Indonesia: Cracks in Jakarta's sea wall project

Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja Straits Times 30 Mar 15;

EACH morning, crab-catcher Cartum, who goes by a single name, warily eyes the scaffolding of a dyke under construction at the edge of Jakarta Bay as he climbs into his boat to head out to sea.

The dyke on the city's northern edge marks the start of a giant sea wall the Jakarta authorities hope will tame rising sea levels and ease annual flooding in the low-lying city of 18 million people.

Not everyone is happy about the sea wall, which is estimated to cost more than 300 trillion rupiah (S$31.6 billion) once completed. It will be Indonesia's most expensive development project, combining roads, bridges and reclamation for residential and business areas.

Fishermen like Mr Cartum, 33, say they will have to go farther out to sea and spend more on diesel once it is completed.

"If they don't go ahead, it's good for me," he said during a recent interview at his home.

Well, he may get some respite.

The fate of the sea wall is now uncertain after Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Minister Susi Pudjiastuti stepped in to say the project initiated by the Jakarta municipal government needs her endorsement.

She also wants a guarantee that construction of the dam and reclaimed areas will be completed. Some say the scheme is economically not feasible.

The 34km sea wall and reclamation will cover 5,100ha and, viewed from a plane, would resemble the giant mythical Garuda bird, a central feature of Indonesia's national emblem.

The outer wall and reclamation along it will resemble wings, while reclaimed land in the centre will be the body and tail of the bird.

In total, 17 artificial islets and several lagoons will be created.

Urban planning analyst Yayat Supriatna said since this project is within a coastal area, Ms Susi's ministry must give its consent. "Otherwise, the project would be legally flawed," he said.

The standoff between the national and local governments risks the sea wall ending up like several other major infrastructure projects in which construction has either ground to a halt, such as the monorail in central Jakarta, or shelved after years of discussion, such as the 30km Sunda Strait Bridge to link Java and Sumatra islands.

Observers say the sea wall is different and is seen as an urgent fix for the Indonesian capital, which is becoming more vulnerable to rising seas and flooding every year. The city is also sinking in some areas because of large-scale ground water extraction.

The weight of large numbers of high-rise buildings is pressing down on the soft soil on which the city is built, making it harder for rivers to flow freely to the sea.

"Jakarta is sinking fast. North Jakarta is sinking at a speed of 7.5cm per year, in some locations more than 26cm per year," Mr Ad Sannen, a senior consultant at Royal HaskoningDHV, a Dutch firm providing technical assistance for the project, told The Straits Times.

"Most of North Jakarta is already below sea level. In 25 years' time, the streets will be several metres below sea level."

Jakarta is criss-crossed by 13 rivers. During the monsoon season, some rivers burst their banks, flooding densely populated communities. The sea wall is meant to prevent coastal flooding and aid the drainage of the rivers into a series of artificial lagoons.

Pumps will keep the water in the lagoons at a lower level than the sea outside the wall, allowing the rivers to flow more freely through the city.

Some have voiced concerns the lagoons would become heavily polluted from the dirty, litter-strewn river water.

But Mr Imam Santoso, director of rivers and beaches at the Public Works Ministry, told The Straits Times that the floodwaters would be filtered before entering the lagoons. "Otherwise, it would be a total mess."

Engineers say greater efforts are needed to clean up the rivers before the water reaches the coast.

Mr Sannen said drainage canals and Jakarta Bay are filled with very thick layers of contaminated sludge. "One strategy is to do waste-water treatment, at the same time as dredging work."

And if water quality in the lagoons becomes a problem, then they could be aerated and flushed out with clean water from the sea by opening a series of gates, he added.

The idea of a giant sea wall was first mooted in 1994 by former Jakarta governor Soerjadi Soedirdja, but it has taken two decades for construction to begin because of problems with funding and land-clearance licences.

Seven private real estate giants have been granted building permits by the Jakarta government for the project.

The municipal government will get 5 per cent of every square metre of reclaimed land created by the private developers, and has promised to set aside that amount for building housing for fishermen and other social projects.

