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.

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)

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…

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!
- - - - -

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….

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

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.

Last year Anke and I had the privilege of accompanying Dr Lee Grismer, Jesse Grismer, J.R. and Chan Kin Onn on their jungle exploration for new species of reptiles and amphibians.

Lee, Jesse and J.R. returned this year and together we explored the Susu Dara Islands. I have actually lost track of the number of new species we have discovered on these trips but i think we are up to 4 geckos, 1 skink and a caecilian. They are all in the processes of being described but I can now reveal our first find:

Only found on the Perhentian Islands of Malaysia, the Perhentian Rock Gecko (Cnemaspis perhentianensis).

The discovery of so many new species on the Perhentian Islands, many of which are most likely not found anywhere else, is just another indication of why careful planning before development on the islands is imperative!

Air Berani beach was cleaned on Wednesday by the Chatsworth International school on their visit to Watercolours on the Perhentian Islands. Well done everyone!

We collected a lot of rubbish again, including my personal record of 6 nappies in one clean-up (yuck). Thanks to everyone who took part, in particular Tracy Tomtene who is a photographer/journalist who will write an article on environmental issues of the Perhentian Islands (www.traceytomtene.com). We noticed that many plastic bags had washed on the beach after falling from the rubbish platforms. We have informed the authorities that the rubbish platforms are inadequate for the volume that is produced on the islands these days.

Pictured is the beach clean, the rubbish we collected, and Sam and Maaarten who retrieved a fishing net from the reef on the same day.

We’ve just completed more reef surveys as part of the Sustainable Island Programme. Another talented bunch of divers from KL came in to help monitor our reefs and to have lots of fun in the process. Apart from an abortive attempt to survey Tokong Laut (not enough corals at the right depth - sorry, my fault guys) the surveys went very well. A full report on the MUW forum (click here). The Roll of Honour:

SIP #3 Participants:
1.Lady Boss Shafi 2.bijan 3.bajaulaut 4.Buoyantvenus 5.Daniel Lim 6.Trigger Fish

Videographers:
1.RoCKET 2.RoCKET’s assistant, labu

We would like to send out a MASSIVE thank you to the divers who give up their time to help survey or reefs, Shafi and the rest of the Wild Asia team, the Reef Check dudes and of course Sime Darby Plantations who make all of this possible with their environmental awareness and generous funding. Whenever I get down about environmental impacts I know that I can cheer myself up by looking around me at all the enthusiasm and talent in the individuals and organisations who are fighting to make a difference.

We’ve just had a fantastic bunch of people visit Watercolours to survey the reefs of the Perhentian Islands. The surveys were part of the Sustainable Islands Programme, a joint collaboration between Reef Check and Wild Asia. The programme is sponsored by Sime Darby and we are very grateful for their input and help. Until i get some info and photos on our blog for you to see, why not visit Malaysian Underwater to read their report. There are a number of photos that are worth looking at!

The Roll of Honour. We would like to thank:

(Shafi) Shafinaz Suhaimi, (Deepblu) Izwar Zakri (Scubabunny), Nur Lela Musrom (Mun) Tang Kah Mun(Miezegreat) Ummi Haslinda (Eve) Evelyn Wong (Belle) Belle Tang (Watercow) Daniel Chua (Jgshuwei) John Goh Shu Wei, Cheah See Siang, and Lee Yeon Huat.

A big shout out to the video guys too: RoCKET (Emran Taib), Ariffin, Ted Adnan & Helmy.

Izwar Zakri is credited for this fantastic photo.

Just in case you were interested, we are using the Reef Check survey methodology to monitor the health of our reefs and to indicate any potential declines in reef health. You too can participate, just see our Reef Check Eco-Diver course.

Save the turtles of Terengganu! Please support our campaign!!!!

The turtle eggs of our islands are not protected at the moment as the turtle conservation project is not running. This is resulting in all the eggs being poached. It is still legal to sell turtle eggs in Terengganu (with the exception of leatherback eggs). We are asking the state government to make the sale and consumption of all marine turtle eggs illegal and to further protect the turtle eggs of the Perhentian Islands and beyond.

Please send an email to savetheturtles@watercoloursworld.com to register your support. We will hand all emails and a petition in at a later date. You only need to write a couple of sentences, such as:

I would like to ask the State of Terengganu to make the sale and consumption of all marine turtle eggs illegal and to install better protective measures to prevent the poaching of eggs from nesting turtles.

Email to savetheturtles@watercoloursworld.com with a suitable title.

Thanks

We just did another! Thanks to our Impiani guests for helping out on this one. We collected a further 53 bags of plastic and polystyrene and even an old tv set! Combined with yesterday’s beach clean that amount to 75 bags of rubbish. Pat yourselves on the backs everyone!

We’ve done 2 beach cleans this month. This one collected 22 bags of plastic and polystyrene from our beautiful Tiga Ruang beach. A special thank you to Luca (age 5) who participated with mum. Well done everyone!!!

Deep Sea News’ Kevin Zilnio points us to a great piece in The Independent describing what has become known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” or “trash vortex” - essentially a floating expanse of waste and debris in the Pacific Ocean now covering an area twice the size of the continental U.S. Believed to hold almost 100m tons of flotsam, this vast “plastic soup” stretches 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. Read more of here

Yesterday’s beach clean was a great success. A number of Watercolours customers kindly volunteered to help us clean the Tuluk Kekek beach, which is often covered in all sorts of rubbish. In around an hour, 42 bags of rubbish were collected. Thanks for all your help everyone!