I must confess that I’ve only recently been made aware of the work that you guys are doing out at P. Hantu after the ST article. In fact, I did my open water course in Hantu, back in 2006. I have to say though, conditions then were really terrible, with occasions where I can’t even see my fins!

It’s good to know now, that things have changed for the better and that there are people championing the cause to increase awarness. Having a diving playground close to home is something that most regular bubble breathers would treasure, I’m sure. I look forward to the opportunity to be able to dive with you guys in the future. I’d appreciate if you guys can let us know the details of your regular trips and I’m sure I can muster some friends along.

Until then, keep up the good work!

Andrew Tang

It’s wonderful to hear from the public. Especially those who haven’t dived with us. It inspires and encourages us that people are compelled to get in touch with us after hearing about our work.

I too have something to confess. The conditions at Pulau Hantu have not changed “for the better”. The one thing that has changed, are people’s perceptions. And that, is what is most needed to safeguard our natural heritage, no matter which way the environment changes.

Mention coral reefs in Singapore, and the first response you often get is, “there are coral reefs in Singapore?” I could’ve kept it my little secret, but it makes me too excited so I just have to tell the whole world about it – YES! There are coral reefs in Singapore! And you’d be surprised at the kind of diversity you will be able to encounter on the little patches of reefs scattered around our island’s waters.

For the past seven years, the Hantu Blog has been documenting the marine and coastal life that exists around and on Pulau Hantu, an island located just two hours off the southern coast of mainland Singapore. With the skyscrapers and smoke stacks in view, it can be hard to conceive that there is any life beneath these busy waters, but BELIEVE IT! Even the volunteers and I get surprised with new finds after hundreds of dives!

Without water, Singapore would not be what it is today. Our seas are the very reason we’ve become such a successful island nation, and it was the reason why anyone settled here in the first place! Our oceans are full of life despite being the busiest port in the world! If we take care to maintain this balance, nature and development can exist together, enriching the life of millions of Singaporeans that live in super urban environments.

More and more people are become aware of the wilderness that is embedded within Singapore city. The next time you are on the beach, walk slowly and look out for critters scrambling along the sand. Recently, a friend and I were on a beach at Sentosa island, when we noticed something scuttling along the sand. He remarked, “This beach is not even real and it’s so developed. I thought it would be lifeless! And there are ghost crabs here!”

Be it day or night, if you just remain patient and keep your eyes and attitude open, you’re bound to find a little surprise along our shores. Just look at the birds! They’ve come to land on the beach because they know there are lots of critters to eat! So just imagine, what more lies beneath the waters surface!

It doesn’t matter if you’re not a diver. You don’t even have to know how to swim! You’ve interacted with our oceans in some way or another. If you have in your home, something that got to you on the deck of a ship that trudged across the sea, you depend on our oceans. If you enjoy the breeze that cruises through Shenton Way and Marina Bay, it’s the ocean that creates that breeze. If you enjoy seafood (and we know many people in Singapore do!) you need to take care of our oceans – a healthy sea begets healthy sea food for all of us. The oceans gives fishermen and fish growers a job, and it keeps the thousands of employees in our shipyards employed.

Here are three simple but big ways you can help our oceans:

1. Learn about our oceans! The more you know about what is out there and the better you understand our relationship with our oceans, the more ways you’ll learn to protect it. Visit Singapore’s wild places!
2. Not littering! When it rains, litter inland flows into drains, then to rivers, and out into our seas. Every year, thousands of animals die because they get entangled in trash or when they mistake trash for food and get choked trying to eat it.
3. Spread the word! Talk to friends and family about the problems (and the solutions) that impact our oceans.
4. Become a volunteer! Volunteering gives you opportunities to interact with others who care about our oceans. You may also get a chance to meet naturalists and scientists who are working hard to learn ways to defend our oceans.

Sea slugs on the reef - Egretta nudibranch PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

Divers at Pulau Hantu enjoyed exceptional visibility today. Volunteer dive instructor Peimin said it’s the best it’s been since April! Sure am bummed I missed it once again. So here I am blogging vicariously (again) but feeling none less thrilled about what was spotted today on Hantu’s reefs! From shellfish to slugs, pipefish to seahorses and all critters in between. We’ve got an unusual perspective of the reef this weekend thanks to some extraordinary photography!

Flabellina nudibranch PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

Another volunteer dive instructor, Jimmy Goh, took time off to do a leisure dive with the group today, and thanks to him we have some wonderful close-up images of Hantu’s critters!

Scallop eyes PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

Did you know scallops have eyes? Yeap! About sixty primitive tiny bright blue eyes reside in rows along a scallop’s mantle edge to detect motion, light and dark.

Doto nudibranch on Giant hydriod PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

You can have lots of fun with a macro lens in Hantu’s waters because there are just so many opportunities for great subjects in our turbid waters, especially if you’ve got a keen eye! And Jimmy’s definitely got one! As a guide on our reef, Jimmy has spotted tiny thumb-sized octopuses and large stoic frog fishes that are masters of camouflage. In the photo above, is an absolutely tiny nudibranch about the size of a pin head. A Giant hydroid can grow up to two meters long, and these tiny slugs seem to blend perfectly into its “feathers”.

White allied cowrie on Gorgonian coral PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

Still on the subject of small stuff, the above is a allied cowie that has managed to blend so perfectly with the texture and colour of the gorgonian coral it shelters in.

