Andrew Sia The Star 22 Oct 11;
The sight of Mat Sallehs picking up OUR rubbish is both inspiring and embarrassing. Responsible tourism can help save our beautiful islands – and protect our seafood supply!
What’s wrong with this picture? One of Malaysia’s top scuba-diving destinations shares an island with a village of 2,000 people without any official garbage collection services.
Divers from around the world pay handsomely to see the marine life here. Yet one of the main attractions – turtles – are well known to choke (perhaps fatally) when swallowing plastic bags, which they mistake for their usual diet of jellyfish.
This is the situation in Sabah’s Pulau Mabul (the sister island to Pulau Sipadan). Many of the villagers here are Bajau and Suluk peoples, migrants who fled the turmoil and poverty of the southern Philippines.
Traditionally, they have roamed the seas between Sabah and Mindanao for centuries, and trash was never a problem when all that was being disposed were biodegradable fish scales or leaves used as wrappers. But what happens when plastic comes into the picture?
To help put things right, several dive resorts got together to organise a big clean-up during Mabul Marine Week in late September. Resort staff, tourists and villagers all chipped in to clear rubbish from white sandy beaches, while divers did the same under water.
“This shows what everybody can achieve when we cooperate,” said Stanley Sie, owner-operator of Sphere Divers. “Both big and small dive operators took part.”
During a clean-up that this writer took part in with some village children, we collected not only plastic bags but also used batteries, broken glass bottles, long strips of linoleum flooring, rusty metal sheets, shoes, pieces of styrofoam and even an old suitcase lying beneath the stilt-houses.
I was surprised that the kids helping me were actually living nearby, and that this was the first time they were cleaning up the seabed beneath their homes!
“Lain kali tak buang lagi (next time won’t throw again),” one of them promised.
“It’s difficult to change people’s habits,” said Sie. “We hope to make more impact with the children.”
Jamaluddin Sopo, the village chief and Umno branch leader here, explained, “The residents have simply thrown rubbish all this time because there were no regulations or punishments against it.”
However, Jamaluddin was happy to report that Mabul was a lot cleaner this year.
“At the mosque, I announced the event to people and asked them to help out with the cleaning,” said Jamaluddin, who is also imam of Mabul.
What about asking the Semporna district council to help collect rubbish regularly?
“Saya rasa malu mau mintak mereka kutip (I am embarrassed to ask them to collect),” he replied.
Ramesh Sundram, the manager of Borneo Divers Resort here, pointed out that typically, tourism operators hire boats to bring in supplies such as food and fuel from Semporna, on the mainland, and then send out their garbage when the boats return.
“According to the Majilis Daerah Semporna (district council), Mabul does not fall under their jurisdiction for garbage collection,” he noted. “So the resort operators have to do their own garbage disposal. A large resort will have to spend about RM60,000 a year to hire boats to come in and out regularly.”
The clean-ups have been going on for 14 years, with the first Mabul Marine Day organised by a resort back in 1997. In 2007, the event was extended to become Mabul Marine Week (MMW) with different resorts taking turns to chair.
The difference for MMW this year is that the resorts have pooled their resources to build two public rubbish disposal sites, so that the villagers will (hopefully) not throw their rubbish into the sea but at the dumpsites.
Rohan Perkins, this year’s organising chairman, said that a total of 10 jongkong (12m wooden boats) of rubbish were collected and shipped out to Semporna during MMW.
Rick Owen, one of the founders of Scuba Junkie Mabul Beach Resort, commented, “We are not just businessmen who have invested in a resort. I myself am a marine biologist by training, and I’ve lived here for 10 years. I married a local girl and my one-year-old child lives here, too. So that’s why I want to keep this place clean and beautiful.”
Ramesh, who has been working here for eight years, commented: “This year’s clean up was much improved compared to last year’s, which was a bit slow. There was more cooperation among the resorts. Perkins kept pushing everyone to get involved, and I sent my staff over for the clean-ups.
“It takes time to spread awareness about not throwing rubbish. It helped that the local police asked all the villagers to come out and help with the clean-up. The fact that free food and goodies were given out also increased participation, I think.”
In his closing ceremony speech, Perkins said, “Let Mabul Marine Week not just be about taking nice photos. So much more remains to be done.”
Fish-eating humans
The Star 22 Oct 11;
Man-eating fish always stirs the imagination. However, the bigger problem is fish-eating humans who seem to be gobbling up all the fish in the world in a hurry.
Mabul Marine Week 2011 was not just about garbage disposal. Raising eco-awareness was another key plank of the event, and organising chairman Rohan Perkins spoke passionately about conservation in several resorts.
