Some Singaporeans plan to usher in the new year in lavish style

Channel NewsAsia 30 Dec 07;

SINGAPORE: 2008 is just two days away and some Singaporeans are celebrating the start of a new year in extravagance.

While some are contented with the usual highlights of a New Year's party, others prefer to make it an event to remember, spending up to S$1,000 per person for a New Year's Eve dinner package.

The restaurant, Le Saint Julien, is preparing an eight-course dinner with high-end produce like oysters and caviar, specially flown in from France.

Paying more than S$500 per person, customers will also enjoy scallops from Japan as well as champagne.

The package comes with a front-row view of the fireworks at Marina Bay.

Julien Bompard, owner of Le Saint Julien, said: "We really have a lot of Singaporeans on tables for two. We've noticed that on some of the bigger tables, the host is Singaporean and he has invited his friends from abroad to celebrate the new year in Singapore. We think Singaporeans want to reward themselves as it has been a good year for them."

The restaurant said their guests are mainly regulars - well-travelled executives, bankers and brokers, mostly in their 40s.

Raffles Hotel is also expecting a full house of 200 guests during the countdown.

Their traditional gala ball takes place at the hotel's lobby and is annually packed with members from Singapore's high society, as well as tourists from Europe.

Raffles Hotel said some of their overseas guests even plan their holidays around the year-end gala ball.

Guests pay a minimum of S$620 each for a six-course dinner, which includes items that are specially flown in.

But hotels and restaurants do not just count on these dinners to make a profit.

Eric Teo, president of the Singapore Chefs' Association, said: "It is the best revenue throughout the whole year, but it's not supporting the biggest revenue throughout the entire F&B industry.

"We cannot depend just on New Year's Eve itself because it is so competitive, so challenging. It has to be everyday consistency."

In general, a New Year's Eve dinner package at a hotel or high-end restaurant will set you back S$100 and above per person.

The cheaper alternative is to join 160,000 others at the Esplanade waterfront to usher in the new year for free.

The skies will come alive at the stroke of midnight with fireworks launched straight from the water, along with specially choreographed music.- CNA/so

Read more!

Huge oil spill in Patagonia

Four companies accused of huge oil spill in Patagonia
MercoPress.com 29 Dec 07

The oil slick extends along a coastline rich in mollusks, shell fish, sea birds and which in summer months attracts thousands of tourists. Besides it’s an area with beaches that took years to clear and clean up following decades of oil exploitation with virtually no environmental control or limits.

The government of the province of Chubut, Argentine Patagonia, formally accused before a court of justice several oil corporations for the crude spill which washed along four kilometers of the provincial coast damaging rich marine resources and limiting tourist industry prospects.

Chubut province named on Friday several corporations, particularly Terminales Maritimas Patagonias, (Termap), which operates an offshore oil loading platform north of Comodoro Rivadavia where the spill originally occurred but was not reported to local authorities, said Environment minister Monica Raimundo.

Local authorities suspect the oil spill occurred several days ago when the loading of a tanker, but the first signals of the disaster were reported on Wednesday by residents from Caleta Córdoba, a small fishing village.

Ms Raimundo warned that another oil slick, several kilometers long, was sighted out in the sea, but could easily reach the coastline if winds change.

“The overall spill is made up of several slicks, two to three kilometers wide along a total extension of approximately forty kilometers”, reported the local daily “El Chubut”.

The corporations formally accused of the incident are Repsol-YPF, Sociedad Internacional Petrolera (Sipetrol, from Chile) and Pan American Energy Iberica that jointly hold the majority package of Termap.

Termap was ordered to present the registry of vessels operating at the platform during the last ten days, while a Crisis committee organized from Buenos Aires with Chubut authorities works reviewing satellite images.

The oil slick extends along a coastline rich in mollusks, shell fish, sea birds and which in summer months attracts thousands of tourists. Besides it’s an area with beaches that took years to clear and clean up following decades of oil exploitation with virtually no environmental control or limits.

Reports from Caleta Cordoba indicate that over a hundred people, (government personnel, environmentalists and volunteers) organized in special crews are clearing the contaminated area and have rescued over 60 sea birds covered in oil. However an estimated 500 have died.

“Unfortunately there’s no other way to address the disaster but manually, this means shovels, buckets and cleaning birds one by one”, said Coast Guard officer Víctor Hugo Burquet.

Patagonia is home to penguins and many rare bird species. The president of a local citizens group, Rene Tula, described the situation as a “serious tragedy”.

Read more!

Seagrass Bald Spots Cause Head-Scratching

Susan M. Green, The Tampa Tribune
TBO.com 30 Dec 07;

APOLLO BEACH - Standing ankle-deep in clear water, Robin Lewis doesn't really need his snorkel and mask to see what he came to see.

Under his wading boots, gleaming between the ripples of sunlight on the water's surface, the sand looks as white and barren as a sun-bathed beach temporarily flooded at high tide.

