Mataking exploration

Yesterday we travelled to Mataking and dived on the far side of the islands, it was a turtle mecca there, we saw 6-7 before we even started the dive, however the number of fish was much lower than at Pom Pom and overall the dive was no less entertaining than most dive at Pom Pom.



A few days ago in the afternoon we did a fish survey from the Pom Pom Northtip jetty where I saw my first Hawksbill of this trip, 4 Green Turtles and a meter long Bumphead parrot fish hiding under a large coral. 

The marine life is great and so many turtles.

Paul Fadden Aug 2016

Turtle Nesting on Pom Pom Island

The Return to the Ocean

This week, the first turtle of the season clambered onto the beach just outside of TRACC to lay her many eggs. As we sat in the communal area, number 4, waiting for dinner we were alerted to unusual activity by the steady bark of the camp dog Monsoon. Curious about the barking Paul went out to check out the scene, triumphantly returning with news of turtle tracks just up the beach. Equipped with red headlamps and the knowledge of Professor Steve, the camp went out to find a large, old and impressive green turtle well hidden beneath the spiky underbrush.

Turtles are aged through the length of the shell, with about 1-2 cm equaling 1 year, this one measuring 1 meter from shell tip to tip was a little less then 100 years old when accounting for her initial 2-4 cm hatchling shell.

Oblivious, as most sea creatures are to red and green light as they have no need to distinguish between it at the depths they spend most of their lives where those colors don’t reach, we watched her under the red glow of a headlamp. The initial hole was dug with the front flippers with much crashing of undergrowth. The next stage was chambering where she dug a smaller hole at the bottom of the pit.  Steadily she used one rear flipper then another rocking her body to and fro to dig her hole into the sand. She folded in the edges of her hind flippers to create a perfect bowl shaped shovel and continued the hard work of making a deeper nest. When she could no longer reach the bottom of her egg chamber, she moved to position her hind flippers over the hole.

Laying Eggs in the Underbrush

It’s usual for a turtle to lay between 80 and 100 eggs, 3-7 times each year and the range is thought to be between about 60 and 120. When satisfied with its size and depth, she began to lay her approximate 140 eggs in what we believe to be her first nest of the season.

After laying her eggs she filled her nest with sand to cover and incubate the eggs, and then tossed

sand and brush over the nest with her front flippers, to hide the nest. Becoming tired, she slowed more often to rest during this process, providing a chance for the A-level marine science students to practice some of their data collection skills and measure the turtles shell height and width – the standard measurements used to determine size and age. The resting period of our turtle friend also gave the team from Pom Pom resort, which has the official privilege to gather and safely incubate the eggs away from the danger of poachers and natural scavengers, a chance to begin collecting the eggs.

A-Level Students Basil and Graeme

Soon after she was satisfied her nest was safely hidden she turned around in the sandy underbrush, clumsy with her huge weight on land, and headed back to the ocean. Surprisingly quickly and steadily she made her way down the beach, shortened by the high tide she prefers for nesting, and entered to water.

Its easy to imagine she must now be relieved to be back in the ocean where her 100 Land kilograms are lightened to what feels like 2, and she can gracefully and swiftly move through her underwater home. In about 2 weeks she will pick another evening high tide to revisit the beach within about 50 meters of her first nest and lay another nest of eggs. For now, her eggs lay safely protected and incubating on Pom Pom Island, and in about 60 days we will have the privilege of witnessing the hatchlings finding their way back into their watery home.  

More about the turtles of Pom Pom

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Coral planting on reef crest undergraduate project

TRACC is learning how to improve our conservation efforts. Every year we have undergraduates come to us in order to conduct undergraduate projects. At TRACC, we have marine biologists, divemasters and volunteers all keen to help with scientific investigation, making it a great place to conduct a project.

Planting coral on a damaged reef crest.

We recently hosted two students from the University of Swansea; Dan Stevens and Jack Gourlay who worked on reef crest restoration and artificial reef fish assemblage respectively. This blog post is a brief summary of Dan's project.

One of the main conservation activities at TRACC is replanting hard corals to restore 3D structure and biodiversity to severely degraded reefs. Reef crest restoration is something we aspire to become extremely efficient at as without a healthy reef crest entire islands can change shape and even slowly erode away. Dan chose to conduct a project to determine which restoration methodology is best at reintroducing hard coral to reef crests.  

Two sites were selected upon the TRACC crest reef approximately 100 meters apart. Two areas of 2 x 10 meters were marked out upon the reef crest and then sub divided into three 2 x 2 meter experimental quadrats with two 1 x 2 meter control patches between. In each of the larger squares one treatment was added as shown below. The red crosses represent controls i.e areas of the reef crest with no treatment given.

