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.

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

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.

Very well done Bjørn and Trine for completing the Reef Check Eco-Diver course and passing all sections! The Reef Check course is not as easy as you might think… but Bjørn and Trine passed with flying colours and now look at the reef with new eyes. Previously, we have received both charity donations (Kota Budaya Lions) and had companies (e.g. Sime Darby) adopt reefs and send their staff to survey them. Bjørn and Trine are the first tourists on the islands to undertake the Eco-Diver course and we give them hearty congratulations! Well done guys. Who’s next?

We are happy to see that our diving surveys are playing a part in raising awareness to the dangers that our Malaysian reefs are facing! The New Strait Times recently ran a double-page article on the work Reef Check Malaysia has carried out, including a status report on our work on the Perhentians. The article highlighted hastily planned development and poor waste disposal as playing a part in impacting coral ecosystems. It also stressed the need for continuing monitoring… so now is the time to come to the islands and complete a Reef Check diving survey with Watercolours!

We extend a big thank you to the Lions Club of Kota Budaya, who have donated money for us to survey the Sea Bell reef. Many of the Lions members and their family members visited the islands to inspect some of our coral reefs to see for themselves what condition they are in. They snorkelled and dived at 3 separate sites of varying health. The reef they have adopted is the Sea Bell reef. Our survey showed the reef to be in good condition, with the shallow area having over 70% live coral. It is important that we survey our healthy reefs so that future surveys can detect changes and the appropriate authorities can be alerted if necessary.

We would also like to thank Loo, a diver from Kuala Lumpur, for accompanying us on the surveys and taking photos. Loo is keen diver and wants to highlight environmental concerns around the islands.