What the Turtle Volunteers have been up to

About 25% of TRACC volunteers from May-September come to monitor the turtle nesting. It isn't possible to dive all day and walk round the island all night so this program is specifically for people who want to do some conservation without the expense (in either money or energy) of diving and reef restoration. They walk quietly round our lovely little island in the silence of the night and then snorkel peacefully in the heat of the day.


The turtle volunteers are also conducting in-water turtle surveys to monitor the turtle population and activity around the island. We've found that the green turtles outnumber the hawksbills by 10:1, but that the population dynamic is different. The green turtles are transitory adults; spending their days sleeping and eating in the shallows, mating and nesting. The hawksbill turtles tend to be resident, active juveniles.

Once the female greens are ready, they haul themselves up the beach and wander round it (often for hours) trying to find the perfect place to lay their precious eggs. We don't have any photos of this because any sort of disturbance at this point will have them beating a hasty retreat. So our turtle volunteers sit in the dark waiting for the girl to be ready.

Finally, when everything is perfect she settles into a semi-trance and starts to lay her eggs. She lays anywhere from 30-150 eggs depending on her age and how long she's been holding them. Often a female will return to the beach and go through the nesting process two or three times before she's finished for the season.

At this point the volunteers get face down in the sand for the enviable privilege of catching turtle eggs straight out of the mother. The eggs are all collected carefully and transferred to the island hatchery where they are safe from human poachers. There are no natural predators of turtle eggs on the island and if it wasn't for poaching the nests could be safely left in situ to develop naturally.

Although turtles are totally protected species and there are stiff penalties for taking their eggs, the local stateless people have very few economic opportunities. The poaching of turtle eggs is a major source of revenue for them but a major threat to turtle conservation.

All credits to Wirginia Romanowicz-Basiak for the photos.

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Sunset music festival coral planting exhibition

Happy with his coral biscuit

Our final coral planting exhibition for spring 2015 was held on the 6^th & 7^th of June, aiming to educate people visiting the sunset music festival on the occasion of the World Ocean Day and World Environment Day. The entire science team was up at the crack of dawn to prepare for all the coral planting work to be conducted that day. Kit accompanied by his younger brother Yong Sien packed all the coral planting essentials, I meanwhile conducted a fish market survey whilst Jason and Emily collected corals of opportunity ready for the days coral planting followed by a late night information stall at the music festival.

In the previous blog post I outlined the methodology for public coral planting, today I shall expand more into the booth and what we try and explain to people. Educating the general public is a large part of conservation, particularly environmental education for the new generations about the importance of being sustainable.  

The Science Team

Turtles

Jason Talking about Turtles

Here at Kudat three kinds of turtles used to be present in abundance, they are as follows; Hawksbill, Green and Olive Ridley. However to date all populations have been severely depleted due to historical egg poaching, with Olive Ridleys turtles likely locally extinct. Numbers of Greens are protected by the activities of community projects such as KTCS but there are still many threats facing these creatures.

Ocean plastic pollution is one of the main threats facing these beautiful creatures. We at TRACC have performed autopsies on turtles and very often, as reflected in the literature, find that blockages of the intestinal tract are the primary cause of death. It appears that plastic bags in the ocean resemble jellyfish are one of the most common causes of this threat.

So what can you do?

Firstly one thing that everyone can do is simply reduce the amount of plastic they use in their everyday life.  One of the easiest and most effective ways of doing this is simply not using carrier bags. Buy yourself a lifelong shopping bag and immediately help reduce your carbon footprint. The average active use of a carrier bag is under 30 seconds and yet it can take hundreds of years for this to biodegrade. Also buying in bulk can considerably reduce plastic in packaging terms, and also save you money! Lastly, the simplest of all, don’t litter!

Another threat that faces sea turtles is egg collection. Turtles are air breathers and need to come onto land to lay eggs. They lay on average 6 times a season and leave large and very evident tracks leading to their nests. Here in Malaysia the eggs are considered a delicacy, one single nest of turtle eggs can be equivalent of an entire months wages, so its no surprise that historical nest raids have dramatically reduced turtle numbers over the years. At the time of writing it is currently illegal, but with so many beaches its impossible for the police to enforce any kind of law regarding this matter. Here at TRACC, we have collected and hatched in excess of 3000 eggs since 2013. We try and put the message across that the maximum value of turtles, is in ecotourism for the community, rather than a one off payment for an individual.  

