Volunteers teach tourists ways to enjoy the marine realm without destroying it.
Natalie Heng The Star 7 Jun 11;
There is nothing more mesmerising than swimming amongst coral reefs, underwater metropolises of curiously shaped and brightly coloured creatures. Living towers of wildly shaped structures resembling wrinkled brains, cabbages, table tops and wire strands form underwater cities for the myriad of fascinating marine organisms snorkellers love to watch.
Unfortunately, many snorkellers have no idea how long it takes for coral reefs to grow, or the fact that these delicate habitats which have formed over thousands of years are slowly dying as our oceans acidify due to climate change. Pollution, coastal development and over-fishing pose constant threats to reef ecosystems all over the world.
It was reported last year that at least 19% of the world’s coral reefs are already gone. So, the last thing this ecosystem needs is snorkellers trampling all over.
That’s what inspired four marine enthusiasts from the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) to start the Marine Friendly Snorkelling Programme in 2003.
“We wanted to teach members how to appreciate what they see underwater,” says Leong Hon Yuen, a volunteer and committee member of the MNS Selangor branch marine group.
The idea is that if snorkellers understand the underwater environment better, not just how fragile it is but also the closely connected and fascinating features and dynamics of its inhabitants, they will be motivated to take better care of it.
The course which is entirely run by volunteers, occurs several times a year on islands such as Tioman in Pahang as well as Perhentian and Redang in Terengganu.
Though the snorkelling course itself is free, participants pay for the cost of the trips, which range from RM300 to RM600 depending on the location and number of nights stayed, to cover accommodation, jungle trekking and other such activities.
“It’s also open to non-MNS members, we just add in the membership price which is RM70 a year so they get automatic membership,” says another volunteer, Kanagalingam Kulasingam.
The snorkelling programme itself covers basic responsible snorkelling etiquette such as how to use a snorkel, how to communicate with your snorkelling buddies by hand signals and how to avoid damaging corals.
More importantly, it teaches snorkellers how to appreciate what they’re seeing underwater.
“For many first-time snorkellers there’s just so much to see, but after a while one fish looks like any other fish, and your interest may start to wane,” says Leong. “We teach people things to look out for. There are all kinds of special relationships going on underwater.”
An example of one such relationship is that shared between the goby fish and prawns. Snorkelling becomes 10 times more fascinating when you know that the little goby hovering above the seabed is actually standing guard for the prawn tucked inside its sand burrow. When the goby flicks its tail, this a sign to its prawn partner, which has poor eyesight, that the coast is clear.
“Unlike a lot of tourists who just swim around and don’t really see anything because they don’t know what they are looking at or can look out for, if you hover in one spot, you might see 10 or 20 fascinating things,” says Leong.
The snorkelling programme integrates informative stuff about the reef habitat such as how corals are formed and the essential role they play in marine ecosystems, as well as the 10 most common marine life snorkellers are likely to see.
“After three days (trips often last for three to four days) we do an underwater treasure hunt which actually tests their underwater snorkelling and marine life identification skills ... its a whole lot of fun.
“We also do a beach clean-up to show them what ends up under the sea and how it affects marine life. Turtles for example, suffocate and die when they mistake plastic bags for jellyfish which they eat. The amount of trash that comes out of the sea is amazing, it comes from rivers, the beach, the sea and tourists.”
One component of the course deals with awareness issues, focusing on the impact that tourism activities might have on reefs.
Kanagalingam points to direct and indirect impacts: “A direct impact would be when people get tired of swimming, they stand on corals. Unfortunately, corals are very fragile and it might take one whole year just to grow 10 inches (25cm). So if you break off a 10 inch-piece, that’s one year’s worth of growth gone just like that. A six feet (2m) wide table coral would have taken over 10 years to get to that size.”
Indirect impacts include fish feeding – fried chicken, prawn crackers and stale bread are popularly thrown into the water so that swarms of colourful fish congregate around the snorkellers.