"The ministry's main concern is that the welfare of the thousands of fishermen in the area will not be affected and that there must be a plan for these fishermen if they have to be relocated," said Mr Yayat.

Green groups have also expressed concerns.

Mr Mukri Priatna, a national campaign manager at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, offered an alternative solution: Go back to nature and plant mangroves.

"If they are so insistent on having a concrete wall and posh residential areas, then their objective is money, not building a coastal flood-defence system as they claimed," he told The Straits Times.

The frustrated Jakarta governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama told reporters: "When a minister and a provincial governor have a disagreement, what should we do? I will propose the President step in and make the decision."

Mr Yayat doubts President Joko Widodo can break the impasse as he, too, has to comply with laws.

At present, only a 70m section of the 5m-high dyke in Pluit sub-district of north Jakarta has been built. If the impasse is not resolved, its scaffolding could join other symbols of failed projects.

For some, the giant sea wall is the answer to easing their annual flood misery.

Ms Tri Asih, 40, a mother with two daughters who lives near the coast, said: "That would guarantee we would not see floods for decades ahead."

Read more!

Vietnam: Ca Mau people plant trees to patch sea dykes

Ca Mau residents are planting trees to reinforce sea dykes to deal with climate change.
VietNamNet Bridge 30 Mar 15;

Ca Mau province suffers most from climate change. The locality faces the sea on three sides with a total coastline of 254 kilometers, which is equal to 1/3 of the total coastline of the Mekong River Delta.

The land erosion tends to become more serious in recent years, which has made the coastal protective forests become more narrow.

The land at the mouth of the My Binh rivulet in Phu Tan Commune of Phu Tan District has seriously eroded. The sea waves now can crash onto the foot of the dyke.

Many mangrove trees have been uprooted, lying on the ground, while land has been “swallowed” day by day by sea water.

Local residents said the land area would go away with the “sea-gods” soon.

Landslides occur with most of the estuaries. Tran Anh Le, who lives near the Cai Cam sea mouth, said the danger of landslides is hanging over her head, but she still does not know where to go.

Tran Van Tu in Tan Thuan Commune of Dam Doi District said the situation was also very bad on the east coast.

“Locals have been leaving their homes over the last five years,” he said. “The situation is better in Dong Hai of Bac Lieu province, where dykes have been strengthened.”

A survey conducted recently by the Ca Mau provincial Irrigation Sub-department showed that coastal erosion is serious in four areas with a total length of 40 kilometers.

Ca Mau provincial authorities have been trying to build dykes to prevent sea waves to prevent the landslide.

However, as the dykes are built with locally existing materials, they cannot bring the designed effects. The dykes can deteriorate within several years of establishment.

Nguyen Long Hoai, head of the Ca Mau provincial Irrigation Sub-department, said the province had been trying to settle the problem with a new dyke system.

About 300 meters of underground dykes have been built on a trial basis in U Minh District. The dyke can prevent waves from a long distance, while allowing sea water to bring alluvium into the area beyond the dyke, thus enriching the soil.

He said the trial plan has brought initial satisfactory results. Mam trees, or Avicennia spp, have been restored very rapidly, helping repair the landslide and restore the coastal protective forests.

The provincial authorities are now trying to speed up the construction of dykes on the eastern and western coasts, at the most critical points with a total length of 10 kilometers.

Thien Nhien

Read more!

Vietnam rice boom heaping pressure on farmers, environment

Cat Barton AFP Yahoo News 29 Mar 15;

Rice farmer Nguyen Hien Thien is so busy growing his crops that he has never even visited Can Tho, a town only a few miles from his farm in the southern Mekong Delta.

"When I was a child, we grew one crop of rice per year -- now it's three. It's a lot of work," 60-year-old Thien, who has been farming since he was a child, told AFP on the edge of his small paddy field.

Experts say Vietnam's drive to become one of the world's leading rice exporters is pushing farmers in the fertile delta region to the brink, with mounting costs to the environment.

