SEAS The Day 2025

On 7 Sep, we had a splashing good time running our Ambin Ubin booth at the Punggol Regional Library in celebration of SEAS The Day 2025! This year's theme also shed a special spotlight on our islander communities and their maritime culture.

Our booth setup for the day! Photo by WWF SG

When Kenny, one of the co-flounders of Pasarfish SG, reached out to me to run a booth here, I knew I wanted to highlight the life in Chek Jawa and Pulau Sekodok. That was what inspired me to come up with these posters showcasing the different marine life found on and off the coasts of Pulau Ubin—particularly the different fish and intertidal creatures that my mom had specifically caught herself throughout her twenty years growing up on the island.

Canva is my best friend. Photo by WWF SG

It was also a fun time listing out these creatures with my mom, and I must admit that it was awe-inspiring to see how many of these fish and intertidal creatures she was able to list out spontaneously. It came with challenges too though, as my mom was only able to list out their Malay names and some of these fish aren't Googleable. Fortunately, I recalled a website, "Talk About Fish" that I chanced upon before in the past that listed out all the different types of fish and intertidal creatures that were caught off the coasts of Johor, Malaysia—and so considering our geography I would assume that the same marine life could be found here too. Also, since it was a Malaysian site, I was able to look up the Malay names of these creatures, along with the English and scientific names too! It's also here that I must disclose that the images used on my posters were also taken from this website (because there's no way I can catch all these fish) and so all credit is due to the original owner!

Sharing about Chek Jawa and Pulau Sekodok with families. Photo by WWF SG

The day was spent interacting with many young families (which is no surprise given the demographics of Punggol) and the whole gamification approach did help to increase some engagement with the folks too. In order for them to collect the cards from my booth, I gave them a simple question: "What are the three animals found in the Legend of Pulau Ubin?", and just like that people learned about the original narrative of the legend as passed down by the Ubin Orang Pulau. This was also the day I learned that my "korkor/abang" days are over as nearly all the parents told their children to tell the answer to the "uncle" so that they could get the cards. 

"Go tell the uncle what's the answer" * cries internally * Video still by WWF SG

Another part of our exhibit include the interactive storytelling sheets, where we invite the public to share their favourite memories of the island through post-it notes. We really enjoyed reading them! We also took the opportunity to share more on our upcoming Ambin Ubin and we are encouraged and heartened by the public's compliments and well wishes for the completion of our project. We also managed to gain some new followers on our Ambin Ubin Instagram page too, hehe.

Thanks for the memories! Video still by WWF SG

Thank you WWF Singapore for organising this event, and Kenny from Pasarfish SG for inviting us to share on our project here, while also showcasing our unique Ubin maritime culture! 

"The day was seas-ed". Photo by WWF SG

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