Stars of our shores and other low tide highlights

This past week was the last of the morning super low tides of the year.

Die-hard shore explorers took this opportunity to document our intertidal shores at their best.

While seahorses are regularly sighted on our Northern shores, the true stars were the Sea Stars!

Changi remains a favourite shore and constantly surprises the diligent visitor. Such as sightings of rare sea stars!
The first sightings of Luidia hardwickii!
And the awesome Eight-armed sea star (Luidia maculata). As well as lots of other stunning sea stars.Other encounters included a first look at special snails such as a living Murex snail (Murex trapa) and strange sea cucumbers and seahorses and other fishes and a closer look at some of the common animals.

Just across the Johor Straits, during a quick health check of Chek Jawa, volunteers were delighted to find two Common sea stars (Archaster typicus).

These sea stars were wiped in the aftermath of the flooding in 2007 and their return is eagerly awaited. Alas, they have yet to be found in the countless numbers as in the past. This clearly shows that we can't take our marine life for granted, if they are common.

A blue Knobbly sea star was also seen!

There were more starry encounters on our other shores! TeamSeagrass was at Cyrene Reefs and encountered the intriguing "Blonde" sea star again.As well as possibly a juvenile Pentaceraster mammilatus, the sea star discovered there in May and identified as a first record for Singapore. Here is it is compared with the more commonly seen Knobbly sea star (Protoreaster nodosus) on the right.

Unfortunately, a quick look at the East Coast shore in an attempt to view the sea fans there, revealed that it was rather badly silted up. What happened to this shore? We don't really know.

See more video clips of marine life encountered on our shores on the sgbeachbum blog

Another special encounter was the Rainbow Warrior!
This famous ship was at the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club.