Pink dolphins put on a performance at Semakau~~

(Excuse the photo-less post but such exciting events have JUST gotta happen when there are NINE divers onboard the boat, with only ONE camera... the rest of us just got desperate enough to try using our cameraphones but alas....) Anyways, if you're still interested in a photo-less account of our day out at sea with our local dolphins, do read on! Photos and vids will be posted once K! has sorted them out ^_^

We were back to using Dolphin Explorer 2 instead of the air-conditioned Explorer 1. This proved to be a good thing since Mel was shouting "Dolphin!!!" as we were approaching the nursery site at Semakau. ^_^ Open-cabin boat means that snoozing divers (such as yours truly) get the chance to shock themselves awake, look up just in time to see 1, 2, THREE!!! greyish (aka juvenile) pink dolphins just off the starboard bow of the boat! After realising that they were hanging around the area, we were kinda playing hide-n-seek with our newfound delphinium mammalian friends for an our or so. It really was a special treat for the 5 Hons. students who were out with us for their check out dives. Plus it was my third time seeing dolphins in local waters (and second time at Semakau)! ^_^ My first delphinium encounter was near St John's Island, and the second was at Semakau.

After the de-gearing and lunching, we were just starting to head back to mainland SG, and it being a nice and sunny day, the usual chit-chatting and catching up was done whilst drying off in our swimwear. Can't even remember what I was talking to Mei Lin about when I saw a grey fin pop in and out of the water. Dolphin!!! My turn to do the sudden shout! Hee~ This time the 3 (or 4) dolphins (likely to be the same ones) seemed to be riding the waves and/or boat wake. Much more playful behaviour than in the morning. They were even jumping out of the water, and "waving" to us with the flippers at some point! Pretty brilliant performance! Who needs to go for the Dolphin Lagoon show when dolphins are showing off like this in the wild. Real amazing stuff!!! Mwahaha! (apologies but I can't resist gloating~~~ ;p) And the reason why we saw dolphins TWICE in a day? Because we were on Dolphin Explorer 2!!

Oh yes. For those curious about the dive, it was relatively crap vis. Was supposed to locate and retrieve one of my missing nursery tables but we couldn't find it at all >_< Came across this drift net that went over the coral nursery, the floating nursery, coral transplant site, and all the way to the breakwater.... caught all over the corals *bah* kept having to untangle it. k! wanted to take photos/videos of it for documentation but the boatmen appeared to retrieve it before she could do so. D and I swam the entire length of it and the good news is that we only saw 5 fish (1 dead big-eyed fish, and 4 live fish - threadfin(?) butterflyfish, soapfish, common damsel, ~20cm Bleeker's parrotfish) caught in it. Bad news was that we didn't release them before the boatmen came along since we wanted k! to take photos of them....

We *did* have some excitement at the nursery as we had two young cuttlefish mothers gently laying