“Fish feed on very specific diets, for example algae found on corals, sponges and other fish. It’s all part of an intricately balanced ecosystem. With regular fish feeding, fish behaviour starts to change. They tend to swarm around people and nibble at you because they have learned to associate humans with food. People think the fish are really friendly when they are not, and are actually more aggressive,” says Kanagalingam.
Andrew Sebastian, MNS head of communications points out that providing fish with this alien diet draws them away from the essential roles they play in the ecosystem. For example, many fish feed on algae which grow on corals. If they are eating bits of bread instead, algae populations can get out of hand and smother corals.
“We subscribe to the principles of eco-tourism, which is observing something in its natural space without tampering with it,” says Sebastian.
Over the years some progress has been made. For example, Sebastian says the Department of Marine Park Malaysia introduced a policy disallowing the use of fins in marine parks a few years ago. This was meant to help protect the corals from being damaged – corals can be quite sharp, so without fins, people are less inclined to step on them.
Sebastian believes all tourists have an important role to play because they create demand. Aside from educating ourselves about marine life, getting to know responsible snorkelling etiquette and refraining from throwing rubbish in the sea, tourists and holiday makers can do more – “Give business to resorts who are aware and want to make a difference,” says Sebastian.
Far-sighted resorts and tour operators will recognise that the coral reefs at their doorstep are assets central to the attractiveness of their establishment; who wants to stay at a resort with a skeletal mass of broken corals?
When choosing green resorts, Sebastian recommends asking some basic questions, such as: Do they treat their effluent before it goes out to sea? Do they dispose of rubbish responsibly? Do they educate their guests and staff on how to protect the reefs?
Meanwhile, the MNS marine group is working with the British Sub Aqua Club to develop a professional certification scheme for local snorkelling guides aimed at enabling them to teach responsible snorkelling etiquette and marine knowledge to tourists.
“Very often the guides are locals and don’t get formal training. If a programme trains them on what to show and talk about when they take people snorkelling, they will be able to make the experience richer for tourists,” says Kanagalingam.
MNS has held only one snorkelling guide training session to date, in 2006 in Tioman, as sponsors are hard to come by. So, getting a certification scheme up and running will provide resorts and tour operators an incentive to sponsor their own guides for the course, something which they can then market to eco-aware tourists.
For upcoming Marine Friendly Snorkelling Programme trips, go to mnsmarine.blogspot.com.
Measuring healthy reefs
Volunteers take a dive to keep an eye on our marine wonderland.
Natalie Heng The Star 7 Jun 11;
IT is a clear night out on a beach in Pulau Tioman, Pahang. The stars are out and a party is underway – and it’s filled with volunteers from audit firm KPMG celebrating their completion of a three-day intensive EcoDiver course and Reef Check survey.
Yes, coral reefs around the world are dying but the group of diving enthusiasts from KPMG are not sitting around lamenting – they are doing something about it. Trained as EcoDivers, they are capable of conducting underwater surveys to assess the health of corals reefs.
They adopted the reef off Pulau Soyak, an island within the Tioman Archipelago, five years ago and send about six divers out every year. However, this year, new recruits bumped the number up to 12 divers, so they could adopt Pulau Renggis reef onto the survey list as well.
Grace Loh, 42, an advisory department manager at KPMG, has been coming to Tioman since the surveys started in 2007.
“I’d learned how to dive with my husband the year before, so I thought it would be nice to join the CSR project when it came up,” she said. When she first started diving, all Loh saw was fish. “Lots of colour, lots of shapes and lots of fishes. The novelty wears off quite quickly. But taking the EcoDiver course is educational … realising that something you’ve spotted is actually incredibly rare becomes a real buzz!”
One detects a real sense of pride about what KPMG is doing with Reef Check Malaysia in her voice. This is the fifth year the company is working with the non-profit that endeavours to protect Malaysia’s endangered coral reefs.