Shark fin soup

Shark bycatch / fisheries are another issue that we are trying to educate the public about. Sharks are scientifically defined as fish, however they belong to the subclass Elasmobranch, which also contains rays, skates and sawfish. All members of the subclass Elasmobranchii, in comparison to the majority of other fish subclasses, have long life histories (that is they take a long time to mature, gestated etc). This in turn means that sharks are more prone to being unsustainably fished. Shark surveys conducted across the world all point to significant global reductions in populations of sharks, See HERE for ours.

Shark fin soup is a causes of massive increases in shark fisheries. Shark fin soup is a luxury item in Chinese culture, and Malaysia has the second largest import of shark fins in Asia. To obtain maximum profits, it is common practice for sharks de-finning to take place on the vessel and their body to be thrown overboard (sometimes still alive). By doing so much more shark fin (the most profitable part of the shark) can be brought to market.

For more information about shark conservation click HERE

Jason explaining about dynamite fishing

Another threat which we are trying to mitigate is that of blast (aka dynamite) fishing. This sadly is exactly as it sounds. Its roots lie within the occupation of the Philippines by America. Historically WW2 grenades were thrown into the water, they would then explode, killing everything in its radius and fish would simply be collected.

Sound like a pretty easy way to fish? It is! Super effective as well as very time efficient. However these bombs also cause massive coral damage, no coral means no fish, therefore the few people who bomb fish are in effect, destroying their livelihood and also the livelihood of other artisanal net fishers for short term gain. For more information on blast fishing click HERE. 

Putting the biscuit back into water
asap to reduce stress on the coral

Here are some of the days coral planting pictures.

Again i'd like to say thank you to all those who participated and a HUGE thank you to my team of scientists; Kit, Jason and Emily for continually working with a positive, can-do attitude, even when working into the night. Great work guys.

Thanks also to the Small grants programme (SGP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) administered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). #thegef

Our best looking biscuit?

The future generation planting the future coral!

Mixing a thick paste of the
coral planting cement

You may also want to read about our coral planting for world ocean day or Growth of the branching corals in the coral nursery.  or Step reefs or Bottle reefs or Shark cave reefs or igloo reefs

More blogs about TRACC marine conservation centre

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

For more information, about learning to dive or volunteering to help save the ocean with TRACC in Malaysia - Turtle Snorkellers - Divers 
 
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

Mapping the house reef

Last week a team went out to map the house reef, I the self proclaimed photographer in training went with them.

Don't mind me, I'm just scratching myself

I did get some photos of our great team working with the mapping but was also distracted from that by the natural beauty of marine life, what can I say.. diving at Pom Pom is so amazing that you just want to take photos of it all.
I mean who can resist a turtle scratching himself....it is no wonder that the structures that TRACC creates dont always grow in the way we expect.  The turtles rearrange things to suit their itches.




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

Jo carrying the heavy crate with sand filled bottles to be used for the mapping

Placing the survey line markers gently on the seabed.

The 3rd auditorium, our newest addition

Jo chilling out after work well done

Tom preparing one of the mapping bottles

For more information, about learning to dive or volunteering to help save the ocean with TRACC in Malaysia - Turtle Snorkellers - Divers 
 
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

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Pom Pom revisited

bottle nurseries

Yesterday we revisited our Pom Pom camp in preparation for the re-build.
Here's the before pictures..... keep following our blog for the after-pictures coming soon :)
We also have bottle nurseries ready for deployment creating new habitat for marine life and to act as buffering from storms.

The view however doesn't need any fixing, it's perfectly amazing just as it is.

In a month the camp will be better than this :-) 
More info about volunteering with TRACC in Malaysia - Turtle Snorkellers - Divers

dive shop

bottle nurseries

Camp area

Kitchen

View

View

TURTLES MATING AT THE TIP OF BORNEO

Witnessing turtles mating might not be so much of an exciting encounter for frequent divers. But it was hilarious indeed to bump into a pair of turtles when they are mating in the middle of the ocean. They split up when the boat got near. One of them swam right off, dived down and disappeared. I wonder if the mating was successful @.@?




More info about volunteering with TRACC in Malaysia - Turtle Snorkellers - Divers

Diving the N. Tip of Pom Pom island

The north tip of Pom Pom island (Semporna, Sabah, Malaysia) is a wall dive with the best wall starting at 30m. The reef crest at the north end of the Pom Pom reef wall has a large flat plateau The current splits at this point and there is a choice to swim either W around the N tip wall or East around the Fleavie wall.

The boat ties to the mooring and we kit up. Quick check of the current direction and last minute gear checks and we are off.

