15-21 May: Week 2 of Pesta Ubin
Pesta Ubin 2017
Checking up Beting Bemban Besar
wild shores of singapore
Sailfin Armoured Catfish (Pterygoplichthys sp.) @ Lower Seletar Reservoir
Monday Morgue
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Best of our wild blogs: 15 May 17
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Malaysia: Customs seizes 330 tortoises worth RM1.2mil at KLIA
JO TIMBUONG The Star 15 May 17;
SEPANG: The Customs Department intercepted a smuggling attempt involving more than 330 tortoises valued at RM1.2mil at the KL International Airport on Sunday.
Acting on a tip-off, a team of officers searched the air cargo warehouse at the Free Commercial Zone and found five boxes containing suitcases.
They found 325 Indian Star tortoises and five Ploughshare tortoises wrapped in moist pouches in the suitcases.
The tortoises were found alive and are believed to have been sedated.
The cargo arrived from Antananarivo Airport in Madagascar declared as "stones".
The fake address on the airway bill was a shop supposedly located in Salak Tinggi here.
Customs Enforcement Division deputy director Abdull Wahid Sulong said it was the first time that they found tortoises smuggled via air cargo.
"We've had five similar cases since 2015 and smugglers usually either hand carry or smuggle them through the post," he said.
Abdull Wahid said the Ploughshare tortoises could fetch US$4,000 (about RM17,339) each while the Indian Star species could sell for US$1,000 (about RM 4,334) each on the black market.
"These tortoises would normally be kept as exotic pets but we aren't able to determine whether they are destined for that or for traditional medicine," he said.
330 exotic tortoises smuggled in via suitcases
JO TIMBUONG The Star 16 May 17;
SEPANG: Quick action by the Royal Malaysian Customs saved 330 tortoises from being encased in glass tanks by local exotic pet enthusiasts.
On Sunday, the department’s enforcement team intercepted the smuggling of Ploughshare and Indian Star tortoises, estimated to be valued at RM1.2mil, at KLIA.
Acting on a tip-off, a Customs enforcement team searched the air cargo warehouse at the Free Commercial Zone here and found five boxes, each containing a suitcase.
Upon further investigation, enforcement officers found 325 Indian Star tortoises and five Plougshare tortoises wrapped in moistened pouches inside the suitcases.
The illegal cargo came in from Antananarivo Airport, Madagascar, and were supposed to be passed off as “stones”, according to the airway bill. The bill also bore a fake address of a shop allegedly located in Salak Tinggi.
All the tortoises were alive and believed to have been sedated.
Customs deputy director of enforcement Abdull Wahid Sulong said this was the first time the tortoises were smuggled through air cargo in large numbers.
“We’ve had five similar cases since 2015 and smugglers either bring them in smaller quantities through hand carry luggages or smuggle them through post,” he told reporters yesterday.
Abdull Wahid believed the tortoises were to be sold in the local black market.
Ploughshare tortoises could fetch US$4,000 (RM17,341) each while the Indian Star species could sell for US$1,000 (RM4,335) each.
“Since we found them alive, they were most probably destined for the exotic pet market,” he said.
The department could not say if a syndicate was behind the smuggling.
“It is difficult to pin-point at the time being and arrests have yet to be made,” Abdull Wahid said.
The case is being investigated under Section 135(1) (a) of the Customs Act 1967 for importing prohibited items as it is illegal to import tortoises without a permit.
Ploughshares are native to Madagascar while Indian Stars can be found in India and Sri Lanka.
Both species are listed as endangered. They will be handed over to the Department of Wildlife and Natural Parks of Peninsular Malaysia.
Meanwhile, a 35-year-old trader from Tamil Nadu, India, was sentenced by a Sessions Court here to two years’ jail for keeping 20 black pond turtles.
Bakrudin Ali Ahamed Habeeb admitted to two counts of keeping 10 female and 10 male black pond turtles (Geoclemys Hamiltonii) without a special permit at a hotel room in Lorong Ceylon at 5.40pm on May 9.