Through corporate sponsorships, Reef Check has built up an army of volunteers to conduct regular surveys of reefs all over the country. General manager Julian Hyde says to date, some 300 divers have gained EcoDiver certification. Many volunteers are supplied through sponsorship programmes from companies as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects. The corporates sponsor up to 70% of the RM750 EcoDiver course for each employee (who has to have an Open Water Diver certificate) and organise a team of people to go on yearly Reef Check survey expeditions on “adopted” reefs.
Reef scrutiny
In the recent survey of Tioman reefs, scuba divers from KPMG, deployed in twos, swam along transect lines laid out under water. The first pair noted down substrate cover such as hard coral, soft coral, nutrient indicator algae, rock, sand or recently killed coral. The second pair counted the number of indicator invertebrates (such as crown of thorn starfish and sea cucumbers) and signs of impact, whilst the third pair arguably had the most challenging task – counting the number of indicator fishes as they swam around.
Reef Check was started in 1996 by marine ecologist Dr Gregor Hodgson and arrived in Malaysia in 2001. It grew out of an idea to create a global army of volunteers trained in the same set of data collection methods to conduct reef surveys. Up until the organisation’s first global survey of coral reef health in 1997, there had never been a concerted effort, just pockets of research using individual methods of data collection. The results of that survey were shocking scientific confirmation that coral reefs were undergoing alarming levels of decimation due to over-fishing, illegal fishing and pollution.
Each of Reek Check’s national coordinating bodies have since been monitoring the impacts that different enforcement measures make, so we can build up a picture of how best to protect our reefs. Most people in Malaysia will be happy to know that our reefs are faring pretty well. Data collected by Reef Check Malaysia for example indicates that most of the reefs gazetted as Marine Parks have remained in relatively stable conditions since gazettement.
If you dreamed of being a marine biologist as a kid but got told that being a lawyer would be more practical, this is your chance to live the dream. All you need to do is be a qualified diver. Reef Check’s methods of data collection were designed by scientists specifically for use by non-scientists. You can enrol for a three-day course to get certification as an EcoDiver, after which you can participate in Reef Check surveys anywhere in the world. The certification will equip you with the ability to gather data on 16 global and eight regional indicator organisms, which have been selected as specific measures of human impacts on coral reefs based on their economic and ecological value, and sensitivity to human impacts.
Reef Check Malaysia’s ultimate role is getting more people trained, so more surveys get done, so we have a better picture of the state of our reefs. The data is eventually turned into a report which is shared with the Department of Marine Parks Malaysia. The ultimate goal is to build a relationship with academia and the department, to the point where they can coordinate their data collection, academic research and enforcement efforts to do something about reefs that are not faring well.
Start them young
After five years of partnership with Reef Check, one can see a sense of ownership growing around the project among the KPMG staff. You can tell some of the veteran volunteers take what they’re doing really seriously.
In 2009, Lim Jit Cheng, an executive director in the restructuring and advisory department, came on board and took charge of the EcoDiver CSR project. He also spearheaded an initiative to bring students of SK Taman Tun Dr Ismail 2 in Kuala Lumpur, a school KPMG does monthly recycling projects with, onboard. So during the recent trip to Tioman, 25 excitable Year Five kids camped out on the grass lawn in front of the Tioman Marine Park Centre.
Hyde had wanted to bring an urban school to the island to learn about coral reefs for a while, as Reef Check’s Rainforest To Reef school programme had previously involved schools from the islands and nearby mainland. Lim pointed out that both programmes sponsored by KPMG (the EcoDivers and the schoolkids’ project) are conservation related; one is data collection which can be used for research on our reefs, the other is about investing in the future through educating children. In the Rainforest to Reef camp, the children learnt about four major ecosystems – rainforest, mangroves, reefs and seagrasses – and why they are important and worth protecting.
