SIP Survey Trip #1: Perhentian May 8-10, 2009

[shafi]

As dawn breaks on May 8th, a boat carries a team of EcoDivers (Julian, Bijan, Irene) and Research Assistants (Eileen, Suli) to Perhentian Watercolours... (Okay, it wasn't exactly dawn, but it was EARLY hours of the day...)



In the meantime, myself together with a reporter, photographer and research assistant just landed at Kota Bahru airport and were racing to get to the Kuala Besut jetty...

That day was the first day of the first survey trip under the Sustainable Island Programme for 2009.

[shafi]

Good weather and calm waters greet us... We were all so looking forward to the survey weekend.



The moment I arrived, the survey team (led by Julian) were all prepped up and ready to go... So I got into my wetsuit as fast as I could and off we went to survey D Lagoon.

D' Lagoon, May 8th.
Time in: 11:52am
Time out: 12:59pm (BT: 67 mins)
Max depth: 7.6m
Average depth: 6.4m
Water temperature: Warm at 31 degrees C 
Visibility: 10-12m.

5 of us for this survey: I partnered with Richard from Sunlight Dive Centre to do Fish; though it was more interesting for the guys doing Inverts (who were Irene and Bijan). Julian laid the line and came back to do Substrate. It was bliss - the survey went smoothly.

Saw 2 scribbled filefish, some pomfrets, 2 bumphead parrotfish, COTs and a baby Titan trigger. Hard Coral (HC) coverage was good (<50%) and Nutrient Indicator Algae (NIA) showed 3%.

D'Lagoon is still in good condition. However, this site needs close monitoring as it is a heavily used site for a lot of snorkellers and divers of different levels...

 

(sorry, wish had more pictures, but laptop stolen a few days ago)

[shafi]

A quick survey interval of 1:30hrs and no lunch... but gobbled down a roll of pancake with chocolate sauce (Thanks Pete!)



Water was 'milky' when we got to Sea Bell. Siltation and suspended solids...

Sea Bell, May 8th (M)
Time in: 14:30pm
Time out: 15:40pm (BT: 70 mins)
Max depth: 11m
Average depth: 8.5m
Water temperature: Warm at 31 degrees C 
Visibility: 8-10m.

Team members switched tasks a little - Irene & Bijan did Fish; Shafi & Richard did Inverts, Julian stuck with Substrate.

Results again showed good HC and Rock (RC) coverage and lets hope these figures improve later on... We do not have enough results from previous surveys for Sea Bell (deep) to do a better comparative analysis.

Amongst others, there were shrimp razorfish, fusiliers, blue-spotted fanray, blotched porcupinefish, mapped puffer, scribbled filefish, yellow boxfish and yellow snappers. Was inverted most of the time along the 100m transect, so can't remember seeing much of anything else.
 

[shafi]

Bijan went to sleep that night without any dinner... Totally flat out - Suli went to wake him up for dinner but that didn't work.. We were so worried he'd be hungry, we brought a plate of pasta and pizza to the room. 

Lo and behold, Bijan did wake up in the middle of the night and had a bit of the spaghetti before returning to his peaceful slumber.

Tanjung Besi, May 9th
Time in: 10:05pm
Time out: 11:16pm (BT: 71 mins)
Max depth: 9.1m
Average depth: 5.4m
Water temperature: Warm at 31 degrees C
Visibility: 12-15m.

Lovely weather once again! This site (Sime Darby's adopted reef) is beautiful with lots of fish activity. I did Fish with Irene, Bijan and Julian did Invert and Richard did Substrate with Peter 

Saw lots of snappers but they didn't come into our transect belt. COTS, angelfish and fusiliers, giant morrays, and titan triggers were happily minding their own.. Lots of parrotfish which could may have been on steroids (they were nice and big) 
Irene and I counted 10 bumpheads and i saw a black-tip shark

Results from Tanjung Besi are showing that the reefs are definitely improving. Live hard coral coverage have increased from 30% in 2007 to 40% in 2008 and 52% in 2009.

So the site is recovering well.. not all is doom and gloom here in Perhentian, yay!

 

[40bar]

fantastic dive bro...really miss perhentian since 2007

[shafi]

We did not have to rush after that dive at Tanjung Besi... Had a leisurely surface interval of 2:42hrs before we headed out to Batu Nesan...

In the meantime, the reporter, photographer and research assistants went around Long Beach at Perhentian Kecil to do a little sniffing around and do a quick top-side visual assessment on the environmental front...

Situation seems to be getting worse since i was last there - the stink from stagnant algae-polluted streams was right where people were chilling out, eating and sun-bathing... Ppeee-yeewww! 







 

Do you think all those complaints about ear infections we've been hearing a lot recently and a few cases of pink eye have got anything to do with this?   

[shafi]

And it flows right out to the sea...



Question: Would this have anything to do with the proliferation of coral-smothering algae (branching filamentous ones, or those that look like bouquets of blossoming swirlies or pencil-shavings) we see when snorkeling to watch the cute juvenile black-tips in front of Coral View?

Anyway, moving on...

[shafi]

We surveyed Batu Nesan that same afternoon as our friends were checking out the menu at Long Beach...

Shark on grill, anybody?



Batu Nesan, May 9th
Time in: 2:00pm
Time out: 3:20pm (BT: 80 mins)   
Max depth: 6.7m
Average depth: 4.8m
Water temperature: Warm at 31 degrees C
Visibility: 10-12m

We spent 80 minutes underwater this time - had to replace some of the missing stakes (Richard and Julian had some mean strength!) and also because when we were half-way through the survey, Peter called us back to say that we had actually started out at mid-point. He had found another stake 50m back... so we surveyed the remaining 50m the other way... no biggie. We just had to make sure we keyed in the data in the right columns, which we did 

It was a real bore for the Fish guys (i.e. Me and Irene). The Invert fellas had it super tough - hundreds of giant clams, sea urchins and sea cucumbers to count!

