End of an Intern experience

Cliché as it is, they are right about how time flies. 
In a blink of an eye, I am at the end of my Intern experience.  Four months have passed. My time in TRACC has finally come to an end. 
Over the past four months, I have gone through the ups and the downs but I have learnt so much at the same time by taking up some leadership roles in TRACC. Leading dives, fish surveys, turtle walks, organizing fun day trips, turtle surveys and so much more. Although I will not miss the centipedes crawling around outside my tent or mosquitoes and sweaty humid weather, I will miss everything else. 

Intern Experience - too many. 

 Alone time on the jetty-the cool breeze from the jetty-the sunset that hits Bohey Dulang-turtles that popped up once in a while to breathe-dolphins that past by house reef-girls night with my favourite girls-naked dive-horror movie nights-Rasma’s and Neng’s cooking-Gon’s late night cooking snacks-the tiki bar-hammock talks with Christine-bottle scraping deep talks-creative bottle reef making with Sophia-crashing CBR’s place during the Olympics-peanut butter and kaya crackers-Community Coral day at Kalapuan-saving CBR’s big boat from sinking during a late night storm-errands in Semporna-juggling session with Chris-badminton session-the fireflies-the moon that shines over TRACC-the games of werewolf-the glitter-the 80s theme party-the tribal theme party-cooking sessions with party music with the girls-late night grilled cheese sandwich making with Alana-uno games-Joey’s constant whining-Monsoon’s weird sleeping patterns and howling-Black Jack’s overall craziness-coming up from every dive to discover new species of nudibranch-seeing an eagle ray breaching from underwater-discovering a translucent nudibranch that curls up into a ball when it got swept away by the current or even the late night heart-to-heart talk at the jetty. 

Ultimately, what I will miss the most is the friendship that was formed. 
The people that I met, that come and go and the company of them. Cheesy as it sounds, I will miss all the TRACC staff members, the volunteers and our dear friend Erik Hagestad. Now, I close this chapter in my life and look back with no regrets, knowing that I will one day return to this beautiful island call Pom Pom. 

(This blog is written by Natalie Chai)

If you want to help with any marine conservation activity, please check our website http://tracc.org or email info@tracc-borneo.org

For more updates on TRACC check out our Facebook, Twitter or Google+

If visits to Tracc are not possible then please help with financial support and follow our projects on facebook

Sabah Shark Protection Association (SSPA) Proposal

As part of my intern experiences, on the 16^th of July, I was given a chance to take a further step deeper into my learning and be part of a proposal meeting by representing both TRACC and Shark Stewards.
 
The proposal meeting was held in Kota Kinabalu and the proposal was on protecting sharks and rays in Sabah. I am so grateful that I was given such a great opportunity by both Dr David McGuire, the founder of Shark Stewards and Prof. Steve Oakley of TRACC to participate and be involved in this pre-proposal meeting.
 
I was able to meet people from different organisation including WWF Malaysia, Scuba Zoo, LEAP, Scuba Junkie, MNS and MCS. Including TRACC and Shark Stewards, these eight non-profit organisations forms an association call Sabah Sharks Protection Association (SSPA) where they work together to protect sharks and rays in Sabah. I personally found my first experience of a pre-proposal meeting intense but by the end of the meeting, I felt thankful that I was able to be part of this proposal meeting. Not only did I get to meet different organisations that share the same goal and passion to protect sharks and rays in Sabah, I was involved in a proposal that we all hopes will have sharks and rays protected in Sabah. That in itself fills my hearts knowing that we are all trying to make a difference not just for the sharks or rays but for the whole world. 


All my intern experiences

 

(This blog is written by Natalie Chai)

If you want to help with any marine conservation activity, please check our website http://tracc.org or email info@tracc-borneo.org

For more updates on TRACC check out our Facebook, Twitter or Google+

If visits to Tracc are not possible then please help with financial support and follow our projects on facebook

Island Life Part 3 - What I've learned at TRACC

Underwater Construction

It’s been two and a half weeks since I first arrived at Pom Pom Island and the Everest of a learning curve I experienced in my first week has gradually leveled to that of a steadier linear climb up some Chocolate Hills.

