The Importance of Marine Ecosystems; A Personal Outlook

Photo from Pixabay, Edited by me

Sadly, time flies and recess week’s ending.

The break may be over in real life, but here, we’re just getting started – we’re on our way to our destination!

(Image source)

The Coral Triangle – Any guesses where we’re going? (Image by WWF under Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.)

It barely takes 2 hours by plane, and I’m not surprised if you didn’t sleep; you’re literally embarking on an exciting experience.

Personally, on short-haul flights, I always find myself reflecting as I look out the window, so I decided to turn that into a post.

Last week, we discovered that Singapore’s marine ecosystem is surprisingly diverse, and we learned about what’s been done for it. It was eye-opening but… Why is the marine ecosystem so important?

We know why coral reefs are important, we’ve learnt that, so why not look at it from an aspect closer to home?

(Image source)

Marine life in Singapore

For me, without marine ecosystems, I wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate what I was learning. As mentioned before, I took up Marine Conservation and Ecology, and it would be a pity if we didn’t have the chance to go to Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve (which I wrote about during my stint at the National Parks Board), for example, for the first-hand experience.

In fact, we even got to witness the changing tides, as well as a crocodile (which our lecturer, Dr Paul Chen, pointed out was a good sign, showing that the lower trophic levels were stable enough to sustain an apex predator) too.

Can you spot the crocodile? (Taken by me)

In fact, it was all these small memories that became something bigger, and perhaps the appreciation helped to solidify what I wanted to pursue. Furthermore, we wouldn’t have had the chance to simulate what the advocation of Chek Jawa’s preservation was probably like. Hence, it not only enhanced our learning, but it also allowed the honing of our speaking and critical thinking skills about environmental issues – two of the things I’ve discovered which are extremely important now.

In a nutshell, the experiences made me want to learn more, and we’re supposed to change the world with that knowledge, right? The marine ecosystem helped me with that.

Now, what about Singapore as an entity?

I sent a survey to 47 BES Y1 students and asked if they knew about Neptune’s Cup. As shown in the results gathered from 17, most didn’t.

Survey Results

The Neptune’s Cup sponge is a significant part of our history in the 20th century, and it wasn’t just museums and collectors looking for it, there were ordinary people too. Unfortunately, it disappeared from our shores in 1908, and was only spotted again in 2011.

(Image source)

Neptune’s Cup (Photo by Karenne Tun)

Since then, studies have been done to find out more about this relatively mysterious species, and it was found to be food for sea turtles, which NParks is also putting in effort to protect. With all this, we might just be able to enhance our efforts at protecting two vulnerable species at once, and not only would we be able to brag , we would also be able to do our part in marine conservation.

Pretty cool for such an urbanised and expanded nation, don’t you think?

What about you? How was the marine ecosystem important for you? I’m looking forward to hearing about these experiences. And don’t worry, you don’t need to be a diver, we’re doing that in the coming weeks anyway!

2 thoughts on “The Importance of Marine Ecosystems; A Personal Outlook

  1. Hi Natasha!

    While I’m familiar with Neptune’s Cup sponge, I’d no idea that it was a food source for sea turtles. However, I’m curious to know if one of the threats facing sea turtles is a lack of food, as I’d the impression that plastic waste and overfishing were the primary threats. Hope to hear from you soon!

    Regards,
    Yu Xun

    • Hi Yu Xun! Thank you for your comment and similarly, I never knew it was a food source that the sea turtles ate either, and it’s pretty ironic because I was one of those who was gathering content for social media when I was working at NParks – pretty sure I wasn’t dreaming about reading up on the return of the Neptune’s Cup sponge as I looked for ways to potentially shed some light on St. John’s Island. Also, I’m happy to note that you’re familiar with the story too! Despite the wonders that surrounded it (who would have thought an extinct species would actually make a comeback to somewhere as urbanised as Singapore; a place most of us might have thought would not be suitable for wildlife, and extinct ones for that matter), and the fact that my family’s quite avid divers, we never actually talked about it or even heard about it on the news too. I, for one, only knew about it 7 years after it was discovered, and I’m glad that I was able to shed some light on it in this blog post.

      With regards to your query, you’re not wrong to say that sea turtles are indeed affected by plastic waste (I think most of us have come across that relatively grotesque video of a turtle getting a straw stuck in its nostrils, and the fact that plastics do look identical to their actual foods) and overfishing. However, I’d have to clarify that while turtles aren’t necessarily hunted for (as compared to the bluefin tunas or sharks), they’re mostly victims of bycatch (the statistics reported in this paper is scary if you ask me, especially when these turtles are actually threatened species and so many of them go unreported) and the fact that they’re higher up on the trophic level too, and they’ll end up being more susceptible to the potential collapse of the ecosystem’s balance. However, to bring it closer to home, the turtles here are affected more in the reproductive stage of their lives when they come up to the beaches to lay their eggs, and not only are they dealing with predation and forces of nature, they’re also affected during their very first hours when some of them end up heading towards the roads instead of the sea with all the lights. With all this, it is no surprise they’re listed in The Singapore Red Data Book. With regards to natural sources of food though, I personally do not think they’re too affected here as a whole since our waters are so populated, as featured in last week’s post.

      However, with the discovery of the Neptune’s Cup Sponge, it was discovered that it actually regenerated quicker than people thought, which showed how much it could be a long-term natural food source, and besides, there’s no harm always bringing back a natural food to these adorable creatures anyway. In addition, given that these we’re the only ones with this sponge (which I interpret could be a sign that it’s native – it was first discovered here too!), that makes it even better, not just for namesake, but more of the fact that it doesn’t bring any harm to the marine life around it (i.e. it isn’t invasive). Nevertheless, we need to acknowledge that it requires a multitude of solutions from different aspects (i.e. we could use less plastics, authorities could raise more awareness about the issue and what to do if they ever encounter such phenomenons in real life, be it to the public or schools etc.) that we’re able to simply provide a better life and a fighting chance for these turtles (i.e. ensuring they survive and providing an additional and long-term food source that they could utilise).

      To end, I hope this reply was useful (it was fun for me to research on and come up with my own views, so thank you for that)! Hope to see you around and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

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