He also admitted to another charge of keeping the 20 turtles inside three suitcases, thus causing pain and suffering to the turtles.
Sessions Court judge Harmi Thamri Mohamad @ Shaharudin sentenced Bakrudin to 24 months in jail for keeping the female turtles, 12 months for keeping the male turtles and three months for causing them pain and suffering. The sentences will run concurrently.
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Malaysia: Exotic pet sellers turn to Internet to avoid arrest
Sharifah Mahsinah Abdullah New Straits Times 15 May 17;
KOTA BARU: Despite the authorities’ crackdown on pet sellers who have turned to online portals to sell wild animals, including totally protected species they are still carrying their business.
Sources said the pet sellers had added tiger cubs (panthera tigris), monkeys (long-tailed macaque), leopard cats (panthera pardus), sulphur crested cockatoo (cacatua galerita) and slow loris (nycticebus coucang) to their list.
The sources said the sellers normally made their offers on Facebook and mudah.my.
“Before this, they were selling bearcat and parrots but they have turned to tiger cubs, leopard cats, monkeys and birds.
“They are working in departments and private offices but their income is not enough to support their living. Therefore, they choose to get involved in the business.
“There are students who are involved in the trade and most of them are from higher learning institutions as they want more pocket money,” said the sources.
Kelantan Wildlife and National Parks Department director Mohd Hasdi Husin said it was monitoring the online sales.
“The department will arrest the pet sellers if they are found breaching the law,” he told the New Straits Times yesterday.
Those found guilty could be charged under Section 60 and 68 of the Wildlife Conservation Act 2010 (Act 716) for hunting or keeping protected wildlife without licence or permit. If convicted, they can be fined between RM50,000 and RM500,000 or jailed up to five years.
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Indonesia: Forest rangers arrest tiger skin traders in West Sumatra
Syofiardi Bachyul Jb The Jakarta Post 15 May 17;
A team of forest rangers at Kerinci Seblat National Park arrested two people allegedly involved in the trade of tiger skin and tiger bone on Saturday night.
The head of the national park, Arief Toengkagie, said the team, led by Nurhamidi, arrested two farmers, Awaludin, 46, and Sabian, 40, in Air Muring village in North Bengkulu, Bengkulu.
“They were arrested carrying two sacks of tiger skin and bones. They are now at the North Bengkulu Police station for further investigation,” Arief told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Kerinci Seblat is the largest national park in Sumatra, spanning parts of West Sumatra, Jambi, Bengkulu and South Sumatra.
The population of Sumatran tigers in the 1.37-million hectare conservation area remains low as they are under constant threat from poachers. The national park estimates a population of between 162 and 174 tigers in the area.
Previously, the team arrested two other suspects, Syamsir, 55, from East Dumai, Riau, and Aris Sulardi, 57, from Dharmasraya, West Sumatra, for allegedly transporting tiger skins to the border area between Bungo, Jambi, and Dharmasraya on April 23.
“The team estimates that the tigers were captured six to twelve months ago in forests in Dharmasraya,” Arief said. (rdi/wit)
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Best of our wild blogs: 14 May 17
Sentosa Butterfly Park
Butterflies of Singapore
Post-TED gratitude – It’s ‘not’ a Clamity!
Neo Mei Lin
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Two Singapore companies try new high-tech farming processes
TOH EE MING Today Online 12 May 17;
SINGAPORE — For the last 20 years, the crew at Eden Garden Farm has been growing and selling produce the old-school way, sticking to traditional methods of manually harvesting and supplying homegrown vegetables to markets here.
Now, with the agricultural sector being urged by the Government to keep pace with technology, the farm’s chief executive officer Desmond Khoo, 30, is looking to break away from this conventional mould and advocate new ways of farming.
