Cyrene - Blue dragons in the grass

Cyrene reef certainly lives up to its reputation as the best reef in Singapore. Thanks Ria, for bringing us there!

Nestled smack in the middle of major shipping lanes surrounded by refineries on Bukom and Jurong island, Cyrene boasts a variety of habitats including seagrass meadows, sand flats (filled with sand dollars, tiny crabs and common sea stars) and rocky intertidal areas. Pretty amazing.


The coral. Most of the IDs for the coral are guesswork as usual. IDing coral is so hard, I don't think I should even try to at my current level of ignorance :

Acropora/Montipora?Polyps suggest it to be leathery coral.


There seems to be some organism attached to the coral in the middle of this photo. Does it prey on the polyps?


Flowery disk coral (Turbinaria sp)?


Leathery soft coral can look repugnant out of the water.


But transform into something beautiful underwater.




The zoanthids, colonial anemones :


Soft coral growing in the midst of broad disk zoanthids.


Zoanthids also try to make a living under the grass.


Corallimorphs :












The anemones :




Nice pink frilly anemone.


This one has purple tips on its tentacles.


Banded frilly anemone.


This looks like a Haddoni.


A small specimen of giant carpet anemone.


The sea cucumbers :








These look like white-rumped cucumbers (Actinopyga lecanora).






Not sure what this cucumber is.


Big synaptid sea cucumber?


The crabs :



Hairy crabs.




Red egg crab. Highly poisonous, do not eat.


Swimming crab. We saw a couple of red ones as well, hiding under rocks and in the crevasses.


Hermit crab.


Fiddler crab.


The worm :




Saw this Giant reef worm (Eunice aphroditois) emerging from its burrow. It was about 2cm thick and shyer than it should be, with the scary look it has.


The nudibranchs :




This beautiful blue dragon was hiding under a seagrass leaf when I found it.


Polka-dot nudibranch. Looks like a tiny furry rabbit, very cute.


The miscellany :


A boxfish.


Looks like green gumdrop ascidians. No idea what the white discharge is.


A fanworm. I saw about 2-3 of them in the rocky areas.


The sea stars :




A cushion star, probably the cutest sea star around.


Knobby sea star. Plenty of them in the seagrass. I saw their colors ranging from bright red to light brown with all sorts of shades in between.