Here's a clip of mass coral bleaching on Pulau Semakau (North). Mass coral bleaching is also happening on Terumbu Raya just across the channel.
NOAA's coral reef watch satellite monitoring, Singapore is in the blue Watch zone. But our corals are still bleaching.
What is coral bleaching?
Coral are colonies of tiny animals called polyps. Each polyp lives inside a little hard skeleton. The huge colony is made up of the skeletons of countless polyps. The polyps of all reef-building hard corals harbour microscopic, single-celled algae (called zooxanthellae). The polyp provides the zooxanthellae with shelter and minerals. The zooxanthellae carry out photosynthesis inside the polyp and share the food produced with the polyp. Corals generally have white colour skeletons, which is believed to assist in photosynthesis by reflecting light onto the zooxanthellae.
Apr 2016, when some signs of bleaching were seen, but not mass coral bleaching. Similarly on our survey in Jul 2015, some bleaching but not mass bleaching. Today, I did see some corals that were not bleaching.
Circular mushroom corals I saw were bleaching, but the large Tongue mushroom corals nearby were not.
leathery soft corals and about 30% of them were bleaching.
Bubble tip sea anemones. I also saw several Frilly sea anemones and only a few were bleaching.
Giant carpet anemones, only one was bleaching. Anemonefishes were not obvious in these anemones. We couldn't find the Fluted giant clams that we saw on our trip in Apr 2016.
SG Sea Drone facebook page for the latest video uploads of what we saw.
On the way home, I also saw coral bleaching on Terumbu Bukom. Sigh.
High res photos of mass coral bleaching in Singapore for free download on wildsingapore flickr
Pulau Semakau is NOT the same as the Semakau Landfill. The Landfill was created by destroying all of Pulau Saking, and about half of the original Pulau Semakau by building a very long seawall. Fortunately, the landfill was constructed and is managed in such a way that the original mangroves, seagrass meadows and reefs on Pulau Semakau were allowed to remain. The eastern shore of Pulau Semakau is right next to the seawall of the Semakau Landfill, opposite the petrochemical plants on Pulau Bukom.
Phase 2 of the Landfill was just recently launched. This involved closing the gap of the seawall on the Semakau Landfill, forming one big pool where incinerated ash will be dumped. NEA worked to limit the damage to natural shores during the construction work for this expansion of the landfill.
Photos by others on this trip
- Russel Low on facebook.
Others on this trip: Heng Pei Yan.