Hilary Chiew The Star 7 Apr 09
She grew up collecting dolphin memorabilia and that fascination has since become her vocation.
FRESH from obtaining her doctorate degree in the last quarter of 2008, Dr Louisa Ponnampalam was greeted by a string of reports in the newspapers on dead dolphins washed ashore in Penang.
While the reports were helpful for this young dolphin scientist on a quest to document the marine mammal species and their distribution in Malaysian waters, she was nevertheless disturbed by the actions that followed – burying the carcasses and excavating the skeletal remains later.
“There is so much that can be learnt from a dead specimen, more so than one that’s alive. All too often, we don’t know what to do except to just bury it. The significance of these events are not appreciated,” she says.
For someone who has been trained to collect tissue, skin and blubber samples and carry out necropsy on dead marine mammals, Louisa sees the local practice as a waste of invaluable information that could be gathered on the cetacean.
Besides sightings in the wild that offer the opportunity to collect skin and flesh samples from live animals, carcasses are the best to work with for marine biologists. They also offer the rare chance of examining stomach contents to shed light on the animal’s diet. Such information is vital for conservation plans.
The trend has strengthened Louisa’s resolve to set up a marine mammal research and conservation centre under the Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences in Universiti Malaya to document such incidents – the first and vital step to build a database on these little-known creatures.
“Through the centre, I hope to create awareness on the importance of keeping a good record of all strandings and dead specimens on our shores,” she adds.
She proposes an alert system so that members of the public, like thosewho had sent pictures of the dead dolphins to newspapers, can approach the centre directly.
The institute has written to the Turtle and Marine Ecosystem Centre in Terengganu, the agency under Fisheries Department that is in charge of matters related to turtles and marine mammals, indicating its willingness to collaborate in the development of an alert and stranding network for Peninsular Malaysia.
Louisa, a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences where she co-ordinates a dugong research programme, is no stranger to marine mammal alerts and strandings. As a marine science undergraduate at the University of Hawaii, she was a member of the turtle stranding team that responded to calls of injured, stranded and dead turtles.
The 26-year-old marine biologist has an impressive field experience record and is raring to go. Last October, together with a Malaysian Nature Society conservation officer, she drove through the night to Pekan, Pahang, to grab a skin sample from a beached Bryde’s whale.
“The sample will be sent overseas for DNA examination but at the moment it is sitting in my fridge at home,” she says. ”
Her interest in the marine world started when her family visited Terengganu beaches during school holidays. She used to keep a scrapbook of everything and anything to do with the sea. In her early teens, she developed the idea of “working within that watery realm” when her mother showed her a photo of a diver hovering over a huge patch of coral.
“The caption identified the diver as a marine biologist. At that time, I had no idea what that meant but from that day on, I set my mind to be a marine biologist when I grew up.
“As for dolphins, it came naturally. Everyone loves them and, as a child, I was attracted to the adorable creatures, too. I went through a phase of dolphin craze when I collected all sorts of dolphin memorabilia, from bedsheets to trinkets and figurines.”
Her fascination with the creature has grown to studying its biology and ecology, and to ensure that it does not disappear in this age of rapid species extinction. In her final year as a marine science student at the university in Hilo, Hawaii, she interned as a dolphin researcher onboard the Hokkaido University research vessel Oshoro-maru. The three-week stint provided her with the invaluable experience of scientific survey of deep water cetacean as the vessel sailed across the North Pacific Ocean from the Aleutian Island in Alaska to Hawaii.
There was no stopping Louisa in her quest to learn more about dolphins. Soon after she left Hawaii at the end of 2003, embarked on a doctoral degree, studying spinner dolphins off Muscat, Oman.
For the next two years from July 2004, Louisa spent months at sea collecting data. Long boat surveys of between seven and nine hours a day in a small inflatable were tough but she relished every moment of it as she encountered possibly all the marine mammals in the world.
Seeing the dearth of information on marine mammals in Malaysia, she then returned to this country. “There’s so much work that needs to be done here and there isn’t anyone really doing it yet, so why would I go elsewhere?”
* Louisa Ponnampalam welcomes information on sightings and stranded marine mammals. She can be reached at louisa@um.edu.my.