I have learned – The underwater signs for nudibranch, grouper, mating, scorpion fish, and crocodile fish. How to make a hammock. The interesting and fantastically strange and beautiful anatomy of the nudibranch, with fluffy gills, spiky cerata, horn like rhinophores, and in some, a special ability to be “solar powered”. There are two distinct populations of Bajau people, land and sea, and that the sea Bajau make a yearly offering to the spirits of the sea through sending a boatful of land goodies down the river. Many words of Bahasa Malay including gila (crazy), ayo (oh my god - used as a general exclamation), and nakal (naughty). How to use a lift bag to move bottle reefs and crates of collected  

The Blue Dragon nudibranch
Photo by Basil Bohn

coral underwater. That planting coral and tending to artificial reefs is a bit like gardening, but you must plant coral with space in between the species so energy is not expended fighting, but growing. The basics of regulator servicing. How the local whiskey sneaks up to give you a bangin’ hangover. How to sit on the Flying Fish, the TRACC boat, a bit on the tip toes to protect the bum from the sometimes harsh motion of the waves. That although much of the coral is reduced to rubble, there are signs of regeneration everywhere throughout the artificial reef and surrounding area. How to mix cement and hammer underwater. Turtle eggs are surprisingly heavy for their size. A week of care and food can do wonders for a malnourished kitten. How to be a real life Baywatch character through the rescue diving course. There are 3 types of seagrass on the house reef and 1717 know types of seacucumbers in the ocean, some of which have teeth in their anus, and sometimes pearlfish live inside them. How fun and enriching it is to be in a place where everyone is passionate about the ocean in one facet or another. That simple living promotes freedom of time and mind. How small tropical fish will come to explore a freshly planted bottle reef within about 5 minutes.  That even those with 100’s of dives, that dive 6 days a week, are still easily excited and happy to dive everyday. That everyone has a story to tell and a bit of awesome strangeness inside of him or her. And that the life I was living three weeks ago seems like a dream light years away and eons ago.

A Storm Brewing in the Sunset

With such a wide world of ocean, practical skills and experience, and people to know and learn about, I don’t expect my slope of a learning curve will ever accumulate in descent.


Previous blogs Island life 1  -- Island life 2 -- More from Lark

--------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to help with any marine conservation activity, please check our website or e-mail info@tracc-borneo.org

The main website is at http://tracc.org
Check out our posts on our activities
on fb tracc.borneo
on twitter tracc_borneo
on google + tracc

or simply #tracc or #traccblog on Google, Facebook, twitter or instagram

Reflection: Building Artificial Reefs

Step Reefs

My experience at TRACC revolved around building step reefs which is a type of artificial reefs. Step reefs are placed on the slope of the ocean bed to serve as wave barrier.( If you're confused don't worry! I was too when I first started. But you'll pick up things easily at TRACC)

It's funny when I first heard the term "step reef".  I thought it was a square reefs just like steps of a stairs. I had a lot of questions playing through my mind. Was it big? Was it small? Was it square? Only later did I realize it was simply a square with glass bottles attached to it. If I had the time, I would have spent it trying to play around with the materials used in building the step reef such as steel or twigs. (Maybe I'll come back next year!)

Making a step reef is not as complicated as it seems. The main material used are cements and bottles. You mix the cements on a crate and add the bottles to it. It's simple! Of course, it's going to take some hardwork such as working in the sun and able to dive a couple of times a day to plant the reefs underwater. Sometimes, I get exhausted but then I realize how much impact I get to make to the environment and that motivates me a lot.

Hardworking :)

TRACC provides training and a place to make your artificial reefs. In fact, I wouldn't have even learned most of the things I have without training. My experience at TRACC will help my goal to pursue my education in marine biology which is something I'm deeply passionate about. More than that, I gained valuable experience as an intern here - how often does anyone get to say they've had hands on experience building coral reefs!




For more information, please check our website or e-mail info@tracc-borneo.org

The main website is at http://tracc-borneo.org
Check out our posts on our activities
on fb tracc.borneo
on twitter tracc_borneo
on google + tracc

or simply #tracc or #traccblog on Google, Facebook, twitter or instagram

Soft coral rubble slope consolidation experiment

Pompom Island

As mentioned in the previous blog post, Pompom island marine environment has large areas where the benthic type is that of a mobile rubble slope. This degraded ecosystem is caused by dynamite fishing and generally has lower biodiversity and fish density than the coral environment that preceded it. Here at TRACC we are working upon methodologies to consolidate the rubble with the hopes of returning it to the bio-diverse hotspot it once was. Mobile rubble slopes present a difficult ecosystem for recolonizing of hard corals as newly settled recruits often attach to a mobile piece of rubble and end up rolling down the slope. Currently at TRACC we are using soft coral replantation techniques to consolidate the rubble slope. Whitney Hoot and myself decided to investigate this and see what effect, if any, the soft coral was having upon the slope.