Backwards roll dive entry into 3-4m of water next to a large mushroom shaped bommie and a large area covered with bottle reefs planted by TRACC. The reef slope is covered with rubble and macrolife such as nudibranchs and frogfish can be found. Our dive is to go deep, so we pass rapidly across this shallow dive site down to 20m. A quick ok and then we curve off to the left and down a gully. The visibility is awesome at least 40 and maybe 50m and the wall looms up some way in front. The currrent has started to pick up and there are increasing numbers of small schooling fish. Big black coral bushes (“I must remember to ask the TRACC scientists why black !!! coral is actually red or white or green”) and a school of bannerfish mark mark the end of the gulley. I learn later that in 2012 when TRACC first surveyed the island of Pom pom, there were 3 of these schooling bannerfish. Now they are impossible to count. Everything is so approachable, the current is quite strong and all the fish are facing the current looking for food and ignoring the divers. A shoal of bait fish swims past and the big fish follow, 2 giant trevally, a small group of no idea (rainbow runners – id later from the photos) and a larger school of the bluefin trevally. I stop on the corner of the wall and try to get a good photo of the red tooth triggers when the school of big eye trevally swims past. Not worried by the 4 or was it 5 species of trevally, the small fish suddenly scatter. Swimming along the wall is a huge dogtooth tuna. It glides past a few metres away and then all the small fish return. Beep Beep, all to soon the computer says go up and then the best part of the dive started.

As we slowly ascend cross the plateau we see one or two then 5 or more, green turtles resting. Each bommie has at least one large female turtle and in the water column, a male is cruising looking for action. The females are not timid, they generally ignore divers, one female lifts off slowly and the nearest male cruises alongside. I learn later that mating was finished a few weeks ago, but the males are still searching for a willing partner. The cameras are clicking and I can see my buddy gesturing for me to swim into the right place to get that fantastic picture of me and a turtle drifting across the reef.

We gradually ascend to 9m and the seabed is a flat gentle slope of broken rubble. There clearly was a great reef here once but the blast fishing has decimated the fragile coral and it looks like the gravel when a road is being built. The vis is definitely 40m and I can see rubble in all directions, flat and featureless. But ahead past the dive master is a cloud of small fish. I look closer and they are living on a bottle reef. It is made from a ring of glass bottles embedded in cement and then the centre of the ring was plastic bottles. The whole structure is covered with coral and spomges and only a few bottle tops can still be seen. The fish definitely like it - there is a sabre tooth blenny hidden in the neck of lots of bottles and many many small fish. It is easy to see that the artificial reefs built by TRACC volunteers are making a huge difference to reef recovery..

Floating up into the shallows, there are more TRACC reefs, the ribbon reef snakes across the reef crest and is a highway for butterfly fish, blue devil damsels, anthias and many others. With successful artificial reefs like these I am fired up and will definitely be making reefs this afternoon.

Pom Pom Turtle island

Pom Pom should have been called turtle island, from the moment I arrived I saw turtle after turtle swimming around in the ocean. I got so excited at seeing these beautiful creatures in the flesh that I couldn’t help but swim after each one, tiring myself out within a short space of time of racing up and down the reef! The turtles would either be resting on coral or just merrily swimming around, some were 1m plus and some smaller but each one was as graceful as the next and just as exciting to see. 

On my fifth night here I got to see a turtle nesting!!! It was an amazing experience a huge 1m female laid 101 eggs and I got to share in this beautiful moment. 
Steve was briefing the guests on turtle ‘antics’ (he is pretty much a walking encyclopaedia when it comes to marine life) and I was getting slowly more and more annoyed with my camera as it was brand new and I hadn’t yet worked out how to use the night vision and film settings. I was silently going mental at the fact that I couldn’t capture this rare moment, but luckily managed to get a few good shots in the end.   

More information on volunteering with TRACC  - Facebook page - pom pom island biodiversity - Marine biology courses -                                                                                     

Anything for the Turtles

As the title hints, we are willing to do anything for the turtles, including walking around in the early hours of the morning, in the rain, freezing our butts off and lifting heavy termite-infested, centipede-housing logs.

The beach at Pom Pom is continuously plagued by lots of pieces of drift wood. This is a problem because when the turtles come up the sand to try and nest, the bits of wood obstruct their paths, resulting in the turtles not being able to lay their eggs.