In a sleepy corner of the Lim Chu Kang area, where limited agricultural land sit in the north-western part of Singapore, Mr Khoo and his team have been experimenting with a multi-tiered vertical farming system on their plot since March: Water is automatically sprinkled onto seedlings, which are kept at a controlled temperature, and light is continuously supplied to the plants for some 12 hours.
While this experiment is still in its early stages, Mr Khoo estimates that the pay-offs from automation could be tremendous. It could mean at least 30 per cent more harvests due to the space to stack plants skywards, as well as savings on manpower costs.
On Thursday (May 11), the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) announced that 36 plots of farm land, located in Lim Chu Kang and Sungei Tengah, are up for tender from August this year.
Using new land-tender methods, farmers will compete based on the best concepts proposed, with a focus on productivity gains rather than on land price, thus paving the way forward for farmers to adopt more technology and innovation.
Mr Sean Neo, 28, general manager of Eden Garden Farm, said that on a recent learning trip to various farms in China, the team saw first-hand how technology such as automatic sprinklers and automatic seed-sowing systems could be useful. Trucks that transported vegetable harvests were temperature-controlled and equipped with global positioning systems (GPS).
“Other than the farming system, what we saw was a total ecosystem, including the logistics. It was not just (purely on production),” Mr Neo said.
Mr Khoo is also managing director of PurelyFresh, a Web platform started in 2014 that he dubs an “online wet market”, which delivers fresh produce such as fruits, seafood and meat straight to buyers’ doorsteps. This also helps them to spread awareness about homegrown produce.
Another game-changer in the field is Apollo Aquaculture Group, a consortium of companies that offer a range of services and solutions for the farming of marine finfish such as hybrid groupers and coral trout, for the import and export of ornamental fish, and for conducting research and development on commercial farming systems.
It first started in 1972 as an ornamental-fish trading company, but now, harnessing technology, the company is producing some 110 tonnes of food-fish yearly.
Helmed by Mr Eric Ng, 44, its group chief executive officer, the group is the first firm here to use a barcoding system for its tanks, to allow easy tracking and updating of fish stocks.
It has a three-storied vertical fish-farming system, and an automatic water filtration and recycling system for marine food-fish and more than 200 species of ornamental fish.
Mr Joseph Loh, 51, who leads the group’s department in aquaculture environment, said that other features of the system include probes in tanks to send real-time information on changes in oxygen levels, acidity and salinity levels, for instance.
To offset the cost of going high-tech, the group tapped the AVA’s Agriculture Productivity Fund in 2015 and received a S$700,000 reimbursement. In 2014, the Government pledged $63 million of this fund to help farmers boost productivity.
Mr Loh said that the company is looking at the potential of harnessing these technologies in bulk, such as building six storeys for the vertical fish-farming system, should the group secure a new site through AVA’s tender.
Given that the present agricultural landscape in Singapore is made up mostly of “small, family-like” farms, he said that there is still room for growth.
“Singapore is well-positioned to (use technology more). It is nimble, it has to put in the right resources to establish this knowledge and skills, so we can do farming better than others,” he added.
Mr Khoo, who is passionate about his role as a young farmer, believes that modernising farming methods and a greater application of technology are the ways to grow, to change the perception that farming is “not cool” among the young.
On the important role that farms could play, he said: “It’s not just about generating profits. If you can contribute to national (food) security at the same time, it’s more meaningful than any other business.”
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Watching from farm to fork: Keeping food in Singapore safe in the global era
As Singapore's food supply chain diversifies, how is food safety and security ensured in Singapore?
VICTOR LOH Today Online 13 May 17;
SINGAPORE — When news of a major tainted meat scandal in Brazil emerged in March, alarm bells went off from South Africa to China and Singapore in a sign of how globalised the food supply chain has become.
The South American country's powerhouse meatpacking industry exports to more than 150 countries. For Singapore, Brazil is considered a major source of supply of beef, chicken and pork despite the huge geographic distance apart.
Though the scandal involved just 21 of 4,837 meat-processing facilities in Brazil, Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) took no chances and brought in a higher-than-usual amount of meat samples from Brazil to its laboratories for analysis.
