"Labrador Rocky Shore" has shifted to Blogspot

This blog is now located at http://labradorrockyshore.blogspot.com/ and the feed URL is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LabradorRockyShore

I changed the blog name has been changed to "Labrador Rocky Shore" instead of Labrador Park. Well, "labradorpark.blogspot.com" is occupied by the Seagrass Angels' now defunct 2007 blog as they shifted to wordpress. I did not ask for the blogspot domain either as Labrador Park includes the larger recreational area in addition to the nature reserve. Since the posts here tend to be restricted to the rocky shore organisms, the more accurate name has been adopted.

The blog includes two pages prepared by Leong Wai in 2004 when we started this project - a simple introduction and a photo gallery. I'll shift those to pages later.

This blog was originally switched to the Habitatnews server after Leong Wai encountered difficulties with Blogspot in August 2004.

A few years ago, I had begun shifting most of my active blogs back to blogspot such as Cycling in Singapore and The Biology Refugia . Since this blog has been relatively quiet after Wai and the UROPS students who came after her graduated, I left it alone.

This morning, however, Blogger reminded me that FTP support will end by end-April. So I had to shift. Blogspot is really lovely to use these days. Shifting this small site was instantaneous and widening the html wrapper to accommodate 500-pixel width images was simple and immediate.

Meanwhile, just in case, I left the old index page at:
http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg/news/labrador/blog/oldindex.html

2nd year NUS ecology students study Labrador Rocky Shore

I introduced an ecology practical at Labrador Rocky Shore with undergraduates in the new second year life science module (LSM2251) to study the diversity and zonation there. I realised almost all the students were unfamiliar with the fauna there and when I checked, I found that about 80% were visiting the park for the first time.

In addition to its characteristic crabs and mollusc, Labrador Rocky Shore is a great place to study marine algae. The animal they were most amazed to encounter was of course, the octopus. Happily there was one individual most nights to fascinate students.

Since there are about 100 students in the class each semester, I split them into two sessions of 50 and divide each session into groups of about 10 each. These groups are then spaced out widely along the rocky shore to reduce impact to any one site. We sent the first two batches (last October and February) and have a better idea of what we can achieve with the class and advise to provide about the reports prior to them writing it.

In future years the students will study the community with the use of Simpson's index to contribute to long-term monitoring of the rocky shore. This will mean boning up during the pre-field trip lab session. It will have to be more rigorous exercise than this year with a greater array of specimens of typical fauna from the Raffles Museum so that they have a grasp of identification before the actual field trip. The intention is to contribute to the monitoring of the rocky shore community which NParks has welcomed.