Magnificent Kusu Island – an urban reef

February 4, 2014

Hantu Blog volunteers made a visit to Kusu Island on 26 Jan to explore more of Singapore’s marine life! We had to set out at dawn to catch the best tide for the dive. We got to catch a beautiful sunrise as we departed the mainland.

Diving off of Kusu Island, we get a view of Singapore’s Central Business District on a clear day!

Kusu Island has so many gorgeous and huge sea fans and loooong sea whips! These simple looking, and somewhat 2-dimensional corals are bursting with so much sea life that has adapted to blend in with the coral and remain completely hidden.

This shrimp on a colony of whip coral is easily missed as it continuously spins around the coral to remain hidden!

Plenty of crinoids clinging onto the gorgonian corals

Anemones that have made their home on whip corals and sea fans

Brittlestars

Bryaninops, or sea whip gobies. There are two of them in this photo, can you find them?

Dermatobranchus

Tambja nudibranch

Little baby Gymnodoris

Phyllidia sea slug with a marine flatworm

A beautiful yellow flatworm

Flatworms are such simple creatures but so beautiful!

A closer look at a flatworm’s pseudotentacles

Small colony of Turbinaria coral

Lobophyllia

Icon seastar

Synaptid sea cucumbers on a barrel sponge

A grumpy-looking but truly shy sandperch (Parapercis sp.)

Kusu Island was recently impacted by resulting oil spill following the collision between a chemical tanker and a containership “about 2.7 km, south of Jurong Island”.

Read more about how this incident has impacted local shores:
Oil spill check at Northern Semakau – Kok Sheng’s blog
Oil spill reaches Semakau Landfill and Kusu Reef: A reef with the lion city view under lots of stress – Peiyan’s blog

More photos from this dive in our Gallery!

Posted in Blog Log