A half-century ago, a visitor likely would have been ankle-deep in seagrass.

"This whole area," Lewis said, swinging his arms wide, "everything from here to the edge, everything was covered with seagrass."

Scientists are pretty sure they know what killed the grass: untreated sewage and other polluted runoff into Tampa Bay in the 1960s and '70s. But much of that was cleaned up in the 1980s and '90s, and seagrass beds across the Bay have been making a dramatic comeback.

Still, some big patches, including a spot where Wolf Branch Creek empties into the Bay, stubbornly remain bald or sport a few sprigs where lush meadows used to be.

Lewis, a wetland scientist who has studied Tampa Bay for more than 40 years, is among experts trying to figure out why and come up with a formula to promote seagrass growth.

One theory: There used to be a symbiotic relationship between seagrass and underwater sand bars, including a long mound that stretched maybe two miles along the shoreline from Apollo Beach to Ruskin.

"We know the bars in Tampa Bay that were here decreased by about 50 percent," Lewis says. "We know the seagrass decreased by about 80 percent."

The question is: Which came first, the sand bars or the seagrass?

Aerial photographs dating to the 1930s and '50s show seagrass on both sides of the underwater linear mounds. Could the vegetation on the outer edge of the bars have anchored the sand and kept it from washing away? Or did the bars buffer the seagrass beds that nestled in the crevice between sand and shore?

Could wave action resulting from storms or shipping wakes be affecting seagrass growth? What other factors might affect seagrass recovery?

As president of the nonprofit organization Coastal Resources Group Inc., Lewis is seeking up to $100,000 in grant money to try to answer the chicken-and-egg question and spur more seagrass recovery. At Wolf Branch, he will be working alongside scientists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute who are looking into whether the foraging habits of rays and manatees could be pinching off seagrass regeneration before it hits full swing.

Lewis hopes to start transplanting seagrass to the Wolf Branch site in the spring. A second part of his study involves installing artificial sand bars off the shoreline of MacDill Air Force Base.

He is seeking state environmental permits to begin a 10-year plan that will target up to 10 sites in the Bay, including a site near Gibsonton known as The Kitchen.

Lewis' efforts are among several projects examining the role of longshore bars in seagrass recovery being coordinated by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. Lindsay Cross, an environmental scientist overseeing the longshore bar projects for the estuary program, said about $700,000 in state, federal and local grants has been allocated for related studies.

Bedeviled By Rays

Meanwhile, also at the Wolf Branch site, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg just completed a two-year study of the effects of rays and manatees on seagrass beds. The institute plans to apply for a federal grant to extend and modify the study to dovetail with Lewis' efforts.

The area near Wolf Branch is Tampa Bay's ray central, especially in winter, said Paul Carlson, a research scientist with the institute. Particularly prevalent are cow nose rays, but other kinds of rays also occur in higher densities - up to twice as many per acre - than elsewhere in the Bay, he said.

Manatees feed on seagrass, while rays rip up the beds in search of their favorite food: shellfish.

"This time of year and in the fall, you can walk across the seagrass area and the sand glistens from bivalve shells after the rays eat them and expel them," Carlson said.

Some people think the rays are drawn to that part of the Bay by the warm-water discharge of Tampa Electric Co.'s Big Bend power plant.

"Cow nose rays have adopted the same behavior as manatees," Carlson said. "They go into the TECO discharge canal in cold weather and stay there and then forage in the seagrass nearby."

The canal lures thousands of rays to the area in winter, he said.

But other factors may influence their numbers, including depletion of the rays' No. 1 enemy: sharks.

"Either there's a lot of food for rays there ... or a lot less predation on rays from sharks in Tampa Bay," Carlson said.

To gauge whether the rays are affecting seagrass recovery, the institute conducted a two-year study that involved fencing off sections of a seagrass bed near Wolf Branch. Researchers checked aerial photography of the sites four times a year.

Preliminary results indicated the fencing protected seagrass from animals in winter but hindered growth in the spring by collecting debris and reducing water circulation, Carlson said.

The new proposal is to devise a large protective cage, about 700 square feet, to keep out foraging critters. The fenced off bay-bed will be divided into sections that will include bare sediment ripe for vegetation, as well as transplants and naturally occurring seagrass, so that scientists can determine whether rays and manatees pose a significant obstacle to seagrass proliferation.

Rx For Rejuvenation

Lewis' prescription for seagrass growth is twofold: jump-start revegetation with transplanted plugs from healthy parts of the Bay and introduce artificial sand bars at a site where transplanting already has proved successful.

In July 2006, Coastal Resources teamed up with volunteers from Tampa Bay Watch to hand-plant about 1,200 seagrass roots in six measured plots near MacDill Air Force Base.

"The great thing is they're taking off like gangbusters," Lewis said, adding that about half the transplanted seagrass plugs survived and spread.

