Fun Dive at North Tip

The diversity at North Tip

The biodiversity at North tip has changed dramatically since May. Bluespotted ribbontail ray, nudibranch, bumphead parrotfish at the size of approximately one meter, humphead wrasse and the redtooth triggerfishes definitely grabbed my attention throughout this dive. Evidently, the photo above shows the diversity of fishes at approximately 30 meters. The redtooth triggerfishes are seen gracefully swimming about in the open blue water.

Redtooth triggerfish are one of the most diverse fish at North Tip.

Blue spotted ribbon tail ray at North Tip.

Furthermore, humphead wrasses have not been seen for more than five months. However, they were recently seen again in mid-August. During this fun dive, an adult humphead wrasse was just swimming peacefully past us. It was definitely a sight to see as I have never seen a humphead wrasse swimming in the ocean but rather I will always see these wrasses in Chinese restaurants, cramped up in small tanks ready to be slaughtered.  TRACC has so far bought and released 15 juveniles :-)

Humphead wrasses and Bluefin Trevally at North Tip.

(This blog is written by Natalie Chai)

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If you want to visit and volunteer 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 like us and share our projects on Social media.

Donations to community projects, or support / sponsor an Intern or Marine science student are always welcome.

Dive Instructor Vacancy

Tracc has a vacancy for a scuba instructor starting immediately.

We're a small, volunteer organisation that are restoring the reef around Pom Pom island in the Celebes Sea, off the East coast of Malaysian Borneo. See the Map.

We need our divers to be well trained; peak performance buoyancy is an integral part of everyone's open water course, because novice divers crash landing on our beautifully planted coral is just not an option. But, we don't have many students, just four or five a week, and we allow you two weeks per course so that you have plenty of time to do the job properly.

All this time means that there's plenty of opportunity for you to take part in the science and conservation aspect of the project too. Some of the diving we do is, well, unique....

For all the details, please send an e-mail to info@tracc-borneo.org 

or call Hazel on (+6) 019 8505412

Social Media Internships

Could you be this girl? Taking fifty shots to get the perfect sunset? Or this one? Lounging in a hammock while you upload some video you took on this morning's diving? Tracc has a vacancy for a social media intern.

We're offering a qualified diver a 12 week stay, and all the diving you can do for just £625 (US$830) and some social media maintenance.  If you're not a diver we can teach you at cost.

We don't need professional photographers, videographers or journalists, although if you are one, you're more than welcome to apply! 

Just someone who can point and shoot and capture what it is we do with enthusiasm.

As our SM Intern you will:

• Write a blog on your experiences at least once a week.
• Post to Facebook and Instagram daily.
• Twitter about our science, conservation and diving.
• Curate the multitude of photos our volunteers take and maintain the photo database.

To apply, please write a 500 word blog post on anything you like, attach a couple of your best happy-snaps and e-mail them to info@tracc-borneo.org

Creature Feature - The Moray Eel

Photo by Basil Bohn

A constant creature of the TRACC house reef the moray eel is often hidden and often seen. Equipped with pharyngeal jaws, the moray is an imposing predator to the crustaceans, fish, and invertebrates that it seeks as a meal.  First it lays in wait, peeking its head from its burrow and sneakily scanning the reef. When spotted it strikes, grasping its prey whole and alive with its first set of outer jaws. Next, it extends its inner jaws, the pharyngeal jaws, to pull its prey down its throat and into its belly, still alive, still whole.

Yet, this beady eyed, and bead spotted eel is not at all harmful to humans, preferring to hide from their presence rather than be seen. The moray has also been observed to collaborate with one of its fellow reef dwellers - the coral grouper. Inhabiting different niches, burrows vs. open reef habitat, the coral grouper lives in the open reef water and has no access to the creatures that choose to hide in the crevices of coral, the grouper in turn struggles to catch creatures quickly darting to and fro. Thus this unlikely pair will sometimes team up, the grouper corralling creatures near the moray burrow, while the moray flushes creatures out of nooks and crevices of its home. Trapped from shelter on both sides, the creatures have no escape and the groupers and morays both get an easy meal.

