Malaysia's Perhentian Islands: Trouble in Paradise

Rethink Travel: Trouble in paradise
Leong Siok Hui, The Star 27 Dec 08;

Terengganu’s Perhentian Islands are “arguably the most beautiful islands in Malaysia,” so says the Lonely Planet guide. Though the islands have dodged major developments so far, they are starting to creak under the strain of burgeoning tourist arrivals.

For the past 16 years, expatriates Bill and Sally Addington have been soaking up the sun and exploring the glorious underwater world in the Perhentian Islands with their family.

Based in Kuala Lumpur, the Addingtons have holidayed in most islands in Peninsular Malaysia, but find Perhentian irresistible.

We used to like Tioman and went there quite a bit. Then a friend recommended Perhentian and we haven’t gone anywhere else since,” says Bill, 52. “Our kids are keen divers, the diving here is superb, and we like the laid-back, peaceful lifestyle.”

Sandy beaches, clear waters and great diving aside, the islands also boast forests that harbours a rich diversity of flora and fauna. This year, herpetologist Dr Lee Grismer from La Sierra University in California discovered a few new gecko species that are endemic to Perhentian.

“We have had tourists who have visited Taman Negara, come here and tell us they wished they hadn’t bothered because they see more wildlife here,” says Peter Caron who manages the Watercolours Resorts and Dive Centre in Perhentian Besar.

Caron, who joined Grismer and a couple of other researches on their expedition this year, says, “You can spot monkeys, monitor lizards, and various insects in a 30-minute stroll just behind our resort.”

Issues cropping up

Though repeat visitors to Perhentian like the Addingtons think the islands haven’t changed dramatically compared to destinations like Redang and Tioman, they are starting to notice the effects from the increasing tourist arrivals and new resorts.

A 2007 Reef Survey done by Reef Check Malaysia (RCM) found the reefs in Perhentian have the poorest health as its live coral cover is only 34% compared to Tioman, Redang and Tenggol which have 50% or more. Also the islands have a high number of algae-coated reef, indicating nutrient pollution, probably from poor sewage treatment.

At low tide, visitors can see the algae-smothered corals in front of the chalets. The algae could be a result of overflowing septic tanks from the chalets/resorts in Pulau Perhentian.

Poorly planned tourism development, ineffective sewage treatment and solid waste disposal, and illegal fishing are some of the factors affecting the health of Perhentian’s reef.

During peak season, in July and August, visitors are likely to spot a mound of overflowing black plastic bags on rickety pontoons scattered around the islands. These are waste left on the pontoons by resort operators. A rubbish barge, sub-contracted by Besut District Council, is supposed to collect the bags daily and dispose the waste on the mainland.

“After an evening storm, you’ll see black bags bobbing in the sea because they fall from the overflowing rubbish platform,” says Caron. “The amount of plastic is phenomenal, and the leachate from the rubbish pollutes the sea.”

The thing is, every resort operator already has to fork out a monthly fee for the rubbish collection.

“Sometimes when there is too much rubbish, the contractor just dumps the rubbish somewhere without bringing them back to the mainland,” claims Azman Sulaiman who runs the Flora Bay Divers. “No one is monitoring. And with the number of tourists here, we need a twice-a-day collection, and not once every couple of days.”

Stinky smells in ‘algaeland’

Originally from Kuala Lumpur, Azman has been running a dive shop in Perhentian for 14 years.

“Thank God, there are no major developments like golf courses and mega resorts here,” says Azman, 35, who also trains dive instructors. “But if you put the number of small chalet resorts together and each has 10 to 15 rooms on average, you end up having a lot of sewage.”

The proliferation of alga-coated reef on the beaches in front of the resorts hint at a problem.

“The resort next to ours is so crowded, and when you walk by, you smell the overflowing sewage,” says Sally. “Six years ago, when it’s low tide there was no smell and you don’t see the algae.”

Septic tanks overflow due to the increasing number of tourists and the limited capacity of these tanks. Some resorts apparently release their untreated sewage directly into the sea.