"We analysed all (the extra meat samples) in two to three days, on top of the regular meats we examine on a regular basis," recalled Ms Elaine Teo, a senior scientist at AVA's drug residue laboratory.
While AVA quickly established that Singapore was not affected by the Brazilian scandal involving rotten meat being sold with faked certificates, the incident underscored the complexities of managing food safety in the face of a globalised supply chain.
Land-scarce Singapore has to import most of its food. Over 90 per cent of its food over the past two years, for instance, had to be imported from some 170 countries worldwide.
AVA recently gave TODAY an inside look at its layered approach to ensuring food safety, which involves multiple risk assessments, inspections, laboratory tests, and monitoring of the numerous food types and sources of supply that enter Singapore.
GATEKEEPING
Countries that wish to export livestock, meat, and eggs to Singapore must first be accredited by the AVA.
"We look at the capabilities of the exporting country. Are they able to ensure food safety, the animals' health, and the meat products they export to Singapore?" said Mr Herman Teo, a senior executive manager at AVA's accreditation division.
He added: "We also look at their labs' diagnostic capabilities, and how they regulate farms, slaughterhouses and food factories on the ground."
AVA officials travel overseas widely and regularly to inspect their counterparts' disease surveillance and pesticides monitoring systems. Foreign commercial food factories and farms are also vetted.
An AVA team was coincidentally in Brazil to inspect one of its export establishments when the meat scandal in March broke out.
Currently, over 1,000 establishments from 36 countries have been accredited to export various meat and egg products to Singapore.
"We have to ensure that their inspectors on the ground - both their veterinarians and food inspectors - are well-trained and know the symptoms of diseases. They need to have the confidence and ability to flag out deficiencies in their food factories and farms," said Mr Teo.
The AVA also works closely with the local authorities in exporting countries to ensure food safety at the source. This has led to the set up of several disease-free animal farming zones in Malaysia and China.
To keep periodic concerns like bird flu at bay, the AVA has been assisting their Indonesian counterparts in controlling and managing bird flu outbreaks in Batam and Bintan since 2006.
STRINGENT CHECKS
Once imported into Singapore, live animals and food items are subjected to strict inspection and surveillance.
For example, three AVA inspectors, including a supervisor, are stationed at the only pig abattoir in Singapore from Saturday to Thursday to conduct visual checks on over 6,000 pigs shipped from Bulan Island, off Batam. There are no deliveries on Fridays.
As the pigs get shepherded from the barge into the abattoir, located at Buroh Lane near Jurong Port Road, the inspectors keep an eye out for anomalies on the animals' gait, body condition, and skin colour.
One inspector will then inspect the meat, while the other checks the organs.
Pigs that pass the AVA inspection are then branded with a pink mark by a staff from the commercial abattoir. Pigs that fail the inspection, which number two to three daily, are further examined by an AVA supervisor who looks out for signs like abscesses in the liver.
"If (the abscess) is localised, we just remove it. However, if the anomaly is generalised, the whole pig is condemned and we make a report," said Mr Placido Ronald Palapal, a senior executive manager at AVA's slaughterhouses surveillance section.
The condemned sample, along with other random samples, are then brought to AVA's laboratories, where they are subjected to a battery of tests for drug residues or parasites.
(AVA inspectors conducting visual checks on imported live poultry arriving at Tuas checkpoint. Photo: AVA)
Similar checks are also conducted for live poultry coming through the Tuas Checkpoint, and at 14 local chicken and duck slaughterhouses.
Over the past two years, some 14,000 samples from the local poultry slaughterhouses had been sent to AVA's laboratories to test for bird flu, salmonella, and other diseases.
Besides live animals like pigs and poultry, AVA also inspects frozen and chilled meat, eggs, fruits and vegetables, and high-risk food like infant milk formula.
