Singapore's Underwater Meadows: a talk by Dr. Len McKenzie

Earlier this evening, I attended a talk by Dr. Len McKenzie of Seagrass-Watch. As mentioned in my earlier post about seagrasses, Dr. Len has had many years of experience working on this threatened marine ecosystem, and I learnt a lot from him.

Off on another adventure

I'm in the midst of final preparations for my trip to Japan as part of the DENSO Youth for Earth Action Global Programme. To refresh your memories, here's what happened during the Local Programme earlier in July.

The Wallace Lectures - Marine Biodiversity: Known and Unknown

I attended the latest instalment of the Wallace Lectures. Conducted by Dr. Bertrand Richer de Forges, it was an overview about some of the amazing and mysterious deep-sea communities, many of which were only discovered in the last 50 years, as well as a discussion of how much more we still don't know about marine biodiversity.



Naturally, I live-tweeted much of the session, under the hasthag #WallaceBertrandRicherdeForges, and here are my tweets from that evening and photos of some of his slides, compiled as a Storify:

The fun of Storify

On 23rd May, I attended U@live Louis Ng: Speaking Up for the Voiceless. Featuring Louis Ng, Founder and Executive Director of the Animal Concerns Research & Education Society (ACRES), it was an interesting insight into the motivations and personal journey of one of Singapore's foremost champions of animal welfare.

Catching up with the Festival of Biodiversity

If you missed the Festival of Biodiversity, you can get a glimpse of the fun and festivities through the many blog posts and photo albums that have been uploaded so far. Jocelyne has helpfully compiled them all over here on the Festival of Biodiversity blog.

Storify is turning out to be an excellent tool to collate information from many different online platforms, and Gladys and I worked together to create this Storify of the entire Festival of Biodiversity:

Vote Monday Morgue!

Me in my element: Guiding as a volunteer with the Raffles Museum Toddycats!.
(Photo by Boh Zuze)

It's been such a fun and fulfilling weekend at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, sharing interesting stories about Singapore's wildlife and wild places with members of the public. And I'm really pleased that my talk about the importance of documenting dead animals was very well-received. I'll write about my weekend soon enough, but now that the fun and festivities from the Festival of Biodiversity are over, it's time for Monday Morgue to focus on another significant event: the Singapore Blog Awards. If you recall, I'm currently a finalist in the Sold.sg Best What-the-Hell Blog category.

Voting opened on Monday, and everyone can cast one vote per category every day until 30th June. I hope that I'll be able get more support, not just from friends who are familiar with this blog, but also with new readers. A big thanks to Crystal and Jerome, who are finalists in other categories, and who have shown their support for Monday Morgue!

In the meantime, while I prepare a nice blog post to show you all about what happened at the Festival of Biodiversity, here's a short interview for the Singapore Blog Awards:

It's Showtime!

The Festival of Biodiversity begins tomorrow!



Many of us are busy making preparations for the weekend, with a wide range of activities for the whole family to enjoy. Besides doing booth duty as a volunteer guide with the Marine Exhibtion and the Raffles Museum Toddycats!, I also plan to participate in some of the film screenings, symposiums, and of course, not to forget my talk on Sunday.

Shameless Self-promotion

If you're free this coming weekend, do take part in the Festival of Biodiversity, happening at the Botany Centre in the Singapore Botanic Gardens!

The growth of Monday Morgue

Wild boar (Sus scrofa vittatus) skull, Pulau Ubin
31st May 2009

Monday Morgue had a humble start. It began as a weekly feature over here on The Lazy Lizard's Tales, a way to provide filler material when I didn't have the time or energy to write proper blog posts, while giving me the chance to share random photos I'd taken of dead animals I encountered while outdoors.

Last year, I decided to split it off and have Monday Morgue hosted on its own dedicated site. At first, I toyed with Tumblr, but eventually settled on Posterous.

For some reason, Monday Morgue seems to have become quite a hit with many people.

First time playing with Storify

Earlier this week, I attended the U@live session featuring Professor Leo Tan. As usual, I live-tweeted the event, and decided to use Storify as a medium to curate and organise my tweets. The result is this.

Ready for the weekend

This weekend, a very important event will be taking place. A culmination of the efforts of people from various organisations, this event promises to be fascinating and exciting, and showcases a side of Singapore most of us might not see very often. No, I wasn't referring to the Singapore Grand Prix, but the Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium III, which will be taking place tomorrow.

Secret Shores of Singapore

Update: Check out Ria's post on her talk at the wildfilms blog.

Today, I went down to the Singapore Botanic Gardens, as Ria was giving a talk on the Secret Shores of Singapore.

On my way to the talk venue, as I was walking down Upper Palm Valley Road, there was a loud commotion in the vegetation just next to the footpath. There was a loud rustling of leaves, and a cicada suddenly fell to the ground, followed by a small shower of dead leaves and bits of twigs. Closer inspection of the shrubs at eye level revealed a plantain squirrel (Callosciurus notatus), which seemed to be frantically searching for something. Perhaps it was looking for the cicada, which had now vanished.

Right in front of the Botany Centre, there was another rustling in the shrubs beside me; another plantain squirrel. This is Singapore's most common squirrel species, and can be commonly found even in urban parks and gardens.

Almost simultaneously, I registered the presence of a common sun skink (Eutropis multifasciatus) on the ground next to the footpath. 2 squirrels and a lizard within 15 minutes of reaching the Botanic Gardens, and I wasn't even actively looking for them.



Ria gave an engaging talk, similar to those she has given before, but with a new focus on Cyrene Reef. How timely that today's edition of the Straits Times has an article featuring the discovery of the sea star Pentaceraster mammillatus, a new record for Singapore.



Some of the questions asked by members of the audience at the end of the talk were quite interesting. The one that really left an impression on me was about the potential threat posed by various marine organisms to human life. After all, many marine creatures are highly venomous, and an encounter with any one of them under the wrong circumstances can prove fatal to anyone exploring the shores. These include:


Jellyfish, which can really spoil a diving trip, but at least we don't seem to get the insanely venomous box jellyfish (Cubozoa) in our waters.


Estuary stonefish (Synanceia horrida), which have been found from time to time.


Sea snakes. The yellow-lipped sea krait (Laticauda colubrina) is not uncommonly seen around reefs.


Stingrays such as the blue-spotted ribbontail ray (Taeniura lymma) and mangrove whipray (Himantura walga) can often be spotted in shallow waters at low tide.


Cone snails (Conus spp.) were mentioned, but live specimens seem to be very rare in our waters these days.

Among those of us who regularly explore our shores, there have been stonefish and stingray incidents in recent years. But hey, so far nobody has died, and we still have all our fingers and toes.

I'm sure all the people who attended had an enjoyable time, are now more aware about the richness of our shores, and the challenges faced by our marine biodiversity.

A group of girls from Raffles Junior College approached Ria after the talk. It turns out that they are interested in making a short film about the marine life that can be found along the natural shores of Sentosa. Great to hear that more youths are expressing an interest in our local biodiversity. I'm now waiting for them to email me so I can pass them the tide tables for this month.

Still to come: Exploring the rainforest, and life around the Symphony Lake.

This is part 1 of a 3-part series on a trip to the Singapore Botanic Gardens on 3rd May, 2008.

Part 1: Secret Shores of Singapore (this post)
Part 2: coming soon
Part 3: coming soon