6th July 07- Chek Jawa Transect Day 2

Good morning, good morning and good morning! :-)

Though physically tired-out on 3rd consecutive day of Chek Jawa working trip, this priceless and magnificient sunrise made the start of the day worthwhile. This time, though 3-4 backed out last minute, I am so thankful that Geraldine and Kian Wah agreed to come back again to help after much persuasion. Geraldine was down with fever and sore throat somemore. I feel really guilty! Everyone is very important to the transect because it is large scale, across 500m, not 50m. Joining us that day were Gerald (came back too), Yujie, Shuyi and Lester.

Believe it's a rare occasion for them to catch a nice sunrise.


How can we forget to capture Ubin with the beautiful sunrise? It's like a typical postcard shot, in Singapore somemore. We are still blessed with these wild places in this urban city.

After gathering a lot of feedback on why we did so slowly and a whole night of re-evaluation and re-writing of protocol, we wasted no time on the second day. At 7am sharp, we left Changi, and again we saw the friendly female driver. Nice to be able to have a morning chat with her in the van as she recollects how Chek Jawa was when she lived there years ago.

Upon reaching CJ, we promptly picked up our stores from House no. 1 (Thanks Choon Beng for arranging it) and headed straight out to transect startpoints. After giving a short and sweet intro and demo, we started nicely at 8am. My plan was to finish transect 1 and 2 by 9am and transect 3 and 4 by 11am.


Here we have the first garang team setting up the transect line for transect 1. It comprises of Yujie, Gerald and Shuyi.


And not forgetting the second garang group, with Kianwah, Geraldine and Lester!


As you can see, the mud is not fun to treach across. This photo features team 1 in transect 1. The other team in transect 2 had more not-fun-at-all mud spa. KW and Lester's shoes came off so many times that they had a lot of difficulties and trauma. In the end, they took not 1 hour as expected to complete 300m of transect 2 but a whooping 2 hrs 10 mins!!!!

So do not underestimate terrain..haha.


Being so much off schedule AGAIN, I was rushing people to work harder and faster for the last two transects like a madman. Haha. This is because the tide was receding very quickly. Even my bag was flooded in minutes when I left it at sandbar. And this datasheet fell out during state of panick and it became drenched....gosh.


I am so thankful that Shuyi is much more composed than me giving a much reassuring smile that I shouldn't worry too much because God will help and is in control. (Photo by Yujie).


And when things go wrong, it's time to improvise! The marker couldn't write on the quadrat labeller (top left photo) anymore and here we have a brillant idea. We shall have a human labeller with hand signals showing quadrat number, and KW has the honour to do it. What a cute and classic collage we have here :-)


Here we have a lovey dovey horseshoe crab. (photo by Geraldine)


And we are glad to encounter a carpet anemone near the sandbar area. Chek Jawa is recovering, slowly.


I was walking quickly between transect sites and saw this hairy seahare threading. A first time spotting in Chek Jawa. Everytime we visit there is always something new.


Miraculously, we managed to complete transect 3 and 4 in 45minutes time! Thank God. I was pleasantly surprised that though work was done so quickly, team 2 managed to lay out their transect line almost perfectly from start to endpoint! Wow.

Everyone was so so so tired that I had to force them to smile for this finally-its-over photo! Haha... be inspired by them ok? They work really hard.

The day ended with washing up of equipment and the same old story of unwinding entangled tapes for an hour. Thanks for your patience guys.

Thank God for perfect weather. Thought of planning transect on Sat, glad its not. Because on sat, there was thunderstorm and heavy rain in Chek Jawa during opening of boardwalk. Imagine that happen and we'll never finish work.


We are glad the transect was done. Everyone made a difference! Here's me, Lester and Shuyi.


Geraldine and Gerald. Sorry Kian Wah and Yujie, no close up photo of you both because you both left earlier. Haha.

Thank you so much to all who paid sweat and injuries and illnesses to help this project. Other than the endless appreciation to Kian Wah, Gerald and Geraldine for coming faithfully twice, also thanks to Lester for being so friend to come, Yujie for coming though I don't know you at first and Shuyi for putting your 101% effort to help.


Till next time!