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Sembawang Tides:
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Wed 30 Sep 2009 The beached Mud lobster at Pasir RisCategory : marine 19 Sep 2009 - During the International Coastal Cleanup last Saturday, the team who arrived there early that morning encountered a mud lobster out of its element, on the beach. Participants told each other that it was "welcoming us to clean the beach." Apparently it was there for at least an hour before they lost of track of it while engrossed in the cleanup.
Read about their exploits at the "News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore" blog:
Sat 16 Aug 2008 International Coastal Cleanup Singapore 2008: Site and Participant StatusCategory : marine The Raffles Museum Toddycats who coordinate the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore (ICCS) met last night over Old Chang Kee curry puffs and a couple of pizzas in NUS. The Zone Captains, Data Manager and a few others sorted through the information, requests, email conversations and reallocations that have been pouring in since May in order to update the status of the organisations and sites that will be the scene of activity on the morning of 20th September 2008. It won't just be volunteers in Singapore that hit the shores that day, volunteers in countries around the world will be taking to the beach as well, in order to data for a global perspective about marine trash. At this stage, beach and mangrove recces have started - these are being conducted by Zone and Site Captains and also for new organisers at various beach and mangrove sites in preparation for the actual day. A briefing for Site Buddies who help supervise operations will be conducted on 13th September 2008. More news uupdates will be posted to the ICCS blog at coastalcleanup.wordpress.com. Thu 24 Jul 2008 Horseshoe crabs rescued from a ghost net in Mandai mangroveCategory : marine Horseshoe crabs have been around for at least 445 million years, predating the dinosaurs and they are facing their greatest challenges during the Anthropocene - habitat loss, pollution, over-fishing and ghost net entanglement. The latter arises when fishermen abandon or lose their strong mono-filament gill nets; these do not degrade but will instead repeatedly entangle all sorts of animals in mangroves, rocky shore, coral reefs, sea grass and sandy shores. This is happening in Singapore too. Like my fellow naturalists and field biologists, I have had to rescue horseshoe crabs, forceps crabs, birds and even snakes over the past two decades. Habitatnews has highlighted just a couple of these rescues (e. g. Lazarus Island, 2004; Mandai, 2005) and the Nature Society (Singapore) has a regular rescue team that works the Mandai mudflats. These days it seems almost every low tide trip to a mangrove reveals ghost nets - e.g. shooting for Once Upon a Tree 2, a shore visit suring the last Pedal Ubin and the recent Lim Chu Kang mangrove cleanup as well. Mandai mudflats and mangroves have such a high incidence of ghost nets that I pack a scissors and factor in time for gill net removal each time before I set out - film shoot, education trip or work trip. Unfortunately, today was no different - NUS biology honours student Theresa Su, Raffles Museum Toddycat Teo Kah Ming and myself carefully released about 20 mangrove horseshoe crabs that were still living. Kah Ming had counted 87 carapaces entangled and adacent to the net so most had died some time ago. We checked each individual to be sure and carefully removed the nylon filaments that had weaved between and around their limbs. The chelicerates (horseshoe crabs are not crabs) were not feisty but happily not too limp - so they were recent entanglements but probably not last night's. Once freed, we left them clustered in various tide pools nearby with some hope that they would survive. The net was cut into three lengths and carried out in a bag made from a large-mesh ghost net lying nearby. There are still nets out there, I know, and with research trips increasing, hopefully it will come to a time when my scissors can stay in the bag!
Sun 06 Apr 2008 NEA's weather page has rain data with landmark overlaysCategory : internet I found the NEA's Local Weather page useful for monitoring cleanup sites during the International Coasta Cleanup Singapore last year. The data from weather radar is updated every 15 mins and now I see that you can click to add overlays including those of HDB towns, nature parks and MRT stations to help orientate you. I do wish NParks URLs to which the park icons are linked to were named URLs instead of numbers so they could double as landmarks without having to click through, but it all an excellent enhancement by NEA to the weather page. This image was taken during the mid-afternoon shower over Holland Village today.
