Northern Expedition on Channel NewsAsia

Prof Daphne Fautin speaks about her astonishment in finding so much marine life in Singapore in this latest Channel NewsAsia video clip of the Northern Expedition. While Prof Peter Ng highlights that the three-week expedition will go a long way towards future policy planning.

Here's more of what she said and the embedded video clip.


From "Marine biodiversity expedition finds new records, rediscoveries in Singapore" Monica Kotwani Channel NewsAsia 27 Oct 12.

"For Dr Daphne Fautin, a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with the University of Kansas, the results have thrown up a few surprises. She said: "I was very reluctant, because I knew Singapore has changed so much since I was here, including all of the expansion of the land. So I thought, 'I'm not going to find anything on the shores because it's all been filled in and extended'. And I was just astonished at the diversity.

"Species that previously were known only from India, we're finding them here. That's not so far away, and that's not too surprising, but I think we're getting a meeting of the Pacific fauna and the Indian fauna, which makes Singapore particularly rich and wonderful and very diverse in the marine realm."

Professor Peter Ng, director of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity at the National University of Singapore, said: "What this survey will do, at least for these three weeks, is add a new layer of information that we didn't previously have.

"One of the missions here, not overly declared but definitely in the pipeline, is we want to build this baseline so that we can make more coherent decisions down the road."

Full text also on wildsingapore news.