The communist country is already the world's second largest exporter of the staple grain. But intensive rice cultivation, particularly the shift to producing three crops per year, is taking its toll on farmers and the ecosystem.

"Politicians want to be the world's number one or two rice exporter. As a scientist, I want to see more being done to protect farmers and the environment," said Vietnamese rice expert Vo Tong Xuan.

A major famine in 1945 and food shortages in the post-war years led to the government adopting a "rice first" policy.

This now generates far more of the crop than needed to feed Vietnam's 90 million population and has catalysed a thriving export industry.

Rice yields have nearly quadrupled since the 1970s, official figures show, thanks to high-yield strains and the construction of a network of dykes that today allow farmers to grow up to three crops per year.

The amount of land under cultivation in the Mekong Delta has also expanded and quotas are in place to prevent farmers from switching to other crops.

But experts are questioning who really benefits.

According to Xuan, farmers don't reap the rewards of the three crop system -- the rice is low quality and they spend more on pesticides and fertilisers, which become less effective year by year.

- Falling quality -

He argues the delta would be better off if farmers cultivated a more diverse range of crops, from coconuts to prawns, with just the most suitable land used to grow rice.

The country should consider abandoning the third crop and focus on improving quality and branding to sell Vietnamese rice at higher prices, he said.

Currently, the bulk of Vietnam's rice is exported at cut-price costs on government-to-government contracts through large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) like the Southern Food Corporation, known as Vinafood 2.

"Over the last five years, the trend is towards lower-quality rice," admitted Le Huu Trang, deputy office manager at the firm.

Some argue that such SOEs have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo as they earn lucrative kickbacks from the huge contracts.

But even as salt water intrusion, drought and flooding increase in the delta -- to say nothing of agricultural chemical pollution -- it is also hard to convince farmers to change.

"The prevailing mindset is to grow three crops... we have to explain two crops is better," said Nguyen Tuan Hiep from the Co Do Agriculture company.

Over the last 20 years, Co Do -- which is state-run but a flagship model of how the industry could evolve -- has identified the best rice-growing land in the delta and helped farmers expand their farms.

They now work with 2,500 families on 5,900 hectares (14,600 acres) of land, enough for each family to make a living -- typically the average rice farm in the delta spans less than one hectare.

The firm invests heavily in high-quality seeds and improving irrigation, while also advising farmers on the best chemicals to use.

"Two crops is more sustainable long term -- the soil is not degraded, the environment isn't polluted, and value of the rice increases," Hiep said.

- 'Ground zero' -

Climate change is another factor threatening the delta, according to the World Bank Group's vice president and special envoy for climate change Rachel Kyte.

"This is really ground zero for some of the most difficult adaptation, planning challenges that any country in the world has," she said.

Ultimately Vietnam has tough choices to make, including whether to help people transition from a rice-based economy to aquaculture (fish or shellfish farming) or other crops, Kyte added.

The environmental costs of maintaining Vietnam's current level of rice production are also rising.

The system of dykes, which blocks flood water, are preventing soil nutrients from flowing freely and over time "soil fertility will fade", said Tran Ngoc Thac, deputy director of Vietnam's Rice Research Institute.

Scientists there are busy trying to breed new strains of rice that require fewer fertilisers and can survive in extreme weather.

"If farmers don't change, if we can't find a suitable new rice strain, pollution will continue and incomes will drop," Thac said, adding these measures were essential to save the delta.

Read more!

Despite deforestation, the world is getting greener: scientists

Alisa Tang PlanetArk 31 Mar 15;

The world's vegetation has expanded, adding nearly 4 billion tonnes of carbon to plants above ground in the decade since 2003, thanks to tree-planting in China, forest regrowth in former Soviet states and more lush savannas due to higher rainfall.

Scientists analyzed 20 years of satellite data and found the increase in carbon, despite ongoing large-scale tropical deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, according to research published on Monday in Nature Climate Change.

