-brown background

Jorunna funebris, a common nudibranch in these reefs

This intertidal reef walk was organised by National Parks Board, as part of Singapore's Comprehensive Marine Biodiversity Survey. A huge thanks to the guides who were with us!

For more information on Singapore's reefs, visit:
http://www.pulauhantu.sg/ and http://www.wildsingapore.com/




PS: I'm no coral expert (yet!) so although I've tried to identify the coral, I may have got some wrong.. Please feel free to correct me!




References: Ria Tan, http://www.wildsingapore.com/