Gorgonian or Sawtooth shrimp PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

Not so much tiny as it is thin, this Sawtooth or Gorgonian shrimp perches precariously onto a whip coral. This is a great shot of the creature because we are able to see its eyes bulging out of its body and its upturned nose at the bottom-left of the picture, as if it’s looking toward the camera. When being photographed, these shrimp like to “roll” over to the opposite side of the whip to hide from the camera. It takes that little for them to literally vanish from view!

Bubble shrimp in Bubble coral PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

I promise I won’t make you squint after this. Here’s another extraordinary photo of a Bubble coral shrimp. As you might be able to determine just by looking at it, these are very delicate creatures, that are also very beautiful to us at least! For protection, you can find them hiding between the stinging tentacles of corals and anemones. These critters are hard to spot, because apart from being transparent, they also snuggle in deep amongst the tentacles for safety.

Longsnout pipefish PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

Longsnout pipefish can be found crawling over stands of hard coral or the sandy seabed in search of small organisms in the water. They usually remain at a spot, allowing the current to bring food to them. They are sometimes spotted in pairs, and can grow to about 8 inches long. These pipefish have snouts much more pronounced than their cousins, the Seahorses and Banded Pipefish, and unlike them, they do not have a prehensile tail with which to attach themselves to a host.

Janss' pipefish PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

Much better than the picture I took several months back, the Janss’  pipefish is a stronger swimmer than its seahorse cousins and rarely comes into direct contact with the substrate. They can be found swimming under rocky overhangs, corals, or close to the floor of its reef habitat where it performs the role of cleaner fish and often feed on parasites and dead tissue from damsels and cardinalfish. What a beautiful find! A video of it lurking in a crevice on Hantu reef can be seen here.

Yellow prawn goby and Blind shrimp PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

Not just pretty to photography but also fun to observe and tricky to approach, prawn gobies and their blind shrimp partners have an unusual but very necessary relationship. In the photo above they both stand guard outside the burrow that they share, looking unusually calm! As their namesake suggest, blind shimp have poor eyesight but they have the might to shovel out debris from the burrow with their pincers. Obviously a goby would have a much tougher time with a job like shoveling  sand, so it stands guard at the entrance to the burrow, flicking its tail to warn the shrimp of approaching danger and hence to stay inside, or disappearing into the burrow altogether if danger is eminent! A video of the duo can be seen here.

Sponge detail PHOTO: Jimmy Goh

To wrap it up, here’s a close look at the structure of a sponge. The delicate network of sponges, looks fine and brittle because it is! The skeleton of a sponge is made up of scilica, in other words, glass! Yes, tiny tiny bits of glass. If you looked through a microscope, they would look like snowflakes. In order to identify a species of a sponge, scientists have to isolate each spicule or segment of the sponge’s skeleton to see its shape before they can figure out what species it is! Before the days of synthetic sponges, people used sponges from the sea for washing and cleaning!

The Hantu Blogs interactive word search puzzles were a huge hit with kids and adults alike! Despite the hot and humid weather, shoppers and browsers stopped by the many booths at the Envirofest 2009 at Toa Payoh HDB Hub to work their way through quizzes for a chance at a lucky dip that could win them anything from a free poster on tropical rainforests to a guided tour of the intertidal reefs of Sentosa!

The theme of this year’s Envirofest was “Family” and it certainly seemed like alot of parents, grandparents and kids, came down to learn about everything under the sun!

The integrated trail at this year’s event, meant visitors got to learn everything from the sea to the shore, mangroves, fresh water systems and rainforests! I was eager to see how the plan would pan out and boy was it an exciting layout!

There was lots of getting up close and personal to the animals that call Singapore home thanks to wonderfully preserved animals loaned from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research. Alot of the animals showcased are either rare or endangered so without the help of the museum, ordinary folk wouldn’t have the chance to see in detail and in some cases even feel the texture of these unique and wild animals that need our help to survive!

Staff from Nparks were also busy telling stories of each of the animals on display at their booth. Visitors also got to learn about the different types of plants that we use on a regular basis (in our food and culture) that originate from the forests! Some visitors even asked if they could buy the exhibits on display for cooking or taking home!

Being at Toa Payoh HDB Hub was great and important because we got to meet the people in the heartlands, where most Singaporeans reside, and bring wild Singapore to them! Several of them had not heard about reefs and it was important for them to learn of their existence and how it is important for us to protect them.

Though the Hantu Blog’s main activity is diving, these educational roadshows are integral and purposeful to its work. These roadshows are one of the primary reasons why we dive Hantu on a regular basis and collect data – so it can be shared with the public!

It was a learning experience to meet with the members of the public who will one day make a choice to either save or lose our reefs. We’ve got alot of work to do! Another long day tomorrow!

Everytime I blog or take a photo, it’s often of an animal or a group of animals, or of life underwater. But there’s a very important aspect to diving at Hantu and the Hantu Blog, and that’s it’s people. The Hantu Blog is run entirely by volunteers who are more committed than you can imagine, to ensuring our dives run smoothly and that we manage to even organise a dive every month!

Take MingSheng for example, the photographer of the pictures in this post. For our late October dive, MingSheng, who’s a Malaysian, shuttled all the way back to his home in JB after we were done with the dive, and spent the night at a relative’s place just to help us out during the weekend. Of course, not all our volunteers have the need to do that. But making sure they are there for the public and for the education of our reefs once a month, for 12 months a year, is an effort that’s far beyond  being just enough.

Diving at Hantu is just one aspect of the Hantu Blog, and ensuring a safe, enjoyable, and educational dive for all onboard (including the crew! we’re always learning!) is just a small regular milestone for us.

Thanks to MingSheng for compiling these quirky photographs to show the other side of the Hantu Blog!