Macho Women conquering all the logs

Therefore our task was to pick up the pieces of wood and make piles all along our side of the beach, in order for them to be burned later. We chose the most ideal day to do this: rainy and cold. In a sense this was good because we didn't get even more burnt in the process.

On various occassions Steve pointed out old turtle nests which are about 50cm x 50 cm circles in the sand. It was weird to think that only six months ago little baby turtles crawled out of their eggs shells buried in these nests and cautiously made their way to the sea. It made us think about what those turtles are doing now. Did they even survive or were they devoured by bigger creatures along the way?

We all ended up with cuts and bites on our arms and legs and exhausted, but we were pleased by the fact that we will be making a difference by hopefully enabling more turtles to come onto the beach and nest.

Enjoying some marshmallows

In total it took us two hours to make twentyone piles of wood and we took advantage of our hard work the following evening by making smores around several bonfires. Laura and Em thankfully had each brought a bag of marshmallows which we devoured under a sky full of twinkling stars. The sweet smell soon attracted the dive instructors from the resort and we gladly shared our sugary delights with them.

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Jetty Journey

Harald was very friendly

With the rest of the group weighed down by exhaustion from coral planting, Beth, Linnea and Lisa decided to go snorkelling in order to survey for turtles. As the resort was low on guests that day, one of the dive instructors, Z-Man (real name = Zainal), had some free time and so we asked him to come with us. We started off at our jetty, swimming over our previously planted corals, and slowly started to venture along the edge of the coral reef. We kept Steve's words from the previous day in mind, "Snorkelling is not a competition; there is no destination. The journey is the most important part." and thus took our time.
Z-Man, being more experienced in the waters of Pom Pom, had a sharp eye for all of the flora and fauna and pointed out a lot of the exotic fish. We saw two lion fish (Beth saw the third hiding under a rock, as she was getting up close to teeny-tiny fishies and taking videos of them with her pro-underwater camera), which don't look at all like lions. Which makes one wonder why they are called lion fish at all. Do they roar....? Moving on, we were most intrigued by the neon-blue fish which excitedly bobbed in and out of little pieces of coral fragments.

Beth's favourite fish are the clown fish. Sadly we didn't see Nemo but probably close relatives of his. Clown fish are extremely inquisitive and once they have worked up the courage to leave their anemone homes, they will swim right up to your face. Steve says, that eventually they will start to nibble on your mustache hairs. Unfortunately, the three of us girls had shaved our moustaches that morning and could not test this theory...
The most amazing encounters however, were with the turtles. We had only seen one on Pom Pom up to that point and would squeal underwater (resulting in us choking on water) every time we saw another one. We're pretty sure that we saw Squirt and Crush from Finding Nemo, chilling out on the sea bed having a snooze. We saw 18 turtles in total, however one encounter sticks out the most for us.
At first Harald the turtle (one of the biggest turtles we saw up close and personal) seemed unaware of our presence as he was gracefully gliding through the water away from us. When suddenly, Harald changed his direction and started swimming towards us. All three of us were flabberghasted by how close he was getting. He kept swimming closer and closer until he was less than a meter away from our faces. We must admit we were quite frightened by this peaceful and toothless creature and had flashes of him turning into a man-eating turtle, so we began to back away. By the time we felt that we were well out of his reach, Harald had gotten bored of us and disappeared into the deep blue.

After 45 minutes of snorkelling we all agreed that maybe it was time to slowly start heading in (because remember, snorkelling has no destination). We started to swim back to the beach but noticed that the tide was going out and as a result the current was against us. We soon realised that there was no way that we could swim back and thought we were doomed to die. Z-Man however was quite casual and easy-going about the situation and, just like Dori, kept swimming. We followed, hoping that he perhaps knew a different area where the current would not be so strong. Instead it seemed as if his plan was to swim all the way to the otherside of the island, where there was a jetty belonging to the other resort on the island. We also felt bad about being gone for so long, as it meant that the others had to do more work. Plus we thought that perhaps Steve might be getting worried about us (which in the end, he wasn't). And so we disregarded Steve's destination-competition snorkelling motto, and swam faster towards the jetty.

Once we got there, we were absolutely exhausted and none of us wanted to walk all the way back. Luckily, a boat with divers from our resort was not too far from the jetty and picked us up along the way, enabling us to get back in no time at all.

Despite the fact that our snorkell turned into a race-to-the-jetty adventure, the three of us loved the experience. Due to the fact that we snorkelled further than usual, we were able to see a diverse range of corals and fish. Those two hours are irreplaceable and will never be forgotten by any of us (that's cheesy, but so true).

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