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)

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Successful marine conservation by coral biscuit culture

A coral biscuit with new coral tissue
spreading across the cement block.

We have been diving on the ribbon reef coral nursery doing essiential maintenance. TRACC has just moved back to Pom Pom island after a one year absence and while there were no volunteers, the nursery was disturbed by the fish. The staff we retained for the SGP/GEF project were busy building step and bottle reefs on land but with no diving gear they could not do the underwater work.

The corals fragments were planted last year in wet cement to create coral biscuits. The biscuit process takes place on land, wet cement is placed in small plastic pots and finger sized pieces of coral are stuck in the cement. The pot and coral is placed underwater where the cement sets, after 24h the plastic pots are removed and the finished biscuits are placed in the nursery to grow. Unfortunately the biscuits are not heavy enough to stop them being moved by fish. The fish are attracted to the crabs and worms that hide under the biscuits, Rockmover wrasse are theworst culprits. These are really crafty fish, you can see them at work on most of the rubble areas of the island. They appear to work in pairs and take it in turns to pick up a piece of loose coral. One fish lifts the coral and moves it while the other grabs the crab or other tasty morsel which was hidden underneath. Pretty clever fish, they take it in turns so each fish gets a share of the food.

Two very similar coral species competing for space
on the same block.  The new coral tissue has
spread from the original massive coral across the block.

Anyway, the rockmover wrasse and the triggerfish move the coral biscuits in the nursery and they drop blocks on top of other corals and even turn the blocks over. Our job as volunteer divers is to sort out the mess of blocks and turn the coral biscuits back the right way. Fortunately, coral is pretty resilient, provided the coral was not buried in sand, they continue to survive even upside down. The coral doesn't get much light when upside down so growth is really slow. Our job at TRACC is to promote reef growth for marine conservation so we spent several days this week turning all the corals back over so they are the right way up.and can grow quickly.

The growth of the biscuits which remained the right way up, has been amazing and is a great example of sucessful reef regeration. If you look at the pictures you can see the coral tissue spreaing across the blocks, the corals in this post are all massive corals which are supposed to grow really slowly. (i will write another article about the branching corals) The original fragment can be seen in the middle of the block and then the coral tissue has spread across the biscuit and in some cases gone over the edges and down the sides. The coral obviousy uses the free space on the biscuit and spreads as rapidly as possible.

It has been a great experience working on marine conservation with TRACC and I would like to thank my instructor and all my gap year and volunteer buddies. It has been a blast, and i hope to come back to see my corals when they have been moved out of the nursery and onto the ribbon reefs and Step reefs.

You may also want to read about our coral planting for world ocean day or our   Coral Planting Exhibition 31 May 2015
Growth of the branching corals in the coral nursery. 
Making coral biscuits 
Making bottle reefs 
 Step reefs
Crate reefs
Shark cave reefs
Igloo reefs construction  -- Underwater assembly  -- Fishlife

More blogs about TRACC marine conservation centre

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
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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

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

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