"It is impractical to inspect and test all food options available in our market. Our inspection and surveillance programme is based on scientific risk assessment," said Dr Paul Chiew, AVA's programme chief (food safety) and group director of laboratories group.
In 2016, AVA conducted over 8,200 inspections and sampling of local farms, while about 6,900 inspections were done on food factories in the same year.
AVA will cull the infected animals in the event of a disease outbreak in the local farms, such as in 2015 when a poultry farm was affected by a salmonella virus outbreak.
Local poultry farms are bird-proofed to prevent contact between wild birds (that may carry viruses) and the domesticated birds.
Professor Zhou Weibiao, director of the National University of Singapore's food science and technology programme, said Singapore has one of the highest food safety and security standards in the world.
"In many cases, Singapore is better than many developed countries. Some regulations (in Singapore) are even stricter than the US or Europe," said Professor Zhou. "This is because Singapore's regulatory system is a collection of the best practices around the world."
SCENARIO PLANNING
While strict, Singapore's food safety and regulatory systems are not impregnable. The country's strategic location and status as a transit hub also make it vulnerable to contagions, said Prof Zhou.
"For example, food poisoning can spread. You can't stop international travel," he added.
To that end, AVA has conducted simulation exercises to test out responses to various scenarios, such as a short-term food supply disruption.
An inter-agency crisis management structure called One Health, involving AVA, the National Environment Agency (NEA), and Ministry of Health (MOH), is also in place to respond to foodborne disease outbreaks.
One Health was activated in response to the Group B Streptococcus (GBS) bacteria outbreak in 2015 that affected raw-fish dishes, and a 2016 mass food poisoning case that affected over 100 people who consumed unclean food from a caterer.
"As food contamination can occur at any point in the food chain, it is essential for all of us to play our part in ensuring that food in Singapore is safe," Dr Chiew said. "Food safety is a shared responsibility between the government, industry, and public."
Keeping imported meat in Singapore safe for consumption
Vanessa Lim Channel NewsAsia 14 May 17;
SINGAPORE: The Brazilian meat scandal that erupted in March highlighted the importance of ensuring safety of imported food in various countries including Singapore.
With the city-state importing large amounts of meat every year, how do authorities ensure that the food are safe for consumption?
According to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), the answer lies in stringent checks that are not just carried out in Singapore but also in the country where the food source comes from.
IMPORTED LIVE PIGS AND PORK
Close to 6,500 live pigs are imported to Singapore from Pulau Bulan, Indonesia every week. AVA starts doing checks even before the pigs leave Indonesia. Upon arrival, they are immediately ushered into a shower area, where they are cleaned and disinfected.
AVA inspectors will then conduct visual checks for signs of ill-health. This can be determined by the colour of their skin, their body condition or simply the way they walk.
"Accreditation is the first step of our food safety system,” said Mr Herman Teo, senior executive manager of Accreditation Division, AVA. “What we call 'source accreditation' is us working with the export country to look at their food regulation and animal health regulation systems," he said.
"So we look at what their legislation is like, their inspection and food safety capabilities, to ensure that what they export to us is safe for human consumption and free from animal disease," added Mr Teo.
To date, 36 countries with over 1,000 establishments have been accredited to export various meat and egg products to Singapore. In the event of a compromise in food safety or animal health standards in the approved establishment or country, AVA will assess and evaluate the situation before taking action. When necessary, the authority will order a suspension on imports.
Once the livestock or meat products arrive in Singapore, random samples are collected and taken to AVA's Veterinary Public Health Laboratory (VPHL) to test for impurities that may not be so easily detected by the naked eye, such as excessive drug residue as well and parasites.
Food products that fail inspections will not be allowed for sale and the party responsible for this will be taken to task. First time offenders face a fine of up to S$5,000 and subsequent offenders could be fined up to S$10,000, jailed for three months or both.
USING TECHNOLOGY FOR FURTHER TESTS
AVA said nearly 380,000 tonnes of meat were imported to Singapore in 2016. This included processed meat and poultry as well as live animals such as pigs, chickens and ducks. Out of 72,000 consignments of imported meat and meat products inspected in 2016, only 90 consignments were rejected.