Carbon flows between the world's oceans, air and land. It is present in the atmosphere primarily as carbon dioxide (CO2) - the main climate-changing gas - and stored as carbon in trees.

Through photosynthesis, trees convert carbon dioxide into the food they need to grow, locking the carbon in their wood.

The 4-billion-tonne increase is minuscule compared to the 60 billion tonnes of carbon released into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and cement production over the same period, said Yi Liu, the study's lead author and a scientist at the University of New South Wales.

"From this research, we can see these plants can help absorb some carbon dioxide, but there's still a lot of carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere," Liu said by telephone from Sydney.

"If we want to stabilize the current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - and avoid the consequent impacts - it still requires us to reduce fossil fuel emissions."

Liu, who specializes in observing the water cycle including rainfall and soil moisture, used a new technique of collecting satellite data on radio frequency radiation naturally emitted by the Earth to calculate the amount of vegetation in a given area.

Before, scientists measured vegetation through satellite images and other techniques, looking at canopy greenness and plant height, he said.

Liu had expected to find increased forests in China, which has had tree-planting projects for two to three decades, as well as on abandoned farmland in former Soviet countries.

But he was surprised to discover the large expansion in vegetation due to higher rainfall on tropical savannas and shrublands in Australia, Africa and South America.

These fragile gains may be easily lost, as weather patterns shift with climate change, he warned.

"Savannas and shrublands are vulnerable to rainfall - one year can be very wet, and more carbon will be fixed in plants, but the next year can be very dry, and then we will lose the carbon fixed in previous years," Liu explained.

Louis Verchot, a research director at the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research, said Liu's findings were "by and large what we would expect in the warmer and wetter world that results from climate change".

"As ice and permafrost melt, they are being replaced by vegetation, and the tree line is moving north as the Arctic warms," he said by email.

Vegetation growth is also expected to increase due to rising CO2 in the atmosphere, known as the "CO2 fertilization effect".

Verchot said the value of Liu's study was that it put a number on the contribution of vegetation to moderating greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere.

"Hopefully this will lead to greater efforts to stop tropical forest loss and to promote sustainable use of ecosystems in ways that preserve enough of the carbon absorption function as we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning," Verchot added.

(Editing by Megan Rowling)

Read more!

Climate change could disturb marine life for millennia

AFP Yahoo News 31 Mar 15;

Miami (AFP) - Climate change may lead to disturbances in marine life that will take thousands of years to recover from, not hundreds of years as previously thought, researchers said Monday.

The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is based on a section of fossilized ocean fauna found on the seafloor off the coast of California dating to between 3,400 and 16,100 years ago.

Researchers sliced up the sediment like a cake for a before-and-after glimpse of how creatures were affected by climate change during the last major deglaciation, when polar ice caps melted abruptly and low oxygen zones expanded in the ocean.

Ice melt and ocean dead zones are an increasing concern today, as scientists study the warming planet and trends that are driven by the burning of fossil fuels that send greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Researchers analyzed more than 5,400 invertebrate fossils, such as sea urchins and clams, and found that they "nearly disappeared from the record during those times of low oxygen," according to the study.

Levels of oxygen in the ocean dropped by between 0.5 and 1.5 milliliters per liter over a period of less than 100 years, a relatively minor changes that resulted in "dramatic changes and reorganizations for seafloor communities," the study said.

Climate change in the future could have similar effects, and could take a similar time scale for ocean life to rebound, on the order of thousands, not hundreds of years, the researchers said.

"There's not a recovery we have to look forward to in my lifetime or my grandchildren's lifetime," said lead author Sarah Moffitt, a scientist from the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute at the University of California, Davis.

"It's a gritty reality we need to face as scientists and people who care about the natural world and who make decisions about the natural world."

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 30 Mar 15

Walk at the Venus Loop
from The Green Beans

Pellets from Tuas: 7. Black-shouldered Kite hunting mice
from Bird Ecology Study Group

APRIL suspends contractor after environmentalists expose ongoing deforestation
from Mongabay.com news by Rhett Butler

Black Eeltail Catfish (Plotosus canius) @ Pasir Ris
from Monday Morgue

Read more!

