On the road again

Kris went to a biodiversity workshop in Singapore where she helped with collecting and identifying amphipods for the survey. The workshop was on Pulau Ubin, a small island on the north side of Singapore. Below is a photo of a aquaculture house that are all around the island. The next photo is of our "sorting center" at the resort we were staying at for the workshop.



Something I found very interesting in Singapore is the coffee in a bag instead of in cups. I guess it is more convenient to carry multiple bags than cups. There was a pond at the resort that had many sting rays and these trevali swimming around.



Below is a photo of the take from a trawl that we pulled in and a photo of a mud lobster mound that we were digging up for crabs and lobsters.



On an off day, I went to the Singapore zoo, which was really a great zoo. They have free ranging orangutangs that are literally moving along these ropes just above your head. It was really crazy to be so close to a huge orangutang! They have many different primates including the proboscis monkey below.



While walking through the zoo, these elephants were walking along the path only 5 feet away from me. They were surrounded by trainers, but it was still very surreal!




After being home from Singapore for a day, Nate, Kris, Masaru, and Javier packed up Masaru's van (see photo below) to take the ferry over to Zamami Island for three days.



It is mating season for humpback whales at Zamami and the surrounding islands, but this is the only whale we saw on the trip when coming into port. In the summer, many sea turtles nest on Zamami beaches, so there are signs up to protect them.



We bought this tent at a recycle shop to camp on Zamami...and it only took the four of us an hour to put it up! It was quite roomy and all four of us slept very well in it.



We drove around looking for suitable diving entry points and this was not one of them. At night we built a fire in the "kitchen area" as fires are not allowed anywhere else on the island.



Below is a photo of Nate near one of the giant coral heads we saw while diving and a photo of the reef on one of our dives. We heard several whales while in the water although we never saw one.



We got a lot of amphipods from sponges and ascidians on our second dive including the two circled in the photo below. (If you control-click on the photo you may be able to see them.)



The video below shows a squid we collected in the trawl in Singapore changing colors.