Sometimes seen hidden in the cracks of the step reef, or twisted and wrapped around the nooks and crannies of the big brain corals scattered around Pom-Pom Island. The moray resembles a snake from the ages, an underwater serpent of the Slytherin, and something superb to be seen. 

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

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

More Marine conservation projects

Reef conservation would not be possible without generous financial support from

GEF /SGP for Malaysia who are helping our community activities and coralreefcare.com who generously provided materials to build the new reefs.

If visits to Tracc are not possible then please help with financial support and follow their projects on Facebook.

Leaving Pom Pom's Paradise

24 hours after waving goodbye to the glittery people and waters of Pom Pom Island and already I miss the ocean, the life, the people. Yes the short stint of air conditioning has healed the majority of my cuts, I’ve slept well pass the natural alarm clock marked by the end of fan time at 7:30AM, and have indulged in the luxury of restaurant quality food and choice. Yet, the lack of modern convenience, insect bites and salty showers is a tax I am more than willing to pay for the life of freedom, community, and awesome access to the ocean TRACC provides.

The short list of what my time on Pom Pom has meant to me is long. It includes– the faces of people laughing underwater – the bright blue gradients of ocean extending from the shore – grabbing a tank and diving at sunrise – feeling weightless – flooding my mask because I can stop smiling – eating bananas underwater – noticing something new about the ocean everyday – excited underwater screams – getting to know the resident creatures of the house reef – collecting and planting soft coral and hard coral, even when the current rips, it storms, and bringing baskets up and down is a chore – peanut butter kaya cracker time – underwater hammering – watching the artificial reef I have helped to build become populated with life – sand everywhere – feeling too hot – the freedom to engineer my own projects – holes in all of my perpetually dirty clothes – jetty time – tanned legs – wonderfully calloused and beat up feet – the stars – the bioluminescence – night diving and the whole other ocean scene that is illuminated under torch light – new favorite ocean creatures – hammock time – waking up to the sound of rain on my tent – learning something new so naturally everyday – the ragged pages of the ocean creatures book – big boat days – jumping off the jetty at Timba Timba – Rasma’s pumpkin curry – Lizz’s cakes – Gon’s roti – turtle walks – moon shadows – Sunday Fundays – Monday Dry Days (sometimes) – getting to know people I wouldn’t otherwise  – how the sun hits the water in the evening and the morning to give the surface a metallic sheen – beams of light breaking through the oceans surface – falling to the ocean floor from laughter – card games during safety stops – being directly involved in marine conservation –150 plus hours of accumulated underwater time – the community – the freedom to dive all the time – and being surrounded by passion and care for the ocean.

But most of all…. The People. The Diving. The Ocean.

Big love to all the many who made my time at TRACC what it was and all the enthusiasm and care for the ocean world.

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

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

More Marine conservation projects

Reef conservation would not be possible without generous financial support from

GEF /SGP for Malaysia who are helping our community activities and coralreefcare.com who generously provided materials to build the new reefs.

If visits to Tracc are not possible then please help with financial support and follow their projects on Facebook.

The Beauty of the Deep - Diving in the Ocean Currents of North Tip

Juvenile bat fish,
Photo By Basil Bohn

I’m floating weightlessly in the murky blue. Below lies unfathomable depth and the tantalizing mystery of the unknown; above the faint glimmer of light I know to be the sun. Behind, the wall grounds me in the weird, wonderful, and still wild world of the ocean. At Pom Pom Island on the Eastern Side of Borneo, I’m scuba diving and drifting with the ocean current at North Tip.

Here at the Tropical Research and Conservation Center, where I am a Divemaster in training and a marine conservation volunteer, I always have ample opportunity to abscond from the restrictions of gravity and meditate in the blue. Yet, today the beauty and the peace of the deep feels forever more intense.