New fire safety rule for solar panels

Feng Zengkun The Straits Times AsiaOne 29 Mar 15;

New regulations on fire safety and the installation of solar panels, including those on rooftops, will soon be unveiled.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) confirmed to The Sunday Times it will issue a circular to the industry next month that specifies the new rules.

They include requiring buildings to have at least two exit staircases from the rooftop before solar panels can be installed there, to aid firefighting efforts.

The new rules were first reported by website Eco-Business, and the SCDF said they will take effect six months after the circular is issued and apply only to new solar panel installations and not completed ones.

The SCDF said if there are physical challenges in making a building compliant, building managers can propose other fire safety measures, and it will review them.

Currently, rooftop access of many buildings is via cat ladders, which are usually narrow and cannot accommodate the transport of equipment.

Assistant Commissioner Christopher Tan, director of SCDF's fire safety and shelter department, said existing ladders to rooftops are for maintenance works.

"We don't believe they are robust or strong enough for firefighters carrying equipment, especially if you have a few firefighters climbing up.

"Speed of access is another consideration," he told The Sunday Times.

With solar systems becoming more widespread here and larger in scale, the new fire safety rules are needed, said the SCDF.

Solar energy companies here, however, are decrying one of the upcoming new rules, which they said could cripple the growing use of solar power in Singapore.

While they recognised that safety is paramount, they noted that solar panel fires are rare worldwide. There are also less onerous means of ensuring firefighters' access to rooftops, such as by installing or widening existing ladders, they added.

A main concern cited by the industry is whether buildings can be retrofitted to have the staircases, since building designers would have maximised the use of their designated space.

Even where such retrofitting is possible, the staircases will add 10 per cent to 50 per cent to the cost of solar panel systems, making them too expensive and unattractive compared with just tapping the national grid for electricity, the firms said.

Solar power has been more widely used in Singapore only in recent years, after prices of solar panels fell, making the cost of solar power competitive with that of drawing electricity from the grid.

Dr Thomas Reindl, deputy chief executive of the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (Seris), said: "These proposed measures would go beyond what is practised in other countries where solar power has been deployed in large quantities."

Seris, the national institute for applied solar research, said it was not involved in drafting the proposed rules. Seris and several of the largest solar energy firms here - including REC, which has a plant in Tuas - said they learnt of the new rules only recently, though some less onerous rules were proposed to some of the firms last July.

The SCDF said it had consulted the Fire Code Review Committee and the SCDF Fire Safety Standing Committee before drawing up the rules, which also include safety standards for solar panels.

The committees include representatives from the Building and Construction Authority, Housing Board, groups such as the Singapore Institute of Architects, Institution of Engineers Singapore, Institution of Fire Engineers Singapore, and universities here.

The solar energy firms called for more consultation with the industry, and a task force comprising the authorities, the firms and more neutral experts such as Seris, which has acted as a mediator between the industry and the SCDF in the past month, to look into best practices globally.

Said Dr Reindl: "The safety of solar panel systems is a crucial pillar in making solar power a reliable and trusted source of energy in Singapore.

"We believe we can summarise the lessons learnt from other countries and apply international best practices to... Singapore, to come up with effective but reasonable measures."

Read more!

Indonesian government must protect pig-nosed turtles from extinction

Otniel Tamindael Antara 28 Mar 15;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - As the illegal trade of wildlife continues to flourish, the government needs to work harder to crack down on pet trade to protect the endangered pig-nosed turtles (Carettochelys insculpta) from extinction.

Pig-nosed turtles are in constant danger of both human and environmental threats, as a result of which their population continues to decline. Therefore, the government needs to take measures to prevent smugglers from capturing these animals.

On Wednesday, the Bakauheni seaport police in South Lampung district, Lampung province, foiled an attempt to smuggle 41 pig-nosed turtles.