He wants to follow a similar strategy at Wolf Branch. Currently, the site not only doesn't have the seagrass coverage it had 50 years ago, but it also hosts mostly shallow-rooted shoal grass that dies off and comes back. Historical information indicates several kinds of seagrass once blanketed the Bay bottom there year-round, Lewis said.

He proposes introducing a type of seagrass known as manatee grass. He knows the project faces challenges, including potential damage from propellers in an increasingly popular boating area and foraging from manatees and rays. But he thinks the seagrass can survive.

"It's really a good site," Lewis said. "It's like Mother Nature is saying, 'Give me a little help.'"

At the MacDill site, he is proposing installing four types of artificial underwater bars made of sand and shell. Two would include fill encased in protective synthetic material to make up what's called a Geotube, which resembles a larger version of crop rows enshrouded in plastic mulch in farm fields. He also wants to install one bar made of rock rubble and another of sand fill without the protective wrap.

Seagrass will be planted on the Bay side of the artificial bars to test the theory that aquatic vegetation helps anchor the fill and protect it from violently sloshing water.

"Our aim is to create a wave shield, an energy shock absorber," Lewis said.

Lewis said he expects to wait at least a year to see if seagrass growth takes off at Wolf Branch to determine whether artificial sand bars should be installed.

SIGNIFICANCE OF SEAGRASS

Scientists say seagrass provides critical habitat for fish and other aquatic organisms and offers a reliable indicator of water quality. The Tampa Bay Estuary Program has focused on restoring seagrass to its prevalence in the 1950s, when the Bay had an estimated 40,400 acres of underwater meadows. Estimates from 2006 indicate about 28,300 acres of Bay bottom hosts seagrass, up from a low of 21,650 in 1982.

Source: Tampa Bay Estuary Program

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 30 Dec 07

Current state of Labrador
thoughts about the meaning of conservation on the wonderful creations blog

Ghost traps keep on killing
link to an article on the reddot blog

Changi is a mini-Chek Jawa
astounding marine life on what is often dismissed as reclaimed land on the wonderful creations blog

Stalking and shooting butterflies
tips on how to get fabulous butt shots on the butterflies of singapore blog

Bronzeback
Encounters and gorgeous photos at tree top trail on the budak blog

Fowl goings on at Chek Jawa
Junglefowl that is, on the bird ecology blog

More coral ids from the coral workshop
at Semakau on the nature scouter blog

Read more!

Indonesian President urges better forest management amid floods

Channel NewsAsia 29 Dec 07;

TAWANGMANGU, Indonesia : Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono urged better forest management across the nation Saturday as he toured an area stricken by deadly landslides and floods this week.

"That would be a brilliant way to take care of the Earth," he said, according to the state-run news agency Antara, adding that it would help prevent further disasters in the world's fourth most populous nation.

The landslides and floods have killed at least 65 people in heavily populated Central and East Java after torrential rains lashed the region.

While activists blame such disasters on the disappearance of trees that stabilise soil and help absorb rain, local officials have insisted the unusually heavy downfalls have destabilised already vulnerable hilly areas.

"We don't need to blame the mistakes of the past. What we need now is better care for forests," Yudhoyono said during a visit to Central Java's Wonogiri district.

Local disaster management official Sri Mubadi said rescuers were still hunting for nine missing people in the district.

In adjacent Karanganyar district, the number of missing has fallen to seven after it was revealed that some people were found to have been out of town, said district official Heru Aji Pratomo.

He said rescuers were continuing their search, which has been hindered by a lack of heavy equipment, amid rainfall.

"I hope all the bodies will be retrieved today (Saturday) as their families have been waiting too long for certainty," he said, adding that two of the missing were children.

In East Java, the bodies of two children were recovered on Friday after a bridge was swept away by swelling flood waters.

Police initially feared 50 people were missing based on witness accounts of who was on the bridge when it was swamped.

Landslides and flooding are common in Indonesia during the rainy season, which hits a peak from December to February. - AFP/ch

Read more!

Deep-sea species' loss could lead to oceans' collapse, study suggests

EurekAlert 27 Dec 07;

The loss of deep-sea species poses a severe threat to the future of the oceans, suggests a new report publishing early online on December 27th and in the January 8th issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press.

In a global-scale study, the researchers found some of the first evidence that the health of the deep sea, as measured by the rate of critical ecosystem processes, increases exponentially with the diversity of species living there.

“For the first time, we have demonstrated that deep-sea ecosystem functioning is closely dependent upon the number of species inhabiting the ocean floor,” said Roberto Danovaro of the Polytechnic University of Marche, in Italy.

“This shows that we need to preserve biodiversity, and especially deep-sea biodiversity, because otherwise the negative consequences could be unprecedented. We must care about species that are far from us and [essentially] invisible.”

Ecosystem functioning involves several processes, which can be summarized as the production, consumption, and transfer of organic matter to higher levels of the food chain, the decomposition of organic matter, and the regeneration of nutrients, he explained.