On Day two of the camp, up the stairs of the Tioman Marine Park Centre just past the interactive info-kiosks and life-size replicas of turtles and sharks, this year’s batch of students huddled in silence. In the darkened air-conditioned auditorium, marine parks officer Mohd Azizol pointed at images of tropical fishes and nudibranches, slugs with colourful elaborate fan-like appendages, which flicker on the projector screen.
“What you’re looking at here are some of the rarest things on earth,” he said. “You can find them on the Discovery channel and on programmes like National Geographic, but you know what kids? Because you live in this special country called Malaysia, all you need to do to see them is hop on the train, get on a boat and they’re right there. Tourists come hundreds of miles just to see them, bringing in billions of ringgit for the tourism industry, so we should look after our assets.”
He explained what “eco-tourism” meant, adding that sustainable management of reefs coupled with responsible tourism practices can act as a buffer and alternative income source for locals who might otherwise seek income through destructive practices such as dynamite fishing.
The session was educational and the kids sat quietly through it all, open-mouthed and listening attentively.
When the time came for everyone to don orange life jackets and jump in the water, chances are all the orange shapes bobbing up and down in close proximity to their teachers and KPMG minders knew what they were looking at. Hopefully, these kids will grow up appreciative and mindful of, the underwater realm.
For more on being an EcoDiver, go to reefcheck.org.my.
Preserving Pulau Perhentian
Allan Koay The Star 7 Jun 11;
Measures to clean up Pulau Perhentian and protect its environment are off to a slow but good start.
FOR a place like Terengganu’s world-famous Pulau Perhentian, a healthy environment is everything. More so for the tourism business which relies on the reputation of the island and its coral reefs as the pristine, perfect holiday getaway.
If a few years ago Perhentian was facing the danger of pollution and poor waste management, which in turn affected the island’s tropical-wonderland image and the health of its coral reefs, now things are finally looking up. Resort operators on the island are banding together under the umbrella of the Perhentian Resort Operators Association which was formed in 2009, and finding ways of going green to keep the island “healthy”.
In the past, resort operators dumped all their rubbish onto pontoons floating off the island, to be later collected by boats and sent to the mainland. When the sea got rough, rubbish spilt into the water.
Now, a boat comes to the island daily to collect the waste from every resort. It would sound its siren and everyone would get ready their rubbish bags to be transported to the mainland by the boat.
Also, beach and reef clean-ups are organised every now and then by resort operators, involving visitors who are rewarded with free stays and dives in return for their voluntary clean-up work.
Some resorts have also adopted greener waste management systems. One of them, Tuna Bay Resort, has just installed the Bio-Robic septic tank to treat sewage, which remains a big problem for the island. Using an anaerobic and oxidation filtration technology, the system produces treated wastewater that is low in ammonia nitrogen and can be used for watering plants and washing.
“This system works around the clock,” said Lee Khing Kit, a co-owner of Tuna Bay. “When the water comes out of the tank, it meets standards, which means it can be discharged into the sea. It won’t affect the environment. You can also let it go into the ground.”
The system was operational only last year and the tank alone cost more than RM30,000, not including the logistics costs and installation fees. But Lee feels it is money well-spent. “First of all, we have to think of the environment. If we discharge (untreated) wastewater into the sea, it can kill the coral reefs. In the long run, it will affect our business.”
Meanwhile, at Senja Bay Resort, kitchen wastewater is piped down to under the restaurant and into a grease trap. The accumulated grease is bagged and loaded onto the garbage boats while the overflow water is pumped to the back of the resort into a soak-away pit (where wastewater percolates through layers of stones and rubble).
Resort owner Faizul Abdul Rahman feels however, that sewage should be collected and sent via boat to the mainland, like how rubbish is transported by boat daily. Currently at his resort, grey water (wastewater from baths) and sewage go into polyethylene tanks, then pumped to a covered soak-away pit that is treated with chlorine.
