Shrimp day at Little Sisters' Island

There are two Sister's Islands in Singapore - Big Sister's and Little Sister's. These two islands are now part of the National Parks Board's (Singapore) Marine Park plan, the Sister's Islands Marine Park. At the moment, visitors are allowed on these islands till further notice.

On the second day of the lunar new year, the intertidal team visited the Little Sister's Island. Our last visit was actually three years ago on June 2012. I remembered that was my second trip with the intertidal team and my first visit to Little Sister's Island. You can read about my adventure here.

In today's trip, I saw many shrimp and shrimp-like animals. This shrimp-like animals was the most interesting find for this trip. I am not sure what it is.

Shimp-like animal

In fact, I found plenty of them in a shallow pool near the sea wall. 

So many of them.

My first visit to Terumbu Pempang Laut

It has been about 3 months since I last did an amphibious landing on our intertidal shores. The previous trip was to Pulau Semakau to check on the oil spill situation during the Lunar New Year. Today, we are doing an amphibious landing on one of the terumbus we have in Singapore. Terumbu refers to submerged reef. During high tide, it looks no different from any sea surface. The reef is being submerged. However, during the period of low spring tide, the tide falls below the reef, exposing the reef. It looks as though a piece of land has emerged from the sea and sank back a few hours later.

So where exactly is Terumbu Pempang Laut? Take a look at this google map image by Ria Tan.

Image from Ria Tan.

From the image, you can see that Terumbu Pempang Laut is the furthest submerged reef northwest of Pulau Hantu. This is my first time visiting this reef. I have yet to visit Terumbu Pempang Tengah and Terumbu Pempang Darat.

The beauty of Pulau Hantu

Many people will relate 'Hantu' as the Malay word for ghost and hence the island Pulau Hantu is literally referred to as "Ghost Island". The island is actually far from the spooky tales and myths of restless spirits or ghosts.

Pulau Hantu looks tiny compared to its refinery neighbour, Pulau Bukom.
Image from Google earth.

The whole of Pulau Hantu is formed by two separate "Hantu" islets - Hantu Besar (Big Ghost) and Hantu Kechil (Little Ghost).