WACKY CRAZY Festival of Biodiversity this weekend!

Dear friends of the Naked Hermit Crabs,

If you're coming to the Festival of Biodiversity held at VivoCity this weekend (13-14 July), do drop by the marine exhibition to say Hello! We'd love to see as many of you come and visit. You'll get to meet lots of people passionate about nature conservation in Singapore.

(photos by Ria Tan)

Many of the volunteers have spent the past few weekends preparing for the festival. There will be beautiful photos to admire, interactive games to play, and lots of information to be shared with you. We had a fantastic Festival of Biodiversity in 2012, and this year, the festival promises to be even more exciting. The venue, VivoCity, is a dream! We simply want to reach out to more people and tell them about the amazing wildlife that we have in Singapore.

Volunteers from the following community will be at the Marine Exhibition of the Festival:

Mangrove Action Squad
Hantu Bloggers
Blue Water Volunteers
Mega Marine Survey
The Leafmonkey Workshop
Wildsingapore
TeamSeagrass
International Coastal Cleanup Singapore
Naked Hermit Crabs


How to spot the nature volunteers this weekend? Easy! We will all be wearing the cutest, wickedest, funniest soft-toy mascots. These mascots represent many of the species of animals that can be found in Singapore. Somehow, I get this warm fuzzy feeling that this is going to be a WACKY CRAZY Celebration of our cherished biodiversity in Singapore! Definitely looking forward to the two days.

Here's a sneak preview of some of the mascots that we made and will be wearing.

So, here are the dates again: 13-14 July (Saturday, Sunday) at VivoCity

More information can be found in the official Festival of Biodiversity website

Chek Jawa Boardwalk outing on 6 July, Saturday, is confirmed

The monthly outing to Chek Jawa Boardwalk on 6th July, Saturday, is proceeding as planned.

Unfortunately we are unable to accept more visitors currently as we already have a huge list carried forward from June. We would love to bring every single one of you to visit Chek Jawa Boardwalk with us, but we are a small voluntary group, and we do need to keep the group to a manageable size. Do visit our blog again and sign up for another month. As a general rule, we open registration of the next walk as soon as we complete the current one.

For our visitors who have confirmed with us for the walk on 6 July, here are the meeting details:

Date: 6 July 2013 (Saturday)

Time: 9:30 am

Duration: 2 hours

Meeting Place: Chek Jawa Information Kiosk, Pulau Ubin

Charge: FREE

If you have questions, please write to us at nakedhermitcrabs@gmail.com, but do expect a delay in receiving a reply as we are able to attend to our emails only at night and during the weekend.

Chek Jawa Wetlands is a much-loved natural shore, home to diverse plant and animal life. It remains vulnerable as all natural shores are, to the risk of development and spread of the urban sprawl. Our monthly tour brings you on the boardwalk, where we are able to see animals such as fiddler crabs, spiders, mudskippers, tree-climbing crabs, monitor lizards, to name a few. And if we are slightly luckier, we should be able to spot wild boars, hornbills, eagles, herons on the sandflats, and jellyfishes in the sea too. It's amazing to see the rich biodiversity!

Festival of Biodiversity, 13-14 July, VivoCity

The Festival of Biodiversity is back again, and we just want to celebrate Singapore's rich biodiversity in our nature places with you!

This year, the festival will be held at VivoCity, and the organisers hope to reach out to more Singaporeans and residents. The festival is an annual event organised by the National Parks Board in collaboration with the Biodiversity Roundtable. Click here for the website for the Festival of Biodiversity 2013.

Date: 13 and 14 July, 2013 (Saturday and Sunday)
Time: 10am to 10pm
Venue: VivoCity, Level 1, Central Court B and West Boulevard

The Naked Hermit Crabs are participating in this festival. We will be at VivoCity to celebrate and share information of our beloved natural shores such as Chek Jawa, Pasir Ris Mangroves, shores and reefs of the Southern Islands. The festival is designed for all ages. There will be lots of information as well as games and activities, all of which will give you a deeper understanding of what biodiversity has been conserved.

See you at the Festival!

Day out at Chek Jawa with special guests

The Crabs spent a delightful Friday morning at Chek Jawa with some friends of NParks.

The incoming tide was at about 0.7m and it was just PERFECT to see lots of life on the mudflats. In fact, we took the counter-clockwise route today, so that we were able to get out to the coastal boardwalk as quickly as we could. Read on, and you will see the rich biodiversity of plants and animals that we encountered today. Even though we stayed on the boardwalk, we were able to experience the magic of Chek Jawa!

We had 11 guests joined us today. Here we are on the coastal boardwalk admiring the vistas of Chek Jawa....

And the group again on the mangrove segment of the boardwalk.

Chek Jawa Boardwalk with the Crabs in May

We had a fantastic outing at Chek Jawa Boardwalk with the Crabs on 4th May! There were more than 60 visitors (out of 90 who said they would come), including a small troop of students from Meridian JC.

Here's the Big Group Photo before we set off on the little adventure with the Crabs!

And a photo of students and teachers from Meridian JC who came to explore Chek Jawa with us.

Announcement: Chek Jawa Boardwalk outing on 1 June

** SORRY! We are full for the walk on 1st June. Join us another month **


Whoa!

After that great article "Wild About Nature" by Lea Wee in Sunday Life! section on 5 May 2013 which featured the Nature Hermit Crabs along with several other nature groups, we've received an avalanche of emails and enquiries about our nature walks in Chek Jawa, I'm pushing forward the signup for our coming free tour on 1 June. So here it is folks.... sign up on our online form!

But only in small family and friend groups please.

If you're organising a corporate event, may I gently request that you contact our professional nature guide friends. The Crabs are a tiny group of volunteers, and we simply do not have the resources to run private tours. Sorry!

Date: 1 June 2013 (Saturday)
Time: 9:30 am
Duration: 2 hours
Meeting Place: Chek Jawa Information Kiosk, Pulau Ubin
Charge: FREE

If you have questions, please write to us at nakedhermitcrabs@gmail.com, but do expect a delay in receiving a reply as we are able to attend to our inbox only at night and during the weekend.

Naked Hermit Crabs in the news!

Thanks to Lea Wee, there's a great feature of the Naked Hermit Crabs in the Sunday Times! With a photo of Mama Crab Ley Kun guiding at the Jejawi Tower on our free guided tours of the Chek Jawa boardwalk!

The articles are a great introduction our fellow nature groups who share the mission to celebrate and conserve what is left of the rich and diverse wildlife here, despite intense urbanisation.