Watercolours Dive Centre Blog

Turtle egg poaching is rife on the islands so we decided to get back to basics and educate the kids in the village as to why they shouldn’t be eating turtle eggs today, whereas it was sustainable a decade or two ago on the islands.

We ran an education programme followed by poster designing. We chose the 6 winners and took them all on a Discover Scuba Diving session for their prizes. I only hope the kids had as much fun as we did!

The overall winner will have their design made into a turtle conservation t-shirt that will be on sale in our dive centre. Watercolours is also going to give t-shirts to the entire school, including the teachers (that’s about 200 t-shirts) in order to further promote care of our turtles.

Thanks to Reef Check with helping us in giving this presentation and for helping organise the colouring materials and children! Project AWARE kindly donated money for printing costs and this is much appreciated.

We’ve been visited by Anthony, who runs www.zesea.com and Corinne, whose website can be found at http://petitesbullesdailleurs.fr

Both visited Watercolours recently and we’re happy to see some great picture on their websites. Thanks for stopping by the Perhentians and diving with Watercolours. Was great to meet you both.

We can be seen here:
http://petitesbullesdailleurs.fr/2009/07/04/les-yeux-dans-le-bleu/
http://www.zesea.com/Zeblog/

Oops I am late posting this one! Thanks to Shafi from Wild Asia for sending me pictures of our last beach clean at Tuluk Kekek. Even bigger thanks to everyone who participated in keeping our islands a little bit cleaner, including the Reef Check Eco Divers (click here)

Better late than never guys - a belated public CONGRATULATIONS on passing your Divemaster Courses with Watercolours. You did great and if you ever need a reference relating to the way you approached your training and professional attitude towards diving then please let me know….

More signs of illegal fishing at our favourite dive site! A massive net completely covering Tokong Laut pinnacle. Our Watercolours Dive Centre staff and a few customers helped us cut away the net and rescue many fish. Thanks also to the Marine Park Authorities and Bubbles for quickly sending boats and divers to help

This was a bad one but luckily we were able to remove the net relatively quickly. It’s not just the fish that suffer of course, just think of the damage to the corals…

Getaway is Australia’s #1 travel show. We got a good plug. You can watch the video on the channel nine Getaway website

When Natalie Gruzlewski was told she was going to the Perhentian Islands, she had no idea where on earth they were…. click here to view the episode and read more….

The new Beuchat wetsuit, inspiration taken from the orginal 1934 design, and seen for the first time in Malaysia

This article is partially reproduced from ‘The Star‘ late last year.

The Perhentian Islands are simply beautiful - with careful management and planning we can keep them this way before the environmental pressures begin to become too noticeable!
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Terengganu’s Perhentian Islands are “arguably the most beautiful islands in Malaysia,” so says the Lonely Planet guide. Though the islands have dodged major developments so far, they are starting to creak under the strain of burgeoning tourist arrivals.

Sandy beaches, clear waters and great diving aside, the islands also boast forests that harbours a rich diversity of flora and fauna. This year, herpetologist Dr Lee Grismer from La Sierra University in California discovered a few new gecko species that are endemic to Perhentian.

Caron, who joined Grismer and a couple of other researches on their expedition this year, says, “You can spot monkeys, monitor lizards, and various insects in a 30-minute stroll just behind our resort.”

Though repeat visitors to Perhentian like the Addingtons think the islands haven’t changed dramatically compared to destinations like Redang and Tioman, they are starting to notice the effects from the increasing tourist arrivals and new resorts.

Read more here… ‘The Star‘

Doing their part

The Perhentian islands — Perhentian Kecil and Besar — have been a tourism destination since the 1980s and started out as a small-scale backpacker destination. Today there are about 20-odd beach chalets with several upmarket resorts and 20 to 25 dive operators.

One establishment, Watercolours Resorts and Dive Centre, started out as a dive centre in Perhentian in 1995 with an environmental slant. One of its founders, Anke Caron, even had her own turtle hatchery and used to buy eggs from the poachers at slightly above market value.

“Tourists used to donate money to help buy the eggs. But Anke closed the hatchery because the beach is eroded and now there’s a government project,” says her husband Peter Caron, a diver and former environmental consultant.

Today, Caron runs a weekly Reef Talk at the dive centre, a free one-hour presentation open to the public. He talks on coral reef ecology, why it’s important, the threats to coral reefs and what we can do about it.

Watercolours also operates as the only reef check facility on the island, under the Sustainable Island Programme with ReefCheck Malaysia. They have surveyed virtually every reef on the islands, collecting data, monitoring the health of the reefs and documenting their potential decline.

Read more here….

Well done to our boat drivers and compressor technicians! These guys are all Open Water divers now. Thank you to Flora Bay Divers for teaching them the theory. Anke helped them through their in-water training

From top left clockwise: Rosa, Ewan and Kharul (boatmen), Rusdi (kompressor), Anke, Kharul (kompressor) and Kimmi (boatman). And the little one looking between the drinks is Sofia.

We tried to get it all, but we ran out of bags!! Some of the non-developed beaches around the islands are in a shocking state. The rubbish platform collection system is not working well, and plastic ends up washing up onshore. We have handed yet another report in to the authorities and it seems that action may finally be taking place. Watch this space.

You can help us on our next beach-clean, which is scheduled for early October after Hari Raya.

Turtle watching is even more popular on the islands this year. Snorkelling boat operators have been swimming down and grabbing turtles to bring to the surface for snorkellers to see. Tourists are holding on to the turtles, or swimming so close to them and stopping them from coming to the surface for a breath of air.

If you book on a snorkelling trip and this happens then please show your dissatisfaction. And please email me with the details so I can continue to highlight the environmental concerns we have on the islands. The photo below show tourists holding a turtle at Redang Island, but we have seen this happen here all too often too.

In a presentation made at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Reef Check Executive Director Gregor Hodgson announced that coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region have largely recovered from the devastating bleaching event that killed up to 90% of corals on some reefs in 1998. He reported that 10 years later, recovery has occurred more quickly and more completely than expected. Caribbean reefs, however, are losing about 3% living coral every four years due to a combination of human impacts.

Read further details here

Getaway is an Australian travel show shown on channel nine. They visited the Perhentians and Watercolours this week to film a few dive sites and around the islands. A big thanks to Chris, Rochelle, Tangles and Nat and the Getaway team for choosing Watercolours to show them around. We had a good time

Congratulations guys on getting a whale shark encounter at Tokong Laut this morning. The grinning divers are Jules, Wid, Petra, Sarah, Jonny and Claudia.

Derrens ‘mates’ couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed for his birthday request for snorkelling with turtles. Luckily Anke and me were happy to take our new friend out for an early morning swim. Happy birthday Derren! If you don’t know who Derren is then just listen for the loud bloke in the restaurant. No, not Brian; the other loud bloke.

Well done Google for banning adverts for shark products (and other endangered species) from Google Ads.

Endangered Species

Don’t promote products obtained from endangered or threatened species.

Advertising is not permitted for products obtained from endangered or threatened species. This includes, but is not limited to, the sale of products derived from elephants, sharks, tigers, whales, rhinoceroses, or dolphins.

Anyone who has not been here yet is missing a great dive!