“There was a state initiative last year to try to get resorts together to share the cost of treating their sewage effectively. However, some resorts have 100 rooms while others have five rooms. Not all are owned; some like ourselves are on short leases,” says Caron, a former environmental consultant.

“If we don’t know whether our lease will be renewed next year, why would we invest all this money on tertiary treatment? What we need is the state government’s intervention to hook up the resorts.

“The cost can’t go to the resort operator in one go but it needs a system (like instalments or subsidies) so we can afford it.”

Where is ‘Nemo’?

To some of Perhentian’s regular divers’ chagrin, the fish stock in some of the dive sites are declining.

“No longer can you dive at Tokong Laut, the best site on the island, and see big schools of trevally this year. We heard a local fisherman made an illegal RM15,000-catch on trevally last year,” Caron says.

“Every year, we are seeing less of the big fish,” chips in Sally, 52, an avid diver. “We used to be able to see humphead wrasse and swim along with them but now they’re harder to see.”

Most divers come for the charismatic species like turtles, black-tip sharks and whale sharks, Azman explains. But with the degradation of the reef and rampant illegal fishing, divers may eventually shy away.

“I think the snorkelers are the biggest culprits — they trample on the corals, the smokers will flick cigarette stubs into the water or throw empty plastic water bottles,” says Azman.

“To please their clients, some boatmen gets into the water, grab the turtle by its carapace, pull it up to the surface to show the snorkelers,” adds Caron. “Some snorkelers actually hitch rides on the turtles and hold their fins, distressing the turtles.”

Frequently, kids will scoop up clownfish (popularly known as Nemo because of the Hollywood movie), keep them in small bottles and release them at a different spot later. But the fish, which forms a symbiotic relationship with sea anemones, will die if it’s placed in an environment with no anemones, Caron says.

“It’s all 90% education, but is anyone educating the boatmen on the do’s and don’ts?” Caron asks.

“Can the marine park introduce training schemes for boatmen to be ‘eco’ operators. They can learn how to brief the snorkelers - don’t stand on the corals, touch the turtles, and stop feeding the fish. Resorts can cooperate by using only responsible operators.”

Each visitor to Perhentian has to pay a RM5 conservation fee when they enter the marine park.

“A lot of tourists are annoyed, and I know some who refuse to pay or ask for their money back because they can’t find much information at the marine park centre,” says Caron, who signed up for the volunteer warden programme set up by the Marine Park.

However, there has since been no follow-up activities by the park.

“Where are the patrol boats? Why are some local villagers or operators fishing within the marine park?”

The Perhentian ‘loyalists’

The lure of Perhentian keep tourists like the Addingtons and Giampaolo Gepesio of Rome, Italy, coming back over and over again. Gepesio, 33, first came to the islands in 1999.

“Of course, there’s a big difference in the number of corals now, and I meet many Italian tourists in other resorts,” says Gepesio.

“Ten years ago, I was probably the only Italian here. Italians are not usually independent backpackers so their presence here means the tour companies are selling Perhentian packages in Italy. I’m a little worried for the islands in the next 10 years. This place is in my heart — the sea, the nature and the people,” Gepesio says.

If you develop the place responsibly, bring in income for the locals and take care of the environment, the islands will remain a sustainable destination, Bill says.

“A couple of years ago, a friend of ours came here to dive and then he went on to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. And he sends us an e-mail saying ‘I don’t know why I bother coming to the Barrier Reef, Perhentian is so much nicer,’ “ adds Bill.

The Addingtons usually stay for a week each time they are in Perhentian. Two days before they went to Perhentian on the most recent trip, they asked their four kids, ages ranging from15 to 21, where they preferred to go for their holiday.

“It was a choice between going to JW Marriot in Phuket with the Playstation, videos, soft hotel sheets and five-star restaurant, or coming to the basic chalets here and eating local food,” says Sally smiling. “And they go, ‘Oh, Perhentian of course.”

For now, I guess the Perhentian folks are — as Sally concludes — “doing something okay here”.

But if the authorities don’t nip the emerging problems in the bud, this sandy paradise may become yet another casualty of irresponsible tourism.