While the quantity may seem small, AVA said that it cannot risk allowing tainted meat to enter the market.
“Meat and animal products have a chance of harbouring diseases that could be transmitted to humans, so we look at it from a food safety and animal health perspective,” said Mr Teo.
AVA’s checks notwithstanding, industry partners are still encouraged to adopt in-house measures to provide further assurance to consumers. According to meat supplier Seo Eng Joo Frozen Food, technology is key to this.
“With Radio-frequency identification (RFID), we are able to data mine the products at each stage of the storage area," said Mr Charlie Seo, Business Development Director of Seo Eng Joo Frozen Food.
"(This is) so we're able to track how long does it take for products to move from one area to another. With time-based alarms, we're able to control whether there's temperature abuse or time-delay abuse,"
Meanwhile, experts from NTU's Food Technology Centre (Naftec) are working on a new innovation that will be able to tell if a meat is safe to consume in real time.
Professor William Chen, Director of the Food Science Technology Programme at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), said: "What is coming up, which has already been developed in the USA, for example, is what we call electronic nose.
"What this device does is to actually detect the decomposed component from the food produce, for example meat, and then directly inform the consumers,” Prof Chen said.
Naftec was opened in November 2016, with an aim to look into ways to enhance food safety and security.
Moving forward, Naftec will also be working with industry partners to develop better packaging to prolong the shelf-life of food produce.
The centre is currently developing a disposable sensor that can be placed within food packaging to detect spoilage.
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Best of our wild blogs: 13 May 17
Seagrassy at Terumbu Pempang Laut
wild shores of singapore
Talk Rocks!
wild shores of singapore
Singapore Bird Report-April 2017 Part II Residents
Singapore Bird Group
Night Walk At Punggol Promenade Nature Walk (12 May 2017)
Beetles@SG BLOG
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Cheers to sponge lost and found
When a marine organism once thought to be globally extinct was found in Singapore waters in 2011, marine scientists were overjoyed, twice over. They had found not one, but two neptune’s cup sponges.
Despite its size, Singapore abounds with animal and plant species. Conserving them is an ongoing challenge. In this third of a five-part series leading to Singapore Biodiversity Week starting on May 20, The Straits Times highlights a species saved from extinction: the neptune's cup sponge.
Audrey Tan Straits Times 12 May 17;
When a marine organism once thought to be globally extinct was found in Singapore waters in 2011, marine scientists were overjoyed, twice over. They had found not one, but two neptune's cup sponges.
Unfortunately, the heavily sedimented waters around Singapore allowed only one to be relocated.
However, Lady Luck smiled on them last year: the scientists rediscovered the "missing" sponge, nicknamed Neppie by the team who found it in 2011.
That is not all. They also found nearby two more individuals.
The discovery of the sponges, which resemble large wineglasses, seemed a toast to serendipity.
Said Dr Karenne Tun, director of the coastal and marine branch at National Parks Board's (NParks) National Biodiversity Centre: "We knew Neppie was about 60m away from the original sponge. So we formed a chain - five of us held on to a rope at 2m intervals, and we just swam in that direction."
Dr Tun was part of the team that discovered Neppie in 2011 and led a team of five that found it again last year. Using finstrokes to measure distance - one kick cycle was roughly 1m - the four divers from NParks and Mr Stephen Beng from the Nature Society (Singapore) swam about 60m in the waters off St John's Island without finding anything.
But at the 60m mark, Mr Beng tugged on the rope. Translation: "Sponge!" The team agreed to tug on the rope if there was good news before they descended 10m underwater. Amid circular jubilant swims around Neppie, another member of the team, Mr Koh Kwan Siong, a manager at the coastal and marine branch of NParks' National Biodiversity Centre, found two more.
More eyes underwater, favourable current conditions and good underwater visibility of about 3m that day, instead of the usual 1m to 2m, contributed to the discovery, said Dr Tun.
