Creature Feature - Pontoh's Pygmy Seahorse

Photo by Basil Bohn

Enigmatic by nature Pontoh’s Pygmy Seahorse fits like a puzzle piece into the drifting, moving, swaying landscape of her hidden hydroid home. She appears fragile with a figure the dimension of my thumbnail. Yet, she moves with relative confidence and ease. Her twiney tail wraps tightly around the base of one hydroid, before she pushes off and moves in one great leap of her tiny frame, tail grasping the next hydroid base to tightly anchor once again.

Found beneath the shelter of the wreck she is well hidden from potential dangers of ocean currents and predators as she nestles into her home. Her creamy beiges and browns mirroring the mossy world which she inhabits, difficult to spot by divers and predators alike. With no teeth and no stomach she must constantly prey on the tiny crustaceans and planktonic organisms. Watch long enough and you will see, a teensy snout protrude to slurp up her tiny prey.

Photo by Basil Bohn

This charismatic creature, also called the weedy pygmy seahorse, was only discovered in 2008. Once again, the small Island of Pom Pom and TRACC has been privileged with rarity and majesty in a diminutive form.

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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 

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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 - Spanish Dancer Nudibranch Spotted on the House Reef

The Spanish Dancer
Photo by Basil Bohn 

Awesome and strange sea creatures consistently populate the TRACC artificial reefs, but sometimes we get especially lucky. This week we spotted a Spanish dancer nudibranch on the algae crusted “swim through “ of the house reef. This domed structure crafted from bent PVC pipes and covered with netting is popular with a variety of fantastic sea creatures including octopus, many many types of tropical fish, and tiny crabs and shrimps hiding between the netting and crevices in the cement and topsy-turvy bottle reefs, among many other creatures both resident and visitor. Yet, news of this giant nudibranch, roughly measured at 40 cm, created waves through camp, with divers running to gear up and see it for themselves.

Peng with the Spanish Dancer
Photo by Basil Bohn

The Spanish Dancer is the largest of the nudibranch family and gleams its namesake from its resemblance to traditional flamenco dancers. Its bright red, orange, and yellow coloration are reminiscent of the costumes of the traditional Spanish costume. When threatened, it swims through the ocean, twisting, flaring, and undulating its wide ruffled red and orange underside in imitation of the flamenco dance. As an added touch, these twirling sea slugs are simultaneous hermaphrodites. They can not self fertilize and do require a mate in order to lay eggs, but once they mate, they lay their toxic and brightly colored eggs in an outwardly spiraling ribbon around the coral, creating a rose shaped offering to the reef and further fulfilling their namesake.

The Underside of the Spanish Dancer
Photo by Basil Bohn

This sighting was a special experience for us all, including many of our instructors and Divemaster’s who have logged hundreds of dives. After the sighting and the combined hours spent observing this rare creature, the atmosphere at camp was filled with a communal feeling of the privilege and excitement of seeing such a rare creature. The feeling was intensified through sighting this Spanish Dancer on a TRACC built structure, providing the added satisfaction of seeing the conservation work TRACC has completed being populated and utilized by the ocean creatures we all love and strive to protect.

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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
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Marine life identification

Close association by different organisms
is the norm in the ocean. 
These are white ascidians, Tan feather like hydroids
and red sponge.

The marine science A level students have been learning about taxonomy and classification.  From the huge differences between different phyla to the difficulties of identifying marine life to species.  The first practical was to look at rare and unusual marine life so diving gear on, the students jumped into the ocean at the TRACC house reef.


We found no mammals - except the Pilot whale :-)  and the Dolphins,  Plus the cuteist baby shark,  Wow and double wow,


The more unusual marine life yielded a wide range of phyla,  many sponges, ascidians, hydroids, molluscs and crustaceans.  If you don't know what all these are and why they are important parts of the biodiversity then you need this class!!!

Black coral which is actually BARBIE PINK !

More blogs on Marine science class 2016
More info on the Cambridge Marine science A level class

Become a volunteer in 2016 here

Conservation projects 2016

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

Ceranth anemone (Phyla Anthozoa)

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Colonial ascidian (Phyla Tunicates)

Gorgonian (phyla Anthozoa)

Worms in calcium tubes. (Phyla

Step Reef re-design

Step reef 2.0

Initial design

Here at TRACC we are actively working to restore our marine environment. Around our island there has been catastrophic damage caused by historic dynamite fishing. Due to this destructive fishing practice, the reef slope has been degraded to a mobile rubble slope environment with little 3D complexity. This drastically reduces the biodiversity of the reef crest and provides little shelter to larval fish. It is not all bad news though, the rubble environment often has hard corals try colonize and when successful coral growth is consistent. In 2013 we built trial step reefs, our goal was to build a sturdy 3D artificial reef, on a slope environment. This had the aim to both provide 3D complexity and a stable benthic substrate for corals to attach and grow onto. Upon our return we found that our initial test wasn’t 100% successful. Many had rolled down the reef slope due to turtles using them as scratch posts. 

Itchy turtle making a mess!

Step reef re- design

One of the first things we noticed was that, in general, the trial step reefs which were larger , were more stable. This lead to the idea of interlocking each individual block with the one both its left and right, this in effect makes every layer of the step reef one large stable block. This is achieved by leaving gaps between the individual blocks, with the plan to initially cable tie them and then cement these once the blocks are in place under the water.  Massive and encrusting corals will be put in the unset cement with the hope that they would grow to envelop the two blocks, creating a biological adhesion that will only become stronger over time.

The next area we chose to strengthen was between layers. A simple and effect method of using recycled stakes to hold each step in place was used. There by removing the possibility of shallower step reefs rolling downhill over deeper step reefs.   

Step reef from every angle

interlocking layers

When the step reef is in place we add biscuits (basically a coral plant pot) from our coral nursery.

For more about coral biscuits and nursery, click here

As you can tell from the picture below, he step reefs are strong enough to support the weight of our step reef primary engineer, Kit! Hopefully our new step reefs trials will be totally successful,. [blog posts on this topic to come]. I personally cannot wait to start deploying these.

Nice and Sturdy

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

Parrotfish survey at Magic Rock

Firstly let me apologize for the lack of parrotfish on these photos, they are not the easiest fish to photograph cause they are a bit shy and I am not the best of photographers yet.
But I did manage to capture thing for all you fish, nudi, inverts and turtle lovers.

Pom Pom is not only an abundance of fish, it's also a haven for all you seaslug, invert and nudibranch lovers out there.

More info about learning to dive or volunteering to help save the ocean with TRACC in Malaysia - Turtle Snorkellers - Divers