Rethink Travel is a series of monthly articles on responsible tourism in collaboration with Wild Asia, a Kuala Lumpur-based conservation group. Hopefully we can help promote sustainable practices in Asian travel destinations and challenge common perceptions and ideas on travel. Click on www.wildasia.net for resources on responsible travel. For more information, check www.wildasia.net.

Doing their part
The Star 27 Dec 08;

The Perhentian islands — Perhentian Kecil and Besar — have been a tourism destination since the 1980s and started out as a small-scale backpacker destination. Today there are about 20-odd beach chalets with several upmarket resorts and 20 to 25 dive operators.

One establishment, Watercolours Resorts and Dive Centre, started out as a dive centre in Perhentian in 1995 with an environmental slant. One of its founders, Anke Caron, even had her own turtle hatchery and used to buy eggs from the poachers at slightly above market value.

“Tourists used to donate money to help buy the eggs. But Anke closed the hatchery because the beach is eroded and now there’s a government project,” says her husband Peter Caron, a diver and former environmental consultant.

Today, Caron runs a weekly Reef Talk at the dive centre, a free one-hour presentation open to the public. He talks on coral reef ecology, why it’s important, the threats to coral reefs and what we can do about it.

Watercolours also operates as the only reef check facility on the island, under the Sustainable Island Programme with ReefCheck Malaysia. They have surveyed virtually every reef on the islands, collecting data, monitoring the health of the reefs and documenting their potential decline.

“The info is passed to marine park centre. Hopefully the authorities are listening,” says Caron.

Watercolours has also collected signatures (through petition) to encourage the state government make the illegal the sale and consumption of marine turtle eggs.

Watercolours’ dive centre has a strict no-touching policy for divers and snorkelers. Guests who have buoyancy issues and are damaging the corals are usually not advised to dive. Most of the staff have conservation experience or have a passion for marine environment.

“Essentially, the environment comes before our customer. And it has cost us some business,” Caron admits.

Some resorts like Bubu Long Beach, Flora Bay and Watercolours also initiate beach clean-ups and invite their guests to participate.

“We offer free dives to people who contribute to the clean-up at beaches like Tiga Ruang. In our last clean-up we collected 75 bags and an old TV from the beach,” says Caron. “Some tourists also take their own initiative and ask for rubbish bags so they can pick up litter.”

The more established dive centres usually keep each other in the loop about what’s happening on the islands.

“Some of us are thinking why not close a dive site for one or two seasons and let the corals regenerate,” says Azman Sulaiman of Flora Bay Divers. “I think it’s about time we have schedules for the dive sites because on some days there are too many divers in the same spot at the same time.”

Since 2004, the local government had stipulated that any new resort with more than 15 rooms has to instal the more efficient Hi-Clean sewage treatment system. Flora Bay Resort’s Mahadi Idris, a Perhentian local, has installed the Hi-Clean tank in his 30-room, Flora 2 resort.

“The tank cost RM140,000, and every three months we have to monitor the underground water,” says Mahadi, 38. “But only we are doing this in Teluk Dalam while the rest of the resorts are not.”

Bubu Long Beach Resort’s director, Ken Cheah, thinks that all the chalet and resort operators should form an association of sorts to enable dialogue with the villagers, district council, state tourism department and marine park, to discuss and solve the issues.

“All parties should do their part,” says Cheah. “We — the chalet and dive operators and the boatmen — as stakeholders must understand that our livelihood and commercial well-being are tied to a sustainable and well-preserved environment.”

What the authorities say
The Star 27 Dec 08;

Commencing operations in 2003, the Pulau Perhentian Marine Park Centre was meant to protect, preserve and manage the aquatic flora and fauna in Perhentian islands, promote marine research, create educational awareness and regulate activities to prevent damage to the environment.

“We try to focus a lot on educating schoolchildren on the importance of marine conservation,” says Mohammad Ismail, head of the Perhentian Marine Park. “We also work with NGOs like Coral Malaysia, organise beach clean-ups and special projects like Panasonic’s artificial reef projects.”

The marine park has five or six staff members who work on shifts to patrol the islands for two to three hours a day. Aside from fixing buoys to mark snorkelling areas or off-limit sites, the marine officers look out for illegal fishing activities, mostly done by local fishermen, he adds.