“There are seven species of sea turtles worldwide, and Sabah is very lucky to have four of them in its seas,” he told an audience of some 100 tourists one night. However, garbage, especially plastic bags, is a huge problem for turtles who mistake them for jellyfish.
“An autopsy of a dead turtle by a vet in Brisbane showed 68 plastic bags inside its stomach!” lamented Perkins, who is also manager and environmental officer at Scuba Junkie Mabul Beach Resort.
Nevertheless, he is glad that the world-famous Pulau Sipadan has been declared off-limits to resorts (visitors make day trips there from Mabul instead) as this means that turtles can lay their eggs on the beaches there without human interference.
“If tourist resorts are built right to the sea’s edge, this means that turtles will have no beaches to nest on,” Perkins explained.
What about turtle eggs on Mabul itself?
According to Perkins, Scuba Junkie has taken the initiative to pay RM10 to locals for each turtle egg they find, which is about 10 times more than if they sold it to others for consumption in the markets on the mainland.
“When anyone discovers a turtles nest,” he explained, “they will receive a finder’s fee based on the number of eggs in the nest. Then trained staff will relocate the eggs to our turtle hatchery which is fenced up to keep out predators such as dogs.”
Sarimah Ibrahim, who was brought in by JSK Events as the goodwill ambassador for MMW, has done over 300 dives over the past 11 years.
“I am just a messenger. I love diving at Sipadan and Mabul, and I want to help conserve the marine life here,” she said. “I believe in using social media to promote causes, not so much to talk about make-up and such. When I tweeted about how a turtle had swallowed 68 plastic bags, it was retweeted over 200 times within 15 minutes.”
Sarimah joined Twitter just five months ago, and already she has 13,000 followers.
“I used to think that we are powerless to make a change. But after I discovered how fast information could be spread on social media, I know we can all do our part,” enthused Sarimah, who recently began working as a radio DJ for Era FM.
“I also hope that Astro will have more Bahasa Malaysia subtitles in their environment-related programmes.”
The real Jaws
Another talk that Rohan did during MMW was on shark conservation. As a Malaysian Chinese, I was struck by the YouTube clip featuring Chinese basketball star Yao Ming (search for his name and “shark fin’s soup” on the site).
And it was sobering to know that during his 90-minute talk, 12,000 sharks were killed around the world.
Sarimah commented, “Ten years ago, I didn’t know that sharks were thrown back alive into the sea to die after their fins had been cut off. That’s like cutting off a gorilla’s arms and leaving it in the jungle.
“As an emcee of dinner events, I have always been exposed to shark fin’s soup. And as an entertainer there were times I was forced to eat it so as not to appear uncool. But nowadays, I am happy to say that most dinner functions serve crab meat’s soup instead. Well done!”
Ironically for Perkins, it was the movie Jaws that got him into shark conservation.
“I was terrified by the movie,” he said. “But that also got me very interested in sharks. Now I know it was all make-believe and the fear of sharks is unfounded. I have dived all over South-East Asia with sharks and never had any problems.”
He noted that statistics of fatalities in the US for 2009 show 936,000 cases from heart attacks and 43,000 from traffic accidents.
“Only five died from shark attacks in 2009 but that, unfortunately, is what captures all the media attention,” pointed out Perkins, who explained that most attacks are “bump and bite” cases where a shark accidentally knocks into a diver and then bites.
“Divers should respect the fact that they are entering the shark’s realm. Keep your distance and please don’t go spearfishing and then hang a bunch of bleeding fish from your belt (blood attracts sharks),” said Perkins, adding that world fishing stocks have declined by 90% since 1988 and the real culprit is industrial-scale fishing.
“Big companies are using fishing lines full of hooks that are five miles (8km) long! The biggest fishing nets now can fit 13 Boeing 747 jets. Large-scale fishing is wasteful as one-tenth of the world’s catch of fish is thrown back dead into the sea (because of poor prices),” he lamented.
“Mitsubishi is the world’s largest exporter of tuna but it’s just one of their many businesses. Big companies can survive without fish but not ordinary fishermen. I come from Pembrokeshire, a fishing community in south Wales, and I will be the first to understand that people’s livelihoods need to be protected,” Perkins added.
This is where sustainable fishing comes in. While the movie Jaws hyped up a totally unreal shark threat, the real terror is what our human jaws are doing to fish life. We have to try to slow down consumption of fish that are close to extinction (see the list at SaveOurSeafood.my). In the meantime, tourism can help save marine life too. And no, they don’t even have to do any clean-ups!
“Just by being here, you are helping,” Perkins told his audience of tourists. “And some of the money you spend will go back to the community, whether it’s jobs in resorts, sale of souvenirs, or provision of services like transport.”
Indeed, the long-term income from tourists who pay to see living marine life obviously outweighs the short-term gain from killing them.