Plan of experimental layout

For each treatment, 63 Acropora pieces were labeled using coloured beads and a cable tie. These pieces were then placed evenly apart and there movement and health were monitored. In addition to this 3 surveys were continuously conducted as follows;

Dive Reef crest surveys – The entire reef crest area where the experiment was conducted was split into 5 different 50 meter sections. The survey would involve 2 divers drifting and tallying all the fish in each section. The aim of this survey was to see whether there is a movement of fish from the already restored area to the newly restored sites. These surveys were conducted twice daily.

Snorkel reef crest surveys – Snorkelers would swim from one end of the reef flat to the other – a length of 250m. This was split into two separate zones. In each zone all individuals in the following groups were counted; Butterfly fish, Triggerfish and Sea Urchins plus any other interesting fish/turtles. These fish families were chosen as they are reef health indicator species.

reef crest corals after 2 years of growth.

Point count surveys – 2 divers swim over the sites counting all the fish which within the quadrats. Divers would then hover 3 meters away from the sites, tallying the fish which move into the sites.

Preliminary results show concrete wedging to be the most effective treatment for reef restoration.

Endangered Humphead wrasse almost extinct in Semporna

Where have all the big fish gone?  Long time passing?  where oh where! Fishermen ate them everyone, long time ago!  (with apologies and thanks to Bob Dylan)

Large sub adult male humphead wrasse on
Sipadan island, the only place on the east coast
of Sabah with a breeding population.

Scary fact--- The biggest wrasse and one of the most charismatic fish on a coral reef is almost extinct in the Semporna region.  

TRACC divers have just finished (Dec 2013) a coral reef survey of Timbun mata island, a large volcanic island (70km long) to the north of Semporna. The ocean surrounding Pulau Timbun Mata is not legally protected but the land is technically a forest reserve, there were plenty of big trees but the mangrove was definitely being harvested close to Semporna.

On the north side the island has a fringing reef with quite steep slopes. Severely bombed in parts but there were a few remote areas which still had good coral cover. While the sea bed cover varies with the amount of blast fishing and other variables there was at least 50% live seabed at all the offshore reef sites to the north of Timbun Mata. In many places, the living reef cover exceeded 80% and was very biodiverse with a wide range of different species.

Fish pots made of wire have decimated
reef fish populations in some areas.
  This pot is upside down.

Surprisingly there were no HHW seen on any of the 150 transects at 50 different locations around the island. Groupers, snappers sweetlips and grunts were all noticable by their absence. There were almost no commercial fish.  

The low fish diversity and abundance is most probably related to the widespread use of fish pots. At some sites more than 5 fishpots /100m were recorded. There were very few fish of commercial size at any site. Blast fishing was widespread and there is a clear gradient of blast fishing from high close to the villages to low at the reefs further from the villages. Some reefs were reduced to rubble with very low fish and coral diversity and abundance, however most reefs were patchy with blast damage confined to the shallower reefs. Reefs at 10-15m were relatively intact with high coral cover and diversity.

Femaile Humphead wrasse have no hump
But have a characteristic eye stripe

We are not the only survey team to find very few HHW in the Semporna area. A study by a team from WWF- Malaysia surveyed 35 sites with 64 transects during 2008/9 covering all unprotected reef types across the entire Semporna reef system. There were no humphead wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus) observed during any of these surveys. The only populations of humphead wrasse in Semporna were found on the reefs of Sipadan which are protected from fishing and destructive fishing practices by the presence of Sabah Parks and divers. There is a very small population of humphead wrasse on Pom Pom Island following the introduction and release by TRACC of 6 individuals rescued from a live fish restaurant. (MORE)

 

Other species are also severely overfished, very few grouper (Serranidae) or other commercial fish were observed during the surveys. These results from Nina Ho and Ken Kassem in 2009 and from TRACC in 2013 indicate severe overfishing of these commercially and ecologically important species.

There is a small population on Pulau Sipadan, where does it get its recruits from?  The island is too small to hope that larvae find their way back to the tiny island.  From the TRACC surveys around the whole coast it is clear that there is no other population upcurrent from any of the Semporna islands.

More info on humphead wrasse and the live fish trade.

If the humphead wrasse of Sipadan die because of recruitment failure then the species will be regionally extinct and will deserve to be upgraded from endangered to critical (IUCN red list).

 

Ho, Nina & Kassem, Kenneth. (2009). Reef Status of Semporna Priority Conservation Area. Kota Kinabalu,

Malaysia: WWF-Malaysia