Deanna Ramsay The Jakarta Post 13 Dec 11;
Dark gray clouds appeared on the horizon as the afternoon progressed, eventually interrupting the work of the visitors to tiny Pulau Badul in Ujung Kulon National Park.
People huddled together under the shelter of two boats, fending off the pulsing showers of the rainy season in Banten.
The planting of coral colonies in the waters surrounding Pulau Badul, a dreamy swath of soft white sand that is the stuff of desert island fantasies, would have to wait until the rain subsided.
Earlier that morning, enthusiastic volunteers had plunged into the island’s aquamarine waters, laden with diving gear and the desire to do a small part to help a unique national park that is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Ujung Kulon is known primarily for its expanse of lowland rainforest being the last sanctuary for the critically endangered Javan rhinoceros, but the park also encompasses the sea and several islands off the western tip of Java, stretching to Krakatoa.
“The marine areas of Ujung Kulon support some of the richest fish fauna in the archipelago, with both deep water and reef species well represented,” notes UNESCO’s website.
In a small ceremony in the attractive hamlet of Paniis in Taman Jaya, just outside the national park, village head Adsa Wijaya thanked the group of assorted visitors who were about to depart for Pulau Badul to plant coral, and described how some of the coral reef offshore “had been destroyed because fishermen had been using bombs for fishing”.
Standing against a backdrop of striking blue-gray ocean, Adsa described efforts to halt the practice of blast fishing, and said locals were now proud to contribute to the rehabilitation of nearby reefs, as they depend on fishing for their livelihoods and therefore also healthy coral.
Part of their contribution comes from cultivating coral colonies for replanting in Ujung Kulon’s protected waters for a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) project that began in 2007.
Timer Manurung, policy coordinator for WWF-Indonesia in Banten, said the December event, called “Build Your Own Reef” and created as an activity for tourists as well, was their sixth, and the plan was to plant 2,500 coral colonies that day.
As participants were readying their gear offshore, Andre Crespo, a coastal and ecotourism officer for the WWF’s Ujung Kulon project, described how the process worked: “We have already prepared the racks below, about 100 are ready, just place the coral in the sand in the rack and leave it. It’s very simple. You don’t need to do anything else.
“Everything was prepared by our colleagues from Paniis yesterday, the [coral colonies] were brought here and immediately taken underwater. They can’t be out of the water too long because it causes stress to the coral.”
And with that, the assorted volunteers jumped into water dotted with ethereal burgundy jellyfish and headed for the ocean floor.
Along the sandy bottom, racks were arranged with bags of two species of soft coral, Sarcophyton sp and Nepthea sp, ready for planting. People in scuba gear worked amid the pacific silence that comes with submersion, slowly and carefully placing the colonies in sand-filled partitions, while those without dive certificates — clad in masks and fins — observed from above, treading water.
Andre said the WWF chose Pulau Badul as their first site for coral restoration because of the damage done to the island’s reef due to its location along the path of fishing boats heading to sea or returning, and because of its proximity to Paniis and the shore.
In 2007, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste agreed to the Coral Triangle Initiative in order to address the threats facing coastal and marine habitats in the region, which include warming oceans, overfishing and destructive fishing and pollution.
As lunchtime approached in Ujung Kulon so did a change of tide. In what had before been crystal waters, the bodies of hundreds of small silver fish, killed in fishing nets and then discarded, someone said, began floating slowly by, crowding the ocean’s surface together with fleets of garbage from somewhere out at sea.
And while Ujung Kulon’s waters fall outside the ambitious plan for conservation in the Coral Triangle, its proximity to the area that possesses 76 percent of the world’s coral species — the highest diversity of coral in the world — and the park’s unique location along the Sunda Strait means the importance of healthy oceans and marine life in the area cannot be overstated.
Chairul Iman, who works for PT Danareksa, which was sponsoring the coral planting that day in cooperation with the WWF, said the experience was unlike anything he had imagined, and that coral transplantation work such as this “provided experience and knowledge about conservation activities”. He described the coral planting as a “breakthrough concept in conservation”.
Timer spoke of the need for “creative conservation” in Ujung Kulon, an endeavor that most certainly must be creative in order to encompass the diversity within Ujung Kulon itself. With local fishermen setting out in their boats to draw livelihoods from the sea and others carving refined Javan rhinoceros crafts to sell to the handful of tourists that make it to this hard-to-reach finger of Java, and conservationists looking to foster more tourist arrivals while continuing to strive to protect one of the world’s most endangered mammals from extinction, being creative in Ujung Kulon certainly means striking the right, and delicate, balance.
As the time approached for the second dive of the day, clouds rushed in. Thick droplets of rain splattered onto the two boats and people ducked for cover, the remainder of the replanting eventually postponed — with Paniis residents to finish later what had been started — a gentle reminder that with all one’s attempts at managing nature, even when trying to restore or protect it, we are still always at its mercy.