Firstly 3 different sites upon the north east side of the island (house reef) were chosen. Sites were selected based on the following criteria; benthic cover type (rubble), depth (~5m), slope angle (between 34-45 degrees), distance below reef crest (1-2 meters) and crest characteristics (no coral heads etc.).

Once sites were selected, 3 nets were deployed measuring 2x8 meters. To each of these nets two treatments and a control was added (thank you to all the volunteers who participated in this). Treatments included cabling tying soft coral to the net, cable tying bare rubble to the next and a control on each side of the net.

After nets had been put in place and quality control had been completed,  121 pieces of labeled and painted rubble fragments were randomly added to the top of the quadrats in each net. This was also repeated for the bottom of the nets using differently painted corals. Our plan now is to track the progress of the rubble movement over time to and see if there are any significant changes.

As well as rubble movement every individual coral colonies was photographed , ID’d and measured using imageJ software. Recording colony height, soft coral density and number of runners will allow us to monitor the growth and survival rates of all the soft corals in the experiment. And lastly i will monitor the benthic community structure that follows due to the change in environment. 

A speedy nudibranch rushes to see what we're upto

Whitneys ingenious labeling methodology

A beautiful sunset to mark the end of experiment preparation

For more information, please check our website or e-mail info@tracc-borneo.org

The main website is at http://tracc-borneo.org
Check out our posts on our activities
on fb tracc.borneo
on twitter tracc_borneo
on google + tracc

or simply #tracc or #traccblog on Google, Facebook, twitter or instagram

Malaysian Interns 2015

Our 2015 Malaysian Interns are finally here!

Malaysian Universities require their students to do twelve weeks of Industrial Training as part of their degree course. This year our lucky interns are coming to us from both UMT and UMS and have backgrounds in Marine Science or Conservation Biology. They successfully beat the rush back in December and were undeterred by the challenging application process; Allen, Martinus, Nadia & Shaakirah have finally made it all the way to an exciting internship with TRACC on Pom Pom, Sabah, Malaysia.

They will learn to scuba dive and (once they get past blowing bubble rings for hours) how to get to work underwater. Cement mixing, concrete lifting and lowering, reef rebuilding and coral transferring are all part of the days work at TRACC. This is part of our major restoration work where we stop the decimated rubble reef from moving and plant healthy baby corals in stable conditions. These in turn grow, stabilize the rubble further and provide critical habitat for all the other denizens of the reef.

On top of this, they will be undertaking research rotations with our resident scientists on the long term projects TRACC has running. These include fish, coral and invertebrate identification to species (there are over 300 species of fish alone!). The coral garden identification and mapping project (the coral id book comes in 3 volumes!). Soft coral stabilization of steep, mobile, rubble substrates ("Perhaps we can use soft coral to "stitch" the reef back together so that it stops moving enough for us to replant it".). Turtle daily migration patterns (Seriously, where does George go every afternoon?).

Finally, they will be mixing with people from different places, ages, backgrounds, opinions and experiences and discussing and debating all the marine science, conservation, ecology, anthropology, sociology and politics that affect the marine environment. The critical thing that unites everyone at TRACC is a love of the ocean, a passion to preserve what we have and the dedication to restore what has been damaged.

Allen, Martinus, Nadia & Shaakirah have a unique opportunity to witness the problems and take part in the solutions for themselves before graduating as enthusiastic Malaysian Scientists.

Good Luck Guys!



For more information, please check our website or e-mail info@tracc-borneo.org

The main website is at http://tracc-borneo.org
Check out our posts on our activities
on fb tracc.borneo
on twitter tracc_borneo
on google + tracc

or simply #tracc or #traccblog on Google, Facebook, twitter or instagram

Advance Open Water course

Marius practising hovering

On todays schedule for Marius and Martinez in their Advanced Open Water course, with dive instructor Liz, was Peak Performance Bouyancy, PPB.

Water temperatur was 28-30 degrees, there were schools of fish around us and the conditions were perfect for PPB training.

The boys completed all the exercises without fault and got treated with a fun dive afterwards.

Martinez practising hovering

Swimthrough

Kissing 

For more information, please check our website or e-mail info@tracc-borneo.org

The main website is at http://tracc-borneo.org
Check out our posts on our activities
on fb tracc.borneo
on twitter tracc_borneo
on google + tracc

or simply #tracc or #traccblog on Google, Facebook, twitter or instagram