The protected pitted-shelled turtles were discovered in a truck with police plate BH 8888 GU, which was en route from Jambi province in Sumatra Island to Jakarta, according to Chief of the Bakauheni seaport police Adjunct Commissioner Feria Kurniawan.

"Even though these turtles are not categorized as protected and endangered animals, they cannot be transported without legal documents. Therefore, we seized them," he remarked.

Kurniawan noted that the seized turtles were then handed over to the Bakauheni-based agricultural quarantine office.

According to the police chief, they were able to prevent the attempt to smuggle the undocumented animals due to the routine checks carried out at the Seaport Interdiction.

He added that the sender of the turtles was identified as Aping, a resident of Jambi province, while the person receiving them was identified as Aken, a resident of Jakarta.

TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network, reported on its website http://www.traffic.org in October 2014 that intensive illegal collection of the vulnerable pig-nosed turtles as pets, food, and for traditional medicine has reached an alarming level.

It said that the pig-nosed turtle was protected under a national legislation and listed under appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, which restricts international trade in wild-caught creatures.

A 2011 study of the pig-nosed Turtles in Papua found that the species was suffering a severe decline in population due to overharvesting.

The latest study found that pig-nosed turtle eggs are collected from river banks by villagers, who incubate them in hatcheries before selling the young turtles into the global traditional medicine and pet trades.

An estimated 1.5 to 2 million eggs are collected every year, although it is believed that current figures may be considerably higher and are continuing to rise.

Minimal law enforcement at the source allows such practices to continue unhindered, which leads to the exploitation of these turtles even along remote waterways.

Moreover, international demand for the turtles is also reportedly increasing. Survey respondents spoke of companies drying and grinding the turtles into powder to supply traditional medicine markets in China and Hong Kong and of the growing online marketplace for live pig-nosed Turtles.

More than 30 seizures, amounting to more than 80 thousand individual pig-nosed turtles, took place between 2003 and 2013.

They included a massive single seizure in 2009 of 12,247 pig-nosed turtles in Timika, Papua.

More recently, 8,368 animals were discovered in several suitcases in connected seizures in Papua and Jakarta in January 2014.

"Urgent law enforcement measures are needed in Papua province to target middlemen operating in rural communities," Regional Director of TRAFFIC, Southeast Asia, Chris Shepherd emphasized.

"We also recommend monitoring ports such as Agats, Merauke, Timika, Jayapura and Jakarta, and increasing enforcement at international points of the trade chain in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, mainland China and Hong Kong," he noted.

Furthermore, Mimika Police Chief Adjunct Senior Commissioner Mochammad Sagi confirmed that some 10,908 pig-nosed turtles were released into their habitat in the Wania river, Paumako harbor, Mimika Timur district, Papua province, in that last few years.

"We released them into the Wania river in Paumako harbor," he affirmed, adding that pig-nosed turtles are protected under Law Number 5/1990 on Natural Resources and Ecosystems Conservation.

The Mimika police had foiled an attempt to smuggle out the 10,908 pig-nosed turtles from Timika in 2010, and arrested two people identified by their initials as A and YW.

The police had raided YWs house in the Kamoro SP1 Timika area and seized the pig-nosed turtles after receiving a tip-off from local people.

The turtles had been poached in the Asmat region and were supposed to be transported to Jakarta.

In addition, PT Freeport Indonesia, which engages in tin, gold and silver mining operations in Mimika district, still plays a key role in the preservation of fauna and flora, including releasing the rare pig-nosed turtles.

Spokesman for PT Freeport, Ramdani Sirait said that the mining company continued its efforts towards preserving the rare animals by facilitating their release into their natural habitat in Papua.

He noted that the task was carried out by Freeport in cooperation with the Animal Saving Center Network (JPPS) in Cikananga, Sukabumi, West Java, and the Directorate General of Forestry Protection and Natural Conservation of the Forestry Ministry.

The pig-nosed turtle, also known as the pitted-shelled turtle or the fly river turtle, is a species of turtle native to northern Australia and southern New Guinea.

