Depressing Reef Survey Dive @ Pulau Hantu.....

BWV ReefFriends were out conducting a reef survey at a patched reef off Pulau Hantu today.

The visibility in today's water was about 1.5m. But nope, I was not depress because of the low visibility but the sight waiting for me at the deeper end transect. Even in such low vis, we had no problem spotting the hard corals because most of them were WHITE!

I would say about 60% of the hard corals that we came across at the 5m depth were bleaching or abit off colour! Along my 3 transect tapes of 70m, I counted at least 18 bleaching hard corals out of about 46 hard corals recorded. The water temperature was about 29 degree celsius.











Some of the soft corals were bleaching too!


Volunteers doing the Invertebrates survey also reported Anemones bleaching at the shallow end.

Fortunately, some corals are still doing well.....





Did not see many critters today either.....


A Fanworm!


One Featherstar/Crinoid along the transect tape.


A Phyllid nudibranch (Phyllidiella sp.).

Sigh.....just hope that the bleaching corals survive and recover.

Meanwhile, Ria and KS had also blogged about their pre-dawn intertidal trip to Pulau Hantu today.

The Hantu Bloggers also have their monthly dive at the same area today.....we shall wait for their report on other parts of the reef.