I twirl 180 degrees with a grace only available in the water and I greet the face of the wall. A rainbow spectrum of color and motion enlightens my senses as the living, moving landscape slowly passes by. Meters of soft coral, usually erect in broccoli-esque trees, drape from the overhang in a vast yellow curtain. Black, purple, and white, sea fans reach into the ocean like starched sheets of capillaries, purposefully protruding to catch the full force of the current and the plankton that will be their meal. Soft sea whips, taller than me, curled, fuzzy, and virtually colorless, extend into the ocean, a stark and awesome vision of light reaching into dark. Upon slight ascent, a new vision appears; massive plates of hard corals in a multiplicity of shapes and colors, some like mushroom caps, others that appear to pulsate in psychedelic colors tessellate with peachy brain corals with divots that can be followed like a maze. This cacophony of beauty expands my body and spirit with elation.

Bubble coral shrimp
Photo by Markus Mende

I take a moment to gently fin against the current and explore the realm of tiny creatures living in the caves and crevices created by corals. A symphony of shrimps and crabs seemingly crafted of glass and porcelain with transparent bodies or perfect pink, green, and blue veneer hide beneath. Others who wiggle their orange and white spotted humped back in a twerking movement to rival Miley Cyrus nestle into their anemone homes in harmony with their neighboring anemone fish. Nearby, soft bunches of bubble coral hide furry orangutan crabs. Rising further I float over the algae crusted coral rubble, still enjoying the sensation of flying diving allows, while the tiny heads of jawfish with devilish glowing orange eyes retreat from my shadow into their ocean floor holes.

Christmas tree worm

Today I never want to leave the ocean, but I am human and my limitations are real. Yet, as I look up to ascend more beauty welcomes as geometric slivers of a deep and golden orange setting sun breaks through the water. Upon surfacing, a rosy horizon and the silver sheen of a setting sun scintillating on the ocean greets me. I am still in the most beautiful place on earth.

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

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

More Marine conservation projects

Reef conservation would not be possible without generous financial support from

GEF /SGP for Malaysia who are helping our community activities and coralreefcare.com who generously provided materials to build the new reefs.

If visits to Tracc are not possible then please help with financial support and follow their projects on Facebook.

Creature Feature - The Solar Powered Nudibranch

the solar powered nudibranch
Photo by Basil Bohn

A dash of divers descend down to shallow depths – word has spread that two solar powered nudibranch’s mating have been spotted on the house reef. Incredible creatures who receive the majority of their energy from the sun, the solar powered nudibranch harvests zooxanthellae algae from the soft coral upon which it sometimes feeds. In a fortunate feat of nature, a symbiotic relationship ensues. The photosynthetic zooxanthellae lives safely in the Solar Powered’s digestive system, in turn providing its host with energy from the sun. The long, flat, wide, and translucent leaf like cerata stemming from the nudibranch’s body are veined with exposed digestive system showing a speckling of zooxanthellae beneath a thin layer of translucent skin. The exposed zooxanthellea allow the solar powered nudibranch to receive the energy of the sun and give the solar powered a resemblance of a living moving flower.

The mating solar powered pair rest in the shadows of a TRACC built artificial reef (a teepee); reproduction organs planted in each other at opposite ends to form a circle of gently intertwined bodies in a fanciful mess of softly glowing cerata. They will stay in this circular act of creation until fertilized, laying up to 1 million eggs in a rose patterned spiral somewhere along the reef crest, giving life to a new generation of naturally fantastical creatures.

Nudi = naked, branch = gills, appropriate Latin for creatures making love in the oceanic sun.

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

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

More Marine conservation projects

Reef conservation would not be possible without generous financial support from

GEF /SGP for Malaysia who are helping our community activities and coralreefcare.com who generously provided materials to build the new reefs.

If visits to Tracc are not possible then please help with financial support and follow their projects on Facebook.