Visit to the mangroves with Shell

Date January 25, 2013

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This evening, Ria Tan and I had the very special opportunity to share our wonderful mangroves with the staff from Shell. Most of the staff that came for today’s walk work at the Bukom Refinery just adjacent to Pulau Hantu. They have seen and heard of Pulau Hantu but have not been for a walk there yet! Hopefully, the Hantu Blog gets to take some of them out for a tour soon! The Bukom refinery is also right in front of Labrador Park, so in a way it was kind of like exploring the surrounds of their office!Some of the staff have worked for Shell in Singapore for many years, and it was wonderful to hear stories from them about their encounters and experiences while working along our coast and out at sea. Every now and then, they do see creatures like dolphins, monitor lizards and unique birds while working in the field. So while I shared with them about the birds and bugs of the mangrove, I too got to learn a lot!

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Because the Shell ferry terminal is nearby, many of the staff walked over to Labrador MRT station, which was our meeting point. Not many places in the world are you able to take a subway to a mangrove! Labrador is literally a mangrove within a city because it’s right next to our Central Business District! You can see massive sky scrapers from the beach!

Apart from squirrels, spiders and showy leaf hoppers, we also spotted some cool birds like a kestrel, Brahminy kite, Brown shrike, White-breasted waterhen, and Chinese pond heron. One of the staff mentioned that he sees many White-bellied sea eagles at Bukom and how he’s awed by their amazing size!

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The walk ended at the mouth of Berlayar Creek where we stood along the boardwalk and looked over at Sentosa Island. Though this was were our walk ended, some of the staff decided to continue walking the rest of the boardwalk because they were enjoying it so much!

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It was so nice to have the staff join us on a weekday evening after their long work day, but what a great way to wrap up the work week!

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Towards the mouth of the Berlayar creek, we noticed an oil slick. A reminder of how our actions in the city impacts our rivers and sea, since the creek leads to the ocean and reef.

Ria Tan also blogged about this trip! Read her post here.

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