110704 Sentosa Serapong

A special visit to the shore bordering Sentosa's excellently manicured Serapong golf course ( hole 7), kindly arranged by Shao Wei, Xi Lin, Sheila and Sylvester, thank you so much for letting us visit this very special shore!

This shore showcases what Singapore's reefs are like when untouched by human activities, with very large colonies of soft and hard coral.


A large expanse of Acropora coral. Kok Sheng found another of the same size at the reef edge. Such immense colonies are very rarely seen in Singapore as hard coral grow relatively slowly (~10 cm a year under optimum conditions for Acropora which is considered fast for hard coral) and it could take a couple of decades of undisturbed growth for them to reach such large sizes.


Close-up of the Acropora coral. The branches seem to be closer to each other than commonly seen.

Other types of hard coral can also be found on the shore:

Favid coral.



Turbinaria coral.


Goniopora coral.


Pocillopora coral.


One of the Pocillopora coral had this orange commensal crab which I have not seen before on any other shore.


Acropora coral with commensal bandit crab (Tetralia nigrolineata).


Euphyllid coral.


Fungid coral.


There was also very good soft coral (Alcyonacea) growth with large colonies:




Never have I seen such diverse and dense coral growth in Singapore before.





A closer look at some of the soft coral.


Kok Sheng next to a large leathery soft coral colony.


Other than coral, this shore is also home to other oraganisms:


Phymanthus anemones. These anemones come in a wide variation of colors and patterns but may all be the same species.


Heteractis magnifica, an anemone that is also home to anemonefish. Ria spotted a cluster of them.


Pseudoceros blue-lined flatworm.


These red feather stars (Crinoidea) were commonly seen on this shore.



Phyllid nudibranchs. Top is Phyllidiella pustulosa, bottom is Phyllidiella nigra.



There were some of these stinging hydroids, found mainly near the eastern beacon.


Zoanthids, tiny colonial polyps that carpet the substrate.


Corallimorphs, very similar to anemones and may have evolved from Scleractinia (losing their skeletons).


Not too sure what this encrustation is, I have not seen something like this before.

Other blog posts on this shore by:
Ria
Kok Sheng
Mei Lin
Jerome