Protecting wild places doesn’t mean excluding people. Users can be stewards of land and sea. Stand-up paddle boarders found a hawksbill turtle off East Coast today and didn’t hesitate to rescue the endangered reptile that was tangled in discarded fishing nets. Photos: YP Loke

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Bad luck can run out. Hantu Blog volunteer Nicholas Chew didn’t give up on his quest to witness the mass spawning of corals in Singapore during a night dive. His tenacity finally paid off with an opportunity to participate in one of Earth’s spectacles of Nature!

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Mass coral spawning is a rare natural spectacle that few have the privilege to witness. Hantu Blog volunteer, Min Hui Khoo, has been hard on the heels of this year’s mass coral spawning event.

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There are a few special times of the year, when the phases of the moon and tides align to trigger a global marine underwater phenomenon called mass coral spawning. I witnessed my first mass coral spawning in 2003. It was also at Pulau Satumu, also known as Raffles Lighthouse. We camped on the island in […]

Posted in Biology, Blog Log, Volunteers Comments Off on Waiting for a Coral Spawning

By Nicholas Chew: I had seen some photos of an extremely cryptic nudibranch Phestilla viei by Chay Hoon over the last few months. It had superb camouflage, unlike anything I’d seen before. Mimicking the patterns and colours of the specific host coral Pavona explanulata, it blended in perfectly. I found it incredibly amazing and beautiful, […]

Posted in Biology, News Comments Off on New to Science, Found in Singapore

By Isabelle Athena: A few weeks ago, a friend and I were discussing the term ‘starfish’ and ‘sea stars’. The creature’s interchangeable name can cause confusion, with identifing sea stars as fish, rather than echinoderms – a group of animals related to sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

Posted in Biology Comments Off on Singapore’s Starry Starry Sea

Veteran diver, Toh Chay Hoon, has completed more than 800 dives in Singapore waters! “I stopped logging after my 300th dive, and that was many many years ago!” But on special, albeit low visibility days, she still gets enthralled by something new or unexpected. Above: A cool cuttlefish remains still even as our diver Chay […]

Posted in Biology, Blog Log Comments Off on Hunters in murky waters

You’ve probably never heard of an ostracod. Why would you? It’s a tiny creature, about the size of a mustard seed, and nothing much more than a head. It is not exactly the thing that many divers go looking for when they are out on the reef. While ostracods are not popular, they truly are […]

Posted in Biology Comments Off on Sea Snails, Ostracods, and the Oldest Penis on Earth

In a recent blog post, I spoke to Hantu Blog volunteer Gina Tan about some lesser-known insights related to the shapes of coral. Samuel Chan is a PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore’s Reef Ecology Lab. After reading our post about coral shapes, he reached out to us to clarify some of the […]

Posted in Biology Comments Off on Traits of Shapes

I recently had the fantastic opportunity to catch up with Hantu Blog volunteer, Gina Tan. We spoke about sinking corals, butterflyfish and coral spawning. I was absolutely fascinated by her insight and unique views of the life history of reefs and wanted to learn her opinion about how our reefs, and in particular, Singapore reefs, […]

Posted in Biology Comments Off on Shapes of Coral