Recent investigations on land have suggested that biodiversity loss might impair the functioning and sustainability of ecosystems, Danovaro said. However, the data needed to evaluate the consequences of biodiversity loss on the ocean floor had been completely lacking, despite the fact that the deep sea covers 65% of the Earth and is “by far the most important ecosystem for the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus of the biosphere.” The deep sea also supports the largest “biomass” of living things, including a large proportion of undiscovered species.

In the new study, Danovaro’s team examined the biodiversity of nematode worms and several independent indicators of ecosystem functioning and efficiency at 116 deep-sea sites. Nematodes are the most abundant animals on earth and account for more than 90% of all life at the bottom of the sea. Earlier studies have also suggested that nematode diversity is a good proxy for the diversity of other deep-sea species.

They found that sites with a higher diversity of nematodes support exponentially higher rates of ecosystem processes and an increased efficiency with which those processes are performed. Efficiency reflects the ability of an ecosystem to exploit the available energy in the form of food sources, the researchers said. Overall, they added, “our results suggest that a higher biodiversity can enhance the ability of deep-sea benthic systems to perform the key biological and biogeochemical processes that are crucial for their sustainable functioning.”

The sharp increase in ecosystem functioning as species numbers rise further suggests that individual species in the deep sea make way for more species or facilitate one another, Danovaro said. That’s in contrast to terrestrial-system findings, which have generally shown a linear relationship between diversity and ecosystem functioning, he noted, suggesting complementary relationships among species.

“Deep-sea ecosystems provide goods (including biomass, bioactive molecules, oil, gas, and minerals) and services (climate regulation, nutrient regeneration and supply to the [upper ocean], and food) and, for their profound involvement in global biogeochemical and ecological processes, are essential for the sustainable functioning of our biosphere and for human wellbeing,” the researchers concluded. “Our results suggest that the conservation of deep-sea biodiversity can be crucial for the sustainability of the functions of the largest ecosystem” on the planet.

Read more!

Photos document annihilation of thousands-year-old coral forest off Florida

John Nielsen, National Public Radio 26 Dec 07;

Scientists are trying to reseed and re-grow them. But oculina corals grow extremely slowly, and for that reason alone it is unlikely that anyone alive today will live long enough to see the reefs return.

Morning Edition, December 26, 2007 · When ancient forests are cut down, there's usually a big public uproar — unless it's a coral forest at the bottom of an ocean. In those cases, hardly anybody sees what's being lost. As a result, it's easy to forget what's gone.

But that's not what has happened to a set of ruined coral reefs found off the coast of Florida, thanks to 70,000 underwater photos taken back in the 1970s and 1980s. For decades these pictures have been sitting in the office of John Reed, a senior scientist of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. He and the late Robert Avent found and mapped these deep water reefs 30 years ago.

"I was (swimming) at about 300 feet, and the water was grey and blue," Reed said. "And all of a sudden, I saw this giant white structure looming up off the bottom, 60 to 80 feet tall."

It was a ridge made up of several thousand years' worth of white deep-water corals, known to scientists as oculina. At the time, these kinds of ridges stretched for roughly 90 miles through deep waters off the east coast of Florida. Reed says all these ridges were covered with corals that looked like bright white leafless fruit trees. Fish and other sea life buzzed around them like a cloud.

Thrilled by their discovery, Reed and Avent photographed "every square foot" of the deep-water coral forest. Those photos helped convince government officials to ban fishing near a few of the reefs. Unfortunately all the other reefs were vulnerable to shrimp trawlers that dragged giant nets with steel doors on them through the fragile coral forests.

"One pass would destroy several thousand years' worth of growth," said Reed.

By the late 1990s, it was clear that the reefs had been badly damaged by the trawlers. But nobody knew what the damage looked like or what exactly had been lost. Then, in 2001, Reed climbed into a tiny submarine, went back to the spots where he had helped take all those pictures in the '70s and took a second set of photos. Then he hauled the "before" and "after" pictures into his lab.

Reed spent a good part of the next several years putting before and after photos under a microscope, trying to figure out exactly how many corals had been lost since the 1970s.

"And what I saw devastated me," he says. "Instead of 60-foot reefs, I saw 60-foot mounds of rubble. Nearly every coral reef had been crushed to little pieces the size of his finger.

"I almost cried," he said.

Reed discovered that the only reefs still standing were the ones that were put under protection in the 1980s. His findings were reported in the Bulletin of Marine Science. Coral reef experts say the findings are depressing, but not surprising. They're aware that trawlers have done huge amounts of damage to deep-water reefs in most of the world's oceans.

What's different here is the fantastic trove of photographs that show how quickly reefs like these can be erased. They also show exactly what gets lost when that happens.

"When you look at the untrawled areas, there are lots of little fish sticking their heads out of the corals," said biologist Margot Stiles of the nonprofit group Oceana. "And there are these cute mini-lobsters that are clicking their claws at the camera.

But in the trawled photos, all you can see are "little bits of coral laying flat on the muddy bottom that stretches out of your field of view into the darkness," she said.

