Crabs, stink bugs and ... a cobra!

The Crabs spent a delightful Saturday morning on 3 August exploring Chek Jawa Wetlands with 45 visitors. This is one of our monthly scheduled public walks on the boardwalk where we take time out to share the lovely Chek Jawa mangroves and coastal areas with members of the public, so that they gain a better understanding of our local plant and animal biodiversity. Many came with their children. It's great! They expressed that they do not want their children to grow up without gaining respect and appreciation for nature. Three cheers for these wonderful mamas and papas!!!

In addition, we hosted some student leaders who are keen to advocate greater awareness of environmental and conservation issues. Eight of them are from CHIJ Katong Convent, while four are from Raffles Institution. They came to understand how nature guiding works.

Chek Jawa Boardwalk - sign up for walk on 3 August (Sat)

Another monthly walk is creeping up on us, and it is time to open the registration. Yay!

If you are new to the work that the Naked Hermit Crabs do, we run a monthly free walk to Chek Jawa Boardwalk as part of our nature outreach program to the public. Chek Jawa is part of a natural wetlands area located on the eastern tip of Pulau Ubin, just off Changi Point. We will bring you out on the boardwalk that passes through mangroves. The boardwalk also loops around the coast of Chek Jawa, allowing the visitors to view the inter-tidal area without getting their feet wet. That's right, we will not be going down to the mudflat and sand bar itself.

Chek Jawa has amazing rich biodiversity. On a typical boardwalk outing, we should be able to see animals such as fiddler crabs, tree-climbing crabs, many species of mudskippers, kingfishers, fishes, jellyfishes, monitor lizards, weaver ants and many other types of insects too. If we are lucky, we might even spot snakes, White-bellied Sea Eagles, herons, Oriental Pied Hornbills, and who knows, perhaps the otters that live in Chek Jawa might reveal themselves to us!

Date: 3 August 2013 (Saturday)
Time: 9:30am
Meeting place: Chek Jawa Information Kiosk, Pulau Ubin
Duration of walk: 2 hours (approximately)
Charge: None. You just have to pay for your transport to get to Chek Jawa.

Online registration form: CLICK HERE

Email us if you have questions: nakedhermitcrabs@gmail.com

We are able to answer emails only during the weekends. We are volunteers; this is not a full-time business!

For more information on Chek Jawa, Pulau Ubin, how to get to Chek Jawa, and what to prepare for the trip, please click on this post: CLICK HERE

Crabs at the Festival of Biodiversity!

President Tony Tan visited the Festival and the Crabs take the opportunity to share about the important aspects of our biodiversity. Heng Pei Yan managed to get a smile out of him by showing him how the dugong leaves a feeding trail in our seagrass meadows.

Mama Crab Wong Ley Kun together with Ivan Kwan also met with the President for a short while. They took the opportunity also to share about the work done by the Naked Hermit Crabs.

The Crabs worked very hard during the Festival to reach out to families, kids and others at VivoCity.

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.