Mon 17 Sep 2007 News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore: New blog for ICCSCategory : coastalcleanup Sat 15 Sep 2007 - News of the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore has been streaming in to a new blog at coastalcleanup.wordpress.com. Hop over for news, photo, data, educational material, etc.  Rains threatened the cleanups but many sites still managed to complete a full cleanup. Photos have been uploaded to Flickr as soon as they come in. These days with gmail and yousendit, seding s photos has become much easier! Data was reported back by most groups immediately and preliminary results are already out for the mangroves with data from the beaches following soon. It seems that more than 2,500 took to the shores to remove more than 100,000 pices of marine debris weighing more than 8 tonnes of trash. The Sunday Times covered the cleanup story and Lianhe Zaobao too has a story out this morning.  Mon 10 Sep 2007 International Coastal Cleanup Singapore - NUS Volunteer Recruitment DriveCategory : coastalcleanup Registration closed; thanks everyone! 16th International Coastal Cleanup, Singapore
What's It About? Tue 21 Aug 2007 Wesley Wong's video, "International Coastal Cleanup Singapore"Category : coastalcleanup "International Coastal Cleanup Singapore," a video by Wesley J. H. Wong (2005). - Wesley Wong produced this video of the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore based on the cleanup at the Kranji-Buloh mangroves in September 2004. He is an overseas graduate in filmmaking and is now pursuing a career in video productions and "indie" projects. When he's not working on corporate and wedding videos, he works on short films for other directors. I called him just now and he's now working with VisualForge Films. He can be reached at wesleywongjh@gmail.com. If you like to see his wedding works, hop over to weddingclips.com. Wesley approached us in 2004 to do his bit for the environemnt. He did this rather painlessly, inserting comments based on information from the ICCS webpage and the "Battling the Curse of Marine Litter" article. He produced the first cut in October and after comments from Angeline Tay and myself, he produced a second cut and then added music for a pleasant and informative piece. All this despite the fact all of us were pretty elusive after the cleanup as its crunch time in Oct-Nov, so he had enough tenacity to complete the job! I think several of the coordinators and site captains who are still working on the site will enjoy reminiscing when they watch this. Although this year's cleanup is all full up already for organisations, new comers are being scheduled for the 29th of September. But we need Site Buddies to help out - you would have to recce the site, learn about the cleanup and its background, marine life and impact of marine debris (morning of 8th September) and, of course, turn up bright and early on 15th of September this year at your designated site. If you are game to join an enthusiastic team, we'd love the help. Simply email: Wed 15 Aug 2007 International Coastal Cleanup Singapore - shoreline is maxed out!Category : envt Every year, participants take to the shorelines of Singapore to collect, categorise and dispose of marine trash as part of an effort across many countries - the International Coastal Cleanup. In Singapore, registration began in June and most of the regulars were quick to register their intent. Some, like Raffles Girls Secondary and Singapore American School, have been participating since the inception of International Coastal Cleanup Singapore (ICCS) 16 years ago! With the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) gaining ground, many corporate groups are joining the effort and the ICCS coordinators andd Zone Captains have been meeting many new organisers for that special briefing afforded to first timers. These organisers have indicated their interest in a long term programme and their desire to communicate more than the expeience of a day on the beach through educational material, so that is good news. Meanwhile, If you'd like to help out as a Site Buddy or in some oither way, do visit the ICCS webpage and email us at: Thu 26 Jul 2007 Los Angeles Times received the Pulitzer Prize for "Altered Oceans"Category : coastalcleanup Los Angeles Times received the Pulitzer Prize for "Altered Oceans" whixh was highlighted here about a year ago. It is excellent work and full of resources, so drop by for a visit. Congratulations to the team!  Wed 11 Jul 2007 Sasi Nayar receives the Tan Teck Guan Gold MedalCategory : news 09 Jul 2007 - Sasi Nayar receives the Nature Society (Singapore) Tan Teck Guan Gold Medal from John Tan, great-grandson of Tan Teck Guan, who was one of the sons of Tan Tock Seng. The Tan Teck Guan Medal was presented to Sasi Nayar for his 2003 doctoral thesis on "Nutrient and Biotic Fluxes in Relation to Dispersal of Pollutants in Ponggol River." The Nature Society (Singapore) Tan Teck Guan Gold Medal was awarded to Sasi Nayar for the best Masters and Doctoral Thesis from National Tertiary Institutions of Singapore for the period 2003-2006 on a subject related to Nature Conservation or Environmental Protection/Improvement. It was well deserved, and Sasi not only toiled relentlessly (1999-2003) over his project, but also found time to help out in the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore for several years, the Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium I as a programme manager, organised the department Deepavali Tea and made his version of milo-dinosaur for many a stressed graduate student! Steady-lah dude!  An audience of NSS members, students and members of the biodiversity community listened as Sasi then presented a seminar on more recent work of his in Australia, where as part of a large and hardworking team, they tackled the mystery of "What killed the seagrasses off the Adelaide coast in Southern Australia?" he spiced up that talk with sharks, an upcoming, seasickness-guaranteed cruise to study upwellings along the South Aistralia coast as well as the work that has taken him on this recent globe-trotting trip to India, Europe, US and Singapore - biodiesel from macroalgae. 
Margie Hall, the Honorary Secretary of the Nature Society (Singapore), did the honours and presented Sasi with "Singapore Waters" and John Tan with "Trees Of Bukit Timah Campus: A Tribute To Old Friends." 
After that a bunch of us old friends trooped to the prata shop down the road for dinner and Links
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