Stiles says it's now illegal to fish near the oculina reefs. Scientists are trying to reseed and re-grow them. But oculina corals grow extremely slowly, and for that reason alone it is unlikely that anyone alive today will live long enough to see the reefs return.

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 29 Dec 07

Echinoderms of Changi
amazing finds on our mainland shore on the tidechaser blog and discovery blog

Plan B
first hand account of travails and travel through flooded Malaysia by Calamity Joe and Disaster Duck on the budak blog

Coral flourescence and other attributes
lessons learnt during the coral id workshop on the mountain and sea blog

More coral ID at Semakau
with lots of background on corals on the urban forest blog

Legislation on dumping stuff on our shores
and on the Labrador intertidal zone on the reddot blog

Artificial reefs: do they help or harm?
highlights of some recent articles on the wildfilms blog

Kingfisher Coughing it up
pellet casting on the bird ecology blog

Pretty gecko
on the urban forest blog

Read more!

Creatures small and smaller: the marine food chain

Studying the lives and threats to life of those at the bottom of the food chain
Bangkok Post 29 Dec 07;

"Deterioration of the water quality will stop only if land development in coastal areas stops," she added. "All that the developers and investors think about is how to make more money, they don't care about the quality of life of the people - and many of the investors who destroy our natural resources are not even Thais, but foreigners."

For 18 years, marine biologist Dr Suree Satapoomin has been studying organisms so tiny they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Her subjects? Plankton.

"If you take a glass of water from the sea, the water may look clear but it is certain to contain plankton, which are so tiny they can be seen only under a powerful microscope," she said.

Suree specialises in copepods, or microscopic crustaceans, a type of plankton that serve as food for aquatic animals. "Whether it's freshwater, brackish water or saltwater, you will find copepods," Suree said.

Plankton are waterbound animals or plants that possess such limited powers of movement that they drift about on currents. One characteristic that defines different types of plankton is whether they remain plankton all their life (holoplankton) or whether they grow into other animals (meroplankton). Many marine creatures, including types of coral, fish, prawns, crabs, molluscs, starfish, sea-urchins and worms, start their lives as meroplankton.

The copepods that Suree studies are holoplankton and are the most important type of plankton found in the surface waters of the sea.

Copepods are a form of zooplankton, which are generally larger than other forms of plankton, such as viruses, bacteria and phytoplankton (plankton capable of photosynthesis), which they tend to eat.

"Viruses, and especially bacteria in this case, do not cause disease but are the primary ring in the food chain," Suree explained.

"They turn inorganic matter into energy through chemosynthesis, or chemical elements, instead of light, while phytoplankton are microscopic plant life that absorb nutrient elements like phosphorous, nitrogen and silicon and process these into food with the help of light, or photosynthesis."

The survival of marine life depends on the survival of plankton. Different types of plankton live at different depths in the water where the animals that feed on them know to seek them out.

The sea is essentially divided into two layers, which represent totally different environments for life, the marine biologist explained. The surface waters constitute the warm and illuminated upper layer known as the troposphere, while the cold, dark recesses that extend to the ocean floor are called the stratosphere.

"People see the importance of the big fish, prawn and crab, which they can eat, but they don't look after water quality," said Suree, who is head of the Marine and Coastal Resource Assessment and Production Unit at the Phuket Marine Biological Centre (PMBC).

Suree's unit investigates the community structure of marine and coastal resources, does laboratory and field work on enhancing production and assesses the changes in various types of marine organisms, food chains and algal blooms, including "red tides".

When the water is polluted, light needed to develop food through photosynthesis cannot penetrate the water, Suree said. Even bacteria, which process food by chemosynthesis so do not need light, cannot survive because there are no nutrients in the water.

"Only if the water is of high quality, where viruses, bacteria and phytoplankton could exist, will there be bigger marine animals for man to eat. If the water is so polluted that the primary food producers could not exist, then there would be no food for the zooplankton, which in turn serve as food for bigger animals, so the link in the chain is broken and humans at the upper end will be affected."

However, Suree said that in her 18 years of research she hasn't observed any major changes in the sea.

"There's a great diversity of plankton in tropical waters, especially in the Andaman Sea where the tide rises and recedes twice a day. The only visible problem is in coastal areas that are heavily populated, such as popular tourist spots," she said.

"In Phuket, hotel and road construction, tourists getting in and out of the water and improperly treated wastewater that flows into the sea all have destroyed the water quality in Patong. This can be seen from the plankton bloom that occurs in Patong every year.

"The year before the tsunami was the worst I've ever seen, when algal bloom turned all the sea green."

Algal or plankton bloom, also known as green or red tides depending on the colour the algal pigment makes the water, is caused by an influx of nutrients from increased nitrogen and/or phosphorus in the water as a result of agricultural fertiliser or sewage draining into the sea, especially washing detergents. The bloom often results in bacterial decomposition, which may reduce the level of oxygen in the water thereby reducing its quality and making it unfit for marine life.