“Due to a lack of resources, we only patrol the islands every other day,” admits Mohammad. “As for the lacklustre park information centre, Mohammad says they’re still in the process of compiling and setting up more educational material.

“Twice a year, once in the beginning of the tourist season and then at the tail end of the season, the marine park tries to organise a meeting to encourage dialogues between marine park, operators and boatmen, but the response is usually lukewarm,” he adds.

“And when we initiated the volunteer warden programme to help our staff patrol the islands, the response was not very discouraging. Only eight people signed up.”

The bottomline is this: the Marine Park needs continuous feedback and cooperation from the operators and villagers on the islands to improve its operations, Mohammad stresses.

Waste issue

The waste collection in Perhentian Islands only runs for about nine months a year. During the monsoon season (November till January) when all the resorts are closed, waste disposal is the operators’ and villagers’ responsibility.

“Technically, our sub-contractor who picks up the waste is supposed to do it every day (February to October),” explains Besut District Council’s Assistant of Public Health Department, Shamsuddin Ibrahim. “But there are 10 rubbish pontoons on the islands, and with only one boat, the operator can’t do his rounds in one day. Hence the rubbish start to pile up especially on weekends or holidays.”

Recently, Shamsuddin and several village development and security committee chiefs (JKKK) from Perhentian and Redang did a study tour to Tioman to observe their waste management.

“One of the solutions we need is to request for a bigger budget from the state government to provide more boats to ensure frequent waste collection on a daily basis,” says Shamsuddin. “We had a meeting with Terengganu’s State Economic Planning Unit (UPEN) in November and will submit the proposal for a budget increase for waste management.

As for the public beaches, the council office will respond if somebody calls up to inform them of litter problems.

“At the end of the day, the operators should take the initiative to tell us if there’s any problem and to give suggestions,” says Shamsuddin.

“Even if they can’t physically come to our office, they can send their request via fax or give us a call.”

What the experts say
The Star 27 Dec 08;

Though Perhentian Islands lack big resorts, airstrips and massive jetties, Reef Check Malaysia’s general manager, Julian Hyde, thinks “it is the most developed of the islands due to the number of small resorts that have sprung up in the past few years.”

“When I first visited Perhentian in 2000, there was only one resort on Pasir Panjang. Now it is end-to-end resorts, dive centres and restaurants, etc,” says Hyde.

A non-profit organisation founded in 1996, Reef Check is an international coral reef monitoring programme involving volunteer recreational divers and marine scientists. RC Malaysia was set up in 2007. This year, RCM collaborated with Sime Plantations and Wild Asia to run the Sustainable Island Programme (SIP), which runs reef checks and workshops to educate tourism operators on Tioman and Perhentian Islands.

“There is no adequate control of development, so there has been lots of physical damage from the transportation of building materials and siltation of the reefs from land clearing,” adds Hyde.

“There are huge numbers of people visiting now, and there is NO regulation over their activities; I suspect divers and snorkelers have been responsible for a lot of physical damage to the reefs.”

Smaller resorts rely on septic tanks that easily overflow and pollute the waters.

“The septic tank has to be built well, has the right capacity, and is well maintained and cleaned out regularly,” adds Hyde. “I don’t think this is happening in Perhentian. The state government should also study the feasibility of constructing centralised sewage treatment plants.”

Dr Mark Hampton of University of Kent in the UK and Dr Amran Hamzah of University Teknologi Malaysia have been doing research on island tourism, including on Perhentian.

“Perhentian, at the moment, is a good example of locally-led tourism development in small islands. Backpacker lodging, such as chalets or small beach restaurants, are usually locally owned and operated so they have strong economic linkages to the local economy,” says Hampton via an e-mail interview.

“And small-scale tourism such as backpacker chalets generally have less negative environmental impacts than larger developments, requiring less land, less building materials, less energy supplies, less water, etc, and usually generate less sewage and garbage.”

Long-term studies of the islands, including Perhentian, since the 1990s show that small-scale tourism is generally far more sustainable than large-scale, up-market type developments, Hampton writes.