Substrate-wise isn't too promising: Low hard coral cover (35%), high NIA at 15% and lots of rubble (RB)... 
 
Would those polluted streams of green goo have much to contribute to the bad results seen here?

 

[shafi]

With that, we concluded our 4 surveys...

Still with boundless energy - we headed out to do a beach clean-up at Teluk Kekek... 



While the majority of the rubbish were recyclable stuff like plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and glass bottles - the rest were plain disgusting - Condoms (which they tried to get rid of in a small campfire but it didn't quite work), used diapers, sanitary pads... 

What happens is the rubbish piles up on the pontoons and the slightest of waves will cause it to topple over - these get swept back towards the shores and get stuck amongst the roots of trees during high tide... So some of us were going all commando (no no, we had our knickers on)... crawling deep and as far as we could under low-hanging branches and over roots to get as many rubbish out.

Worse still, the plastic bags get buried in the sand and they remain there. They break up into little tiny pieces and get eaten by fish and turtles that mistaken them for food...

What we managed to pull out in about 1.5 hours...


Loading it all up...

[shafi]

Some fast facts about Plastics.

1. 500 billion – 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year.

2. Only 1-3% are recycled.

3. UNEP estimates that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic, and plastic bags account for nearly 70% of debris washed up on coastlines.

4. Plastic bags take 20 – 1,000 years to breakdown, but they don’t decompose. They photo-degrade into smaller and more toxic petro-polymers, contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web.

5. Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.

6. Plastic BOTTLES NEVER BREAK DOWN even if they do, it would take a million years (Alam Flora, 2009)

[shafi]

On Sunday, May 10th, the day we were all going to leave Perhentian, we did a dive at Sugar Wreck and found 53 species of fish, some of which were juveniles. So the wreck is playing its role as a reef and a great breeding ground for a variety of marine life.

Visibility was a challenge, but that didn't stop us from getting up close and personal with its inhabitants 



And the list is as follows (many thanks to Julian, Anke and Pete for identifying them)...

Longfin banner fish
Blue-ringed angelfish
Semicircle angelfish
Longfin spadefish
Golden rabbitfish
Java rabbitfish
Chocolate grouper
Bluelined grouper
Longfin grouper
Scissortail sergeant
Banded sergeant
Indo-pacific sergeant
Chinese demoiselle
Alexander’s damsel (?)
Bigeye snapper (incl juvenile)
Blackspot snapper (large adults)
Whitecheek monocle bream
Fan bellied filefish
Orange spotted trevally
Bigeye trevally
Yellowstripe scad
Brown banded bamboo shark
Yellowtail barracuda (juvenile)
Pickhandle barracuda
Blue & yellow fusilier
Scissortail fusilier
Robust fusilier
Goldspotted sweetlips
Bluebarred parrotfish
Redbreasted wrasse
Blackspot tuskrfish
Blackeye thicklip
Crescent wrasse
Bluestreak cleaner wrasse
Star puffer
Map puffer
Porcupinefish
Baloonfish
Catfish
Redcoat squirrelfish
Cardinalfish (var sp.?)
Shrimp gobies
Cleartail lionfish
Raggy scorpionfish
Rhino boxfish
Yellow boxfish
Freckled goatfish (juveniles)
Vanicolo sweeper
Cobia (kingfish)
Blue spotted ribbon tail ray
Blue spotted stingray
White eyed moray eel
Squid

[Ketam]

Great report bro,

Well done and tabik spring to you and gang for the clean up efforts. Any plans pls inform Ketam..... always up for sand, sea and sweat. hehehehe

Small steps for the bigger picture.....

Bravo!!!!

[shafi]

Some bits of the wreck... (my camera battery went dead after a few minutes)... and I am no pro. Forgot how to change settings and all the moment the camera was in its housing, hahaha (sorry Ipin!!)



Anke removing a net that got caught...  


Lots of fish - the wreck is teeming with marine life!  


Lots of yellow snappers


... and juvenile yellowtail barracuda

[shafi]

Great report bro,

Well done and tabik spring to you and gang for the clean up efforts. Any plans pls inform Ketam..... always up for sand, sea and sweat. hehehehe

Small steps for the bigger picture.....

Bravo!!!!

Thank you thank you 

Only reporting the good efforts and hope that everyone else can help out in whatever way they can...

A first step would be to REDUCE RUBBISH!     Then we wont have to pick them up so much 

[shafi]

Well fellas, that was it for the short weekend...

I'd like to thank the following who have made the survey trip such a memorable and significant start to the SIP 2009:-

Peter and Anke: for their commitment and time in ensuring that everything ran smoothly - from boats to schedules to room bookings, from leading the survey dives and clean-up... and passionately fighting for the protection of our beloved island. SIP for Perhentian wouldn't have been possible without you guys.

Julian: for leading and being an integral team player (and keying in all the data after every survey. Thank Goodness its in your laptop and not mine!!)... thanks heaps for making time for us despite your hectic traveling schedules!

EcoDivers: Bijan, Irene and Richard (from Sunlight) - It was bliss surveying with such seasoned divers who are all serious about carrying out the surveys well and proper.

Research Assistants: Ying, Eileen and Su Li - keeping all 3 pairs of your eyes open and snapping away photos of what's happening top-side while we were all underwater.. Also for laboring over the water monitoring (Thanks Peter for taking them out for this one!)...

The Edge: for covering the SIP and doing justice to the issues highlighted. May your corporate readership provide us with more $$$ to take the SIP further to other islands... and with more support for awareness training and community outreach for better engagement with local communities and operators in protecting the environment in which the businesses depend on.