A tribute to Singapore's coral reefs. PART 1 (An Appendix).

This post is inspired by "A tribute to Singapore's coral reefs. PART 1." at The Blue Tempeh, and is an appendix as it will not be as extensive as that.

I recently paid US$103.12 for 2 dives at Hawaii while on some other business there. I think many would as well. The dive boat was full, with some of the divers diving for many consecutive days, and raving about how diverse Hawaii's reefs are. Well, upon entering the water, I was immediately wowed by the clarity of the water. Clear blue, something that Singapore has failed to maintain...

But as I made my descent, I see this...




















How many species in this picture? I only see one... (Pocillopora meandrina)

Well, I did see another... (Porites lobata)




















But that is about all at two dive sites located at the south shore of Oahu... let's take a look at Singapore... St John's Island...




















Need I say more? The number of species is so high we can see different species fighting to stay here... competition between coral species is tough here, but they have done well to stay for the past hundred million years or so...



















Coral competition and the dead zone between them

Unfortunately, competition has increased, between reefs and man... obviously humans are at an advantage in Singapore because we have fancy ships and lots of sand from elsewhere to respectively ram against and pile on top of these poor animals...

So I was thinking, if the Hawaii state government decides to reclaim land and cover their reefs, say hypothetically land is limited... maybe just the one shown above, what would the response be? Not pretty... people all over the world would probably make noise...

Now as you read this, some reef in Singapore is going to be lost, but who makes/made noise? Hmm... maybe a few people who petitioned and a lone ranger in parliament.

The thing is, I don't even think where we dove in Hawaii was a reef, just some corals scattered on lava rocks... but thousands are willing to fork out that kind of money to dive there (many times over), and likely protest if it's under threat. As mentioned in The Blue Tempeh, Singapore is situated near the "Coral Triangle", and corals are plenty here. 197 species here vs less than 50 in the whole Hawaiian archipelago (Veron, 1995). But the truth is, not many know we have reefs, let alone understand this fact... Reefwalk just received its 1000th visitor to Kusu. But that's as much as such programmes can do (including Chek Jawa walks and some others)...

It's time we start raving about the 197 coral species we may still possess, before its gone, forever. We ought to be charging 4x US$103.12 or receiving 4x thousands of visitors to Singapore reefs for the 4x more diverse corals here. Ok, that's not how we should do business, but you get my point...

Those of you reading this probably knows more or less of this... time to go beyond the usual crowd.