Sipadan corals recover from 2006 barge incident

Daily Express 31 Jan 08;

Kota Kinabalu: The recovery process of the damaged coral reef at Pulau Sipadan following the 2006 barge incident is now almost complete, according to Sabah Parks.

Its Deputy Director Dr Jamili Nais said their concern is now on the fate of coral reefs in the proposed Tun Mustapha Marine Park site in Kudat.

"The proposal to gazette the Tun Mustapha Marine Park in Kudat is worrying us because most of the coral reef areas there are devastated. However, it is hard to say what percentage because they are very localised," he told Daily Express at the Semporna Islands Darwin Project (SIDP) Symposium at Magellan Sutera Hotel, Thursday.

These damages were more due to the human impact, including rampant fish bombings in the area, he said.

"The human impact on coral reefs is more worrying because its negative outcome is more obvious and much faster than natural impacts like global warming.

"Based on my own analysis, the coral reefs in Sabah waters are not that badly affected by the human and natural impacts. But the threat is there, particularly those around the islands in Tunku Abdul Rahman Park which are the closest to land affected by sediment effluents coming from the rivers," he said.

He said tourism activities going on at the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park islands including Pulau Manukan, Pulau Sapi do not give much problems to the coral reefs because they (activities) are controlled and limited to only certain areas.

Dr Jamili said based on their records, the most badly affected coral reefs in Sabah are those off Semporna which had been gazetted as the Tun Sakaran Marine Park.

This was before the Tun Sakaran Marine Park in Semporna was gazetted.

The condition was very bad then due to rampant fish bombing. But now there is improvement with continuous monitoring by Sabah Parks rangers, he said.

He said most of the damaged coral reefs in Sabah recovered positively through the natural process. "The damage to our coral reefs are caused mostly by sedimentation, fish bombing activities as well as fishing trawlers," he said.

But after the affected areas were gazetted into a marine park, all these managed to be controlled and reduced with the presence of enforcement authorities.

To another question, he said, the impact of global warming as well as other major seasonal global phenomenon on the coral reefs and islands in Sabah are still very minimal.

Although there has been no apparent impact related to global warming on our coral reefs as well as erosion on the island beaches, Dr Jamili said there had been minor incidences of coral bleaching recorded which resulted in the death of corals.

He explained that corals are sensitive to changes in temperature. When the surface temperature rises there will be coral bleaching, which will result in the corals turning white due to losing its pigmentation. And then the coral will die, patch by patch.

"It happened in Sabah during the El-Nino period. But this is a seasonal global occurrence which occurs in a cycle, particularly during a drought when there is a rise in surface temperature," he said.

He said Sabah since over 30 years ago has "escaped" great impacts of the global cycle.

"Our coral reefs seem to have been spared from the global cycle of major coral reef death due to this global phenomena which has been affecting the coral reefs in other places including Hawaii, Maldives, Great Barrier Reef and so on," he said.

Sabah Parks manages four marine parks, namely Tunku Abdul Rahman Park, Pulau Tiga Park, Tun Sakaran Marine Park and Turtle Islands Park.

Coral reef monitoring is more focused at Manukan and Sapi Islands as well as a bit in Pulau Tiga and in Tun Sakaran Marine Park islands.

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