There are now five known neptune's cup sponges in Singapore - one more was found off Semakau Island in 2014, and moved to the Sisters' Islands Marine Park. Two more neptune's cup sponges were spotted off Singapore's southern shores, but the divers who found them did not log their exact locations.
Dr Tun hopes good visibility and more surveys of Singapore's seas would uncover the duo and, hopefully, other individuals too.
Meanwhile, NParks' goal is to see if the five sponges can help to build up the organism's population in Singapore's waters, where they were once found in abundance until overharvesting by museums and private collectors, and individuals who harvested it so they may use the cup-like structure as a bathtub for infants, nearly wiped them out.
NParks is working with researcher Lim Swee Cheng, of the National University of Singapore's Tropical Marine Science Institute, on a species recovery programme for the sponge.
Said Mr Lim: "The three discovered sponges look young. It shows larvae from this species, either from Singapore or neighbouring waters, recently settled in our waters."
But how exactly the sponges reproduce is still a mystery the scientists hope to solve through various methods, including studying its tissue to figure out when it reaches sexual maturity.
Three of the five sponges have been moved to Sisters' Islands Marine Park, and NParks plans to take the remaining two there soon. Living in close proximity gives them a better chance to reproduce and spread the eggs around Singapore waters, said Mr Lim.
"But it is also important we find out more about its life history, like when the eggs and sperm are released. Only after these studies are done, can we propagate this iconic species effectively," he added.
The scientists also discovered that the neptune's cup sponge grows fast, and had a quick rate of regeneration. Bite marks on Neppie left by turtles had been replaced with new tissue in several months. It was previously thought the sponge was likely a slow-growing species, thus contributing to its disappearance.
"Now that we know the sponge regenerates quickly, it might be possible to propagate them by taking cuttings from them - similar to how plants are propagated," said Dr Tun.
Sponges in general are natural water filters which draw in water to extract nutrients. Good sponge diversity can help to manage water quality in the reef, which provides shelter and food for other marine organisms such as fish.
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Indonesia: NGO urges Jokowi to issue moratorium on oil palm plantations
Moses Ompusunggu The Jakarta Post 12 May 17;
Environmental group Sawit Watch is urging President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to fulfill his pledge to declare a moratorium on the issuance of new permits for oil palm plantations, arguing that a moratorium will provide the necessary momentum to reorganize Indonesia’s palm oil industry.
The group said no progress had been made to follow up on Jokowi’s moratorium pledged in April last year, when he also promised to halt the issuance of new permits for coal mining operations.
Sawit Watch deputy director Achmad Surambo said in a press briefing on Friday that an oil palm moratorium was badly needed to stop environmental destruction in the form of land clearing for plantations.
Moreover, there was no sign that the government would revise Presidential Instruction (Inpres) No. 8/2015 on a moratorium of new permits for primary forest and peatland areas, which was due to expire on Saturday, he added.
Achmad said Inpres No. 8 and the promised oil palm moratorium were both important to ensure there would be no more land clearing for oil palm plantations. Land clearing was the prime driver of the annual land and forest fires across Indonesia.
“It will be better if Indonesia has a moratorium, as stipulated in Inpres No. 8 and another moratorium for oil palm plantations. They will complement each other,” said Achmad.
“During the moratorium, the government could revisit and then reform the management of the forests and the palm oil industry,” he went on. (ebf)
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Does a new era of bleaching beckon for Indian Ocean coral reefs?
The Conversation 10 May 17;
Ronan Roche
Research Fellow, Bangor University
John Turner
Professor & Dean of Postgraduate Research, Bangor University
Despite extensive media coverage, campaigns and scientists’ warnings, still the world is not fully aware of what coral bleaching is and why it is happening. Mention bleaching and some think that it is the death of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral, but the problem is much more widespread.