A more dangerous form of plankton bloom is the one caused by algae that spread poison, which is then passed up the food chain to humans. Mussels made toxic through such a bloom could cause diarrhoea or worse, Suree said.

The worst form of algal bloom is the red tide, as the plankton that cause it produce a deadly neurotoxic substance called saxitoxin, which depresses sodium transport in the human body and affects the nervous system. Within 12 hours of ingestion of mussels contaminated with saxitoxin, breathing becomes inhibited and cardiac arrest may follow. Luckily for Patong's tourism industry, no tourist has yet died from eating toxic mussels.

Japanese scientists have been collecting data for more than 50 years, but they still cannot predict when an algal bloom will occur, Suree said. "All they can do is warn people not to eat shellfish at the first sign of the bloom.

"Deterioration of the water quality will stop only if land development in coastal areas stops," she added. "All that the developers and investors think about is how to make more money, they don't care about the quality of life of the people - and many of the investors who destroy our natural resources are not even Thais, but foreigners."

As Suree spoke, a new resort was being built right by the beach at Cape Panwa in Phuket where the PMBC is located.

Global warming has started to melt polar ice caps, which scientists say will result in a gradual rise in sea levels and changes to global currents.

"The effects of warmer waters on plankton is not yet clear," Suree said, "but a sudden change in water temperature by 2C would certainly change the marine community. Marine life that can adapt to warmer waters will survive, and that which cannot will become extinct. Whether this will have a positive or negative effect on the ecosystem remains to be seen.

"That's why there's a need for research," she added, "so that we know what the marine community is like before and after the change, and what impact the change will have on the productivity of Thai waters. But in Thailand there's very little money for research, unlike in developed countries where they have been collecting data for the past 50 years or more."

A graduate of the University of Copenhagen, where she obtained her doctorate, Suree has participated in an international educational and scientific marine expedition financed by the Danish government. She has also observed the importance the Danish people place on research.

"There was a web site where teachers, students and journalists [from the expedition] wrote about their experiences during the day, and it was closely followed by the people of Denmark," she said.

Suree admits that when studying for her bachelor's and master's degrees at Chulalongkorn University, she "did not like the subject of plankton. Like other young people, I loved diving in coral reefs to observe coral, prawns and fish, as you could see them clearly and admire their beauty.

"But the seawater is not just about coral reefs or sea grass beds, which the dugong inhabit. We have to look at the whole ecosystem and understand where the dugong stands in that ecosystem. Without the microorganisms that are the primary producers of food, the link will be cut off, the whole ecosystem will collapse and man at the upper end of the food chain will suffer."

Read more!

The word I want banned in 2008

Christie Loh, Today Online 29 Dec 07;

You "switched off" each time it appeared in the media or bristled at the way it was mangled and misused.

What is the one word you would like to be rid of as you bid farewell to 2007?

Weekend Today asked several people for their pick of not-so-hot words.

Global warming

"The news has been all about flooding and disasters and the phrase 'global warming' has been heard a lot this year. When I'm out at sea, it sickens me to see plastic bags and rubbish and it's not just in Singapore. But I think we should try to look on the bright side, like getting people to appreciate nature more, rather than scaring people with images and facts."

National sailor Roy Tay, who won a gold medal in the 2007 SEA Games, on the skewed presentation of the effects of carbon dioxide on the environment.

Climate change

"The benefits of controlling global warming lie far off into the future. Why should the far-off generation always get priority over the immediate generation? Presently, poverty is still very high. There should be priority towards the present generation."

Professor Euston Quah, Nanyang Technological University head of economics, on how governmental talks and media reports tend to stress the long-term aspect of climate change and inevitably dull the average Joe's interest in the topic because he feels less connection with the far-off future. The global debate should also deliver "less rhetoric, more action", added Prof Quah.

Win-win

"It's used a bit too often in any context or line of argument, where people need to convince you of something."

Filmmaker Tan Pin Pin, whose latest screened work is documentary Invisible City, on the term that has been used to describe things such as the staging of the Formula One race here and Singapore's support for Malaysia's Iskandar Development Region.

P65

"It started out nice and fresh, but after a while, it got kind of boring and mainstream. I was a bit disappointed because I thought they would come up with alternative viewpoints reflective of the young."

Veteran Member of Parliament Charles Chong (born in 1953) on www.P65.sg, the blog set up by 12 younger MPs born after the nation's independence. The People's Action Party coined 'P65' after last year's elections, to describe the 12 newbies tasked with connecting with their peers, who will form the majority of voters by the 2011 polls.

KPI

"In our area, we all know there must be some form of measurement. But this KPI sometimes gets stretched to that point that it's misused and ends up being a numbers game. Some things, you can't measure."

Mr Henry Quake, executive director of Council for Third Age, a public-funded body tasked with promoting active ageing. What, for instance, should be the key performance indicator (KPI) for whether the council is successful in changing mindsets, he asked? Attendance of events?

