Since 2002, 10 hectares of coastal secondary-type vegetation and its rocky shore have been gazetted as a nature reserve and its flora and fauna preserved by NParks.

In light of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the expansion of the military (especially the navy) of the Empire of Japan during the 1930s (when there was a worry by the USA and the UK about Japan's increasing aggressiveness and the country's rapid pace of militarization and desire to conquer most of Asia), the British government conducted a general review of the coastal defences in Singapore and showed that Pasir Panjang Beach would be an easy place for an enemy military force to land ashore.

Machine-gun emplacements, artillery-gun casemates and barbed-wire entanglements were built and set up together with a fence running along the entire length of the beach.

The British military strove to make the beach an element of a so-called "impenetrable fortress" as part of their strategy to turn Singapore into a powerful military base (which was believed by the British government to be akin to a "Gibraltar of the East") in Southeast Asia to protect the UK's colonial interests and territories in the surrounding region that would be shown by making it extremely difficult and costly (in manpower and related resources) for an invading enemy force to conquer Singapore and would have proven very useful in fending off an enemy naval force trying to land troops on the southern shorelines of Singapore.

[1] This designation helped to prevent any extensive development from taking place in the area, which might threaten and endanger the flora and fauna of the immediate surroundings.

[1] The future of the beach environment became uncertain as there were, at that time, no laws enacted which prevented the damage or destruction of nature parks.

Also, in 2001, a labyrinth of tunnels, which were an integral part of the old fort built by the British government, were also discovered within the area of the park(located on the top of the cliff).

These used to serve as a storage place for ammunition and other important military supplies, as well as being a base-camp for British troops guarding the fort.

One of the tunnels goes under the waters of the entrance of Keppel Harbour and leads to Fort Siloso on Pulau Blakang Mati, present-day Sentosa (this is alleged by many to exist although there is a lack of concrete evidence to prove it).

NParks, National Biodiversity Centre, TeamSeagrass and volunteers from the public regularly conduct surveys and monitoring of the seagrasses found in Singapore, in inter-tidal areas such as Chek Jawa and Pulau Semakau.

Data gathered is then fed back to Seagrass-Watch Headquarters, which then analyses the trends and condition of seagrass habitats at the local, regional and global scale.

The NParks, National Biodiversity Centre and the Tropical Marine Science Institute jointly launched a collaborative project to survey and identify the intertidal sponges around Singapore.