“Bleaching” is when corals lose the highly productive algae (termed zooxanthellae) from their tissues due to stress from high sea temperatures and solar irradiation. The algae and coral have a symbiotic relationship: the algae remove the coral’s waste products while the coral gives the algae a safe environment to live in, and provides compounds for photosynthesis. Without the algae, the coral no longer has a sufficient source of food, meaning that it essentially starves to death.
Due to its iconic status and numerous nearby scientific institutes, the Great Barrier Reef often receives the most attention when it comes to coral bleaching. But there are many other reefs across the globe that are experiencing the same problem. These reef provinces encompass undeveloped, remote and unpopulated areas, where, unlike near the Great Barrier Reef, monitoring and research is either non-existent, scarce or sporadic.
Chagos reefs
The Chagos Archipelago is a British overseas territory located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, consisting of 55 islands distributed across six atolls, and covering an area the size of France. It certainly fulfils the remote criterion: the Maldives are the next island group, 300 miles to the north, and it is more than 900 miles to the more substantial landmass of the Indian subcontinent. In total, the reefs and shallow banks cover some 60,000km² – nearly three times the size of Wales.
For the past decade, we have been carrying out research in the Chagos Archipelago. What we have found is that although reefs vary in condition across the large archipelago, most were vibrant during earlier surveys and managed to rebound from the first major bleaching event in 1997/98 – when around 16% of the world’s coral was killed, and only about 10% of living coral was left to some 30m depth.
After the 2015 global bleaching event occurred, we knew that the Chagos Archipelago had been affected, but it was only during our 2016 survey that we found the bleaching had been as bad as it was in 1997/98.
A degraded reef in Chagos, pictured in April 2016.
We were struck by the stark increase in dead coral, mostly the branching Acropora which form wide table-like structures, similar to a canopy, over large portions of the reef. We found that on reefs dominated by this coral type, more than 50% of the live coral which was present in 2015 has died in shallow areas.
What is most alarming is that these surveys took place immediately before the 2016 bleaching event began in earnest, and went on to surpass 2015 in severity. The true condition of the reefs within the Chagos Archipelago at present is unknown, as we haven’t yet been able to revisit the study sites.
Hat-trick events
We also don’t know when, or if, a 2017 bleaching event will occur on the Chagos Archipelago. But based on global sea temperature patterns so far, and early indications of bleaching starting on the Great Barrier Reef – which usually precedes events in the Indian Ocean – a 2017 event could begin in a matter of weeks.
This could very well be the start of a new era for the coral reefs of the Indian Ocean and beyond. Of course, bleaching itself is not a new phenomenon, having been first recorded in 1911 in the Florida Keys, and is likely to have occurred, certainly at local scales, throughout the last several millennia of global reef growth. What is completely new, however, is this frequency of bleaching events: if a 2017 event materialises it will be part of an unprecedented “hat-trick” of yearly back-to-back mass coral bleachings. Corals may recover from mild and infrequent bleaching events, but will die from severe and repeated loss of their algal symbionts.
Scientists warned in 1999 that if global warming patterns continued, reefs in the Indian Ocean could start to bleach every five to 10 years by 2010. Unfortunately, it appears these predictions have been met and may even be surpassed in the next decade.
Reducing the impact
There is no easy way to stop coral bleaching. A frequent suggestion is to focus on removing localised impacts and stressors such as over-fishing and excess nutrient inputs from agriculture. However, the Chagos islands are already devoid of these pressures, and yet appear to be equally susceptible to the effects of global warming as more populated reef areas.
Though we don’t know if these reefs can bounce back from bleaching, based on the previous pattern following the 1998 global bleaching event – where up to 90% of corals died in some parts of the Chagos Archipelago – the reefs could take a decade or more to recover. But if these yearly repeat bleachings carry on, it could be like pressing the reset button on each trajectory of recovery just as it gets underway.
Nonetheless, it could be argued that if anywhere has a chance of recovery the Chagos Archipelago does, and by continuing to research this location we may learn more about what factors promote and drive reef recovery in the process.
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