Medical tourism

"Beyond the casual tourist coming here for executive screenings, there are many serious patients coming; they're not tourists. Many are looking for better care, at the terminal end, desperate or even quite poor. The news keeps focusing on the rich individuals, but don't forget the bottom of the pyramid, which is heavier."

Associate Professor Phua Kai Hong, who teaches health policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, on how public understanding of "medical tourism" here needs to be expanded.

Governance

"The governance issue arose with NKF (National Kidney Foundation) and this emphasis is taking away attention from the fact that there's a lot of good work going on out there by charities that do good well. The real challenge is to find more good people to come and work in the sector. Then governance should not be so much of an issue."

Mrs Tan Chee Koon, CEO of the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre, believes the structures are already in place for good governance and hopes the negative spotlight currently on the charity sector will soon dissipate.

Local

"Today's audiences are increasingly exposed to a wide variety of artistic influences and productions from around the world. So, when artists create works, there needs to be a less parochial mindset. We need to be conditioned to think beyond our shores and develop artistic standards that can transcend boundaries and be enjoyed by audiences everywhere."

Mr Benson Puah, CEO of The Esplanade Company, hopes artistic works and mindsets here will become less "local".

Medals

"It's the spillover effect from last year's Asian Games and during this year's SEA Games, performances were gauged in terms of medal prospects and wins. It is the most overused word in sports ... In Singapore, there is too much focus on medals and winning. Sometimes, you learn far better lessons from losing than winning."

Ms Annabel Pennefather, International Hockey Federation vice-president and Singapore National Hockey Federation president, would like to see the nation measure sporting success in different ways.

Costs

"From the very beginning of the year, we started to hear about rising property costs and business rentals … Next year, we hope to see more stable growth without the big spikes we have seen this year."

Mr Phillip Overmyer, chief executive of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce, on how businesses are feeling the heat from rising costs. He listed factors such as Indonesia's ban of sand and granite exports to Singapore, the GST hike and growing wages.

Inflation

"The Government will probably have to do more to help. But it isn't just about that. It's about having everybody see that we're part of the circle of life, so that employers see that if they hire the auntie or the uncle — as opposed to the three other foreign people — he's doing much more for the community than just paying a wage to somebody."

Dr Gillian Koh, senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, on how the issue of the rising cost of living – and with it, inflation – has dominated 2007. While Dr Koh hopes to hear less of the I-word in 2008, she says rising costs will continue to be a major issue in the New Year.

Read more!

Vegetable prices up in rain-soaked Malaysia

Hazlin Hassan, Straits Times 29 Dec 07;

KUALA LUMPUR - THE heavy rains that flooded parts of Malaysia may have subsided, but the bad news remains - prices of vegetables are likely to stay high in the run-up to Chinese New Year.

The reasons: increased demand, along with a drop in supply due to bad weather and flooding.

While floodwaters in the main vegetable-producing states of Johor and Pahang have gone down, Mr Chay Ee Mong, secretary-general of the Federation of Malaysian Vegetable Growers Association, told The Straits Times that prices are not expected to follow suit.

'This is based on weather forecasts which predict another wave of heavy rains,' he said.

Meteorological officials expect more rain to pound the north-eastern Malaysian states during the monsoon season, which occurs between November and February every year.

Mr Chay added that farmers also have to factor in recent increases in the cost of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and seeds into their prices.

Prices of vegetables are now between 40 per cent and 50 per cent higher than normal, said Mr Chay. In addition, production has dropped about 20 per cent.

Previously, round cabbages were sold at RM1.20 (50 Singapore cents) per kg, but they now cost RM1.70 per kg, said Mr Chay.

And leafy vegetables such as spinach now cost RM3 per kg, compared with RM2.20 previously.

But the Malaysian government said the raised prices are temporary.

Deputy Minister for Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs S. Veerasingam said: 'Supply is still sufficient. If not, then we will take measures, including importing from China and Indonesia or other suitable countries.'

In Singapore, vegetable prices are coming down.

At the peak of the price surge, which occurred during the worst of the Malaysian floods in mid-December, prices went up by almost 50 per cent. The cost of kailan, for instance, rose from $1 per kg to up to $1.40. The current price is about $1.20.

Prices should return to normal in about a week, said Mr Tay Khiam Back, president of the Fruits and Vegetables Importers and Exporters Association in Singapore.

'There are five main vegetables affected, including kangkong, spinach and xiao bai cai,' he told The Straits Times.

'But these leafy vegetables also mature fast...it takes at most two to three weeks to grow and harvest, so although production is affected now, this can be recovered quite rapidly.'

According to Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority, Malaysia usually supplies the Republic with 300 tonnes of vegetables each day.

While there has been a recent drop of about a quarter of this amount, much of the impact has been buffered because stocks are flowing in from local farms and other countries such as China, Thailand, Australia and Indonesia.

hazlinh@sph.com.sg

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM TARA TAN, REUTERS

Read more!

A secret garden in Seletar

Business Times 29 Dec 07

The residents of Seletar Camp have recently been living with the knowledge that progress has finally caught up with their suburb, reports GEOFFREY EU

WITH its narrow country lanes, quaint English road names, simple single-storey colonial-era houses and verdant scenery with not a single high-rise in sight, Seletar Camp is the antithesis of modern Singapore - a leafy northern suburb caught in a time warp and a throwback to an age where the relaxed pace allows residents to sit back and enjoy the ordinary things in life.

For Singaporeans of a certain vintage, a drive through this former Royal Air Force base-turned-military camp will trigger fond childhood memories and lead to a greater understanding of why the residents who occupy over 200 houses in the estate are so passionate about protecting that way of life.

Many other properties are either empty as leases end or occupied by aerospace companies that service the adjoining Seletar Airport.

For the past year and a half, the residents of Seletar Camp - which was first built in the 1920s to house Royal Air Force personnel - have been living with the knowledge that progress has finally caught up with their part of the world, and just like the Dempsey Road and Portsdown Road camps before it, the rhythm of life as they know it will eventually be very different.

The government-owned area is due to be turned into an aerospace hub within the next several years - complete with F&B outlets, of course - and infrastructure work has already commenced, with the roads around Seletar heavy with daily lorry traffic.

The nine-hole public golf course in the estate has already been closed, its fairways slated to make way for a runway extension project.

Like a sleepy village

Residents like G Gobinathan represent the last pockets of resistance at Seletar Camp, where the residential community is akin to a sleepy village where everyone knows each other. Although he is relatively new to the estate - some residents have been there for two decades or more - he is vociferous in support of the lifestyle it represents.

His tidy three-bedroom semi-detached house, complete with spacious back garden, is located on a small lane with the atypical name of Regent Street - Hay Market, Edgeware Road and yes, Oxford Street are all nearby - and the area resembles nothing so much as a quiet English suburb, with dogs in the yard and children playing in the street.

Mr Gobinathan, his wife Annie and three children - Anthony, 14; Harry, 11; and Geoffrey, 7 - moved here from his family home in Upper Thompson Road just over a year ago, and they couldn't be happier.

'I used to have cousins living around here and I always wanted to live here because it's rather quaint,' says Mr Gobinathan, a qualified accountant who spent 15 years working in Europe and who is now the chief operating officer of a Singapore-based company that manufactures shelving for supermarkets.

'Here, you can hear the birds singing. It's also a fact that my kids don't fall ill so frequently because there's so much nature and greenery around,' he says. 'The neighbours are very friendly and our front doors are always open - it's very village-like.'

Despite the proximity to the airport, the air traffic is minimal, he says, especially since the activity is restricted to small jets and single-engine private planes.

Vanishing scenery

'Within the next five years, massive change is going to happen here, with many houses slated to be demolished, while some will be converted to restaurants and bars and workshops for the aircraft industry,' says Mr Gobinathan. 'All this beautiful scenery is going to disappear - of course there will be landscaping of whatever is left, but the whole area will still be more industrialised.'

Not surprisingly, Mr Gobinathan and his fellow residents are not too happy about the impending changes.

A loose-knit residents' committee met government representatives about preserving the area - to no avail - earlier this year, and even non-residents were moved to support. A short documentary by Li Xiuqi, titled Seletar Airbase: Singapore's Secret Garden, also helped to publicise the plight of the people living there.

At present, the rural atmosphere is akin to living in the countryside, notes Mr Gobinathan. 'Too much change is not good,' he feels. 'This place reminds us of the history of Singapore and gives people an opportunity for people to experience living with nature - modernising this place is not really necessary.'

This is the kind of neighbourhood where sitting on the patio and greeting people as they walk past is a daily ritual.

At one time, there were even no fences between houses. Residents include retired professionals, businessmen and expatriates keen for a reminder of the home country.

Mr Gobinathan, whose wife is from Ajaccio, a small town in Corsica, says there are hints of Europe in Seletar Camp.

'The place where she comes from is as quaint as this,' he points out. 'We both love the countryside and working in the garden.'

'Living here, there is a sense of security, even though all the doors are always open. There's a feeling of extended community, and my friends drop by unannounced for a drink because they look forward to coming here for a feel of nature and the environment. You just feel happy over here,' he says.

'It's rare that this kind of living is available to the average person - not many people can sit out on the patio and enjoy this kind of view,' he adds.

As a young boy, Mr Gobinathan had a fascination for flying, but his father refused to allow him to fly. 'Now, I tell my kids that at least daddy lives next to an airport,' he says.

The greenery, low-rise housing and being in a rural environment help to make Seletar Camp the ultimate countryside estate - a rare instance of true suburbia in Singapore. It's a place where living extends well beyond the walls of your house.

Mr Gobinathan waves an arm at the green expanse beyond his front gate. 'These old trees are the lungs of the earth - but they're all going to go.'

Read more!