“For water from baths and the kitchen, it is fine (to be pumped into the soak-away pit),” said Faizul. “But for sewage, it’s not so good in the long run, because the sewage does find its way back to the sea. According to scientists who have done research on the reefs around Perhentian, every year the percentage of algae on the reefs is increasing. Their conclusion is that this is due to sewage from the island.”
The smaller operators are also into better waste management now. Muhammad Kasmuri Abd Wahab, who runs the 12-room Maya Beach Resort, segregates the rubbish at his resort, and the recyclable items, including cooking oil and engine oil, are sold to an acquaintance who then sends the waste to a recycling plant.
Ruth Yap, outreach programme manager of Reef Check Malaysia (RCM) said the organisation received funding from the Small Grants Programme (under the Global Environment Facility) to carry out a project in Perhentian in 2009, focusing on the community and the environment.
“We started talking to all the resort operators over there. We had funds to set up the Perhentian Resort Operators Association, which involved resorts, dive centres, snorkelling guides and even taxi boats,” said Yap.
The initial project lasted only two years. This year, the association with the help of RCM obtained funding again to work on areas in waste management and environmental awareness talks for the students and villagers there.
“This year we are looking at composting, and we have already purchased a compost machine that takes in 25kg of waste per day,” said Yap. “After 48 hours in the machine, you get compost. This is a trial period, and we have yet to implement it. The resort operators are still trying to look for space to install the machine. If this is successful, we might apply for more funds from the local government. The idea is to reduce the amount of waste taken off the island.”
Info-sheets have also been put up in each room of the resorts, which explain in various languages, the things that visitors can do to reduce waste and safeguard the environment. One of it is to refill drinking water at the resort instead of buying bottled water, thus reducing the number of discarded plastic bottles. Yap said one operator provides RM1 refills, and he gets up to 78 requests per day, which makes good business sense for operators to provide the service.
Reef clean-ups
For Watercolours Resort, the main concern is the health of the coral reefs. Said its chief operating officer Mike Soh: “They are being polluted by rubbish, (and choked by) fishing nets and so on. What we do is organise reef clean-ups at least twice a year. We get help from Reef Check in terms of funds and divers.
“Sometimes we organise beach clean-ups for our guests. We provide them free food or a free outing on the beach. For reef clean-ups, we offer them free dives and food, and in the evening we gather together for a small barbecue.”
Watercolours is in the process of converting its septic tanks into a filtration system similar to the one used by Tuna Bay. About half of its 20 tanks have been converted and each new tank costs about RM1,000.
“What comes out of the tank is quite clean,” said Soh. “There are no more particles, and the water is almost clear. We use it for the plants in our garden. After filtration, the water doesn’t smell anymore. Also, after a few years, what is left in the tank (sludge) can be cleaned out and used as fertiliser.”
Overall, everyone agrees that the association has done quite a bit for the island, especially in raising awareness. Yap agrees but said: “Behaviour change cannot happen overnight. You need time and repetition. With the association, it’s easier for the local government to have a dialogue with the resort operators. There’s a platform for discussion now.”
Even so, some feel there is still more to be done. The operators say foreign tourists are environmentally conscious, but most local visitors still throw rubbish indiscriminately. And while it is all clean and good at the resorts and beaches, other parts of the islands remain an ugly sight.
“The parts where there are no resorts, such as the jungle trails, are very poorly looked after,” said Faizul. “They are full of plastic bottles and wrappers. It is very ugly. All tourists who come here are charged a marine park conservation fee of RM5 per head. I think some of the money should be used to hire workers to go around weekly and clean up the rubbish. Everyone knows about the problem but nobody bothers.”
“In terms of awareness, it has definitely improved over the last few years,” said Soh. “The only thing is whether we can afford some of the measures. The (new) sewage tanks are quite costly, so the smaller operators may not be able to afford them.”
Soh and some others feel rubbish disposal is still a burden to the operators, especially the smaller businesses, because each resort is charged a fee of RM15 per room monthly. But that should give them a reason to reduce waste amounts, for instance through composting and recycling.