This species is the only living member of genus Carettochelys, subfamily Carettochelyinae and family Carettochelyidae, although several extinct carettochelyid species have been described from around the world.

The pig-nosed turtle is unlike any other species of freshwater turtles. Their feet are flippers, resembling those of marine turtles, and their nose resembles that of a pig, with nostrils that end in a fleshy snout, hence the common name.

The carapace is typically grey or olive, with a leathery texture, while the plastron is cream-colored.

Males can be distinguished from females by their longer and narrower tails.

Unlike the soft-shelled turtles of the Trionychidae family, pig-nosed turtles retain a domed, bony carapace beneath their leathery skin, rather than a flat plate.
(.TO001/INE/KR-BSR/A014)

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 29 Mar 15

A Photo Guide to the ID of Large Hawk Cuckoo
from Con Foley Photography

A look of the Top 20 birds of 1986 and 2015 By Lim Kim Seng
from Singapore Bird Group

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 28 Mar 15

Night Walk At Lower Peirce Reservoir Park (27 Mar 2015)
from Beetles@SG BLOG

Asian Glossy Starlings eating Alexandra Palm fruits
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Read more!

Malaysia: Marine creatures most at risk from plastic dumped at sea

RUBEN SARIO The Star 28 Mar 15;

KOTA KINABALU: Marine researchers are once again raising the alarm about the dumping of plastic material in the sea following the death of a pilot whale that was found to have ingested 4.25kg of plastic bags.

A post-mortem on the 310kg male pilot whale found that the three compartments of its stomach were filled with 14 pieces of large plastic bags, 11 small plastic bags, 11 plastic sheets and 6m of caution tape, among others.

Also discovered in the confines of its stomach was a yellow detergent bag manufactured in Guangzhou, China, said Universiti Malaysia Sabah Borneo Marine Research Institute (BMRI) director Assoc Prof Dr Rossita Shapawi.

“After the pilot whale ingested these plastic bags, its stomach was blocked and it could not consume anything else. It starved to death due to the plastic,” she added.

She said it was likely that the pilot whale had mistaken the plastic bags for food.

Latest casualty: Marine researchers getting ready to conduct the post-mortem on the pilot whale assisted by UMS staff.
Latest casualty: Marine researchers getting ready to conduct the post-mortem on the pilot whale assisted by UMS staff.
Giving details to the press about the death of the whale that was estimated to be between two and three years old, she said the pilot whale was the latest casualty of the tonnes of plastic waste in the ocean.

“It is very possible that we will see more marine creatures washed ashore, given the amount of plastic out there,” she said.

She said the pilot whale, initially thought to be a risso dolphin, was discovered by a villager at Likas Bay on March 19 and subsequently taken to the BMRI where it was given round-the-clock care.

Sabah Wildlife Department assistant director Dr Sen Nathan said the condition of the pilot whale appeared to have improved after it was given antibiotics, painkillers, anti-­parasitic drugs, appetite stimulants, gastric protectants, multivitamins and fluid therapy.

“However, its condition suddenly deteriorated. The pilot whale vomited and died on March 25,” he said.

Sen said wildlife rangers discovered a pantropical spotted dolphin in waters off the northern Kudat district in September last year that died due to plastic ingestion.

He said green turtles were the most common creatures to die in Sabah waters for that same reason.

UMS lecturer for water quality for aqua­culture and marine pollution Dr Abentin Estim said a study last year of several beaches along the state’s west coast found 11,000 pieces of plastic bags per 100m stretch.

“The prevalence of plastic in our sea is a ­serious problem which needs to be tackled,” he said.

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 27 Mar 15

The curse on the waters off Pasir Ris
from Water Quality in Singapore

grey-headed fish eagle squawk & flight @ SBWR - Feb 2015
from sgbeachbum

Plain Plushblue caterpillar and its attendant ant
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Why palm oil expanded, and what keeps it growing
from Mongabay.com news

Read more!