Watercolours Dive Centre Blog

Anke got a surprise the other day when snorkelling up at the rocks. She was getting some nice footage of the batfish… but then…

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.

We’ve just had our first wedding at Impiani. Perhaps you saw this featured on the tv? Congratulations to Reeza & Shukreen! The day was simply fantastic.

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!!!

Sobri from our Paradise Resort made this impressive sketch of Impiani. I thought it should go on our website for others to see…

We’re sorry to see you go…. good luck with the wedding mate! Keep in touch.

Congratulations on becoming a PADI Divemaster Marcus. The ocean is your office

On a less-busy afternoon we decided that our boatmen and compressor guys should experience what they see us do every day… so we took our Watercolours staff on a Discover Scuba Diving experience. We had a lot of fun

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

We didn’t get a choice about this one! Our good friend K.C. got bored with setting up facebook accounts for his friends and decided to set one up for our dive centre also. If you have a facebook account you can now join the Watercolours Dive Centre group by searching for ‘Watercolours Dive Centre‘.

Last year DYK (Scandanavian diving magazine) got in touch with me to ask for an interview. This is now out, although they haven’t sent me a printed copy yet. You can read the article here.

We are very happy to say that we have put a lot of work into Impiani this year and the resort is looking good. Anke and I have just returned from seeing the workmen and they’ve done a great job painting the rooms and fixing the roofs. They’ve been busy in the restaurant also, restoring the furniture and painting the whole place. The new beach chairs are in constant use and we have had some very good feedback from our guests on the work done so far. The new terrace decking is very popular for breakfast and the new barbeque stand is just about to be finished. We now offer pizzas and bbq every night on our Impiani menu. When i get some time i’ll have to upload some photos! Hopefully I will also get some time soon to finish our website www.impiani.com …

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!

Yesterday (April fools day), two of our cats, ‘Phantom’ and ‘No-name’ volunteered to act as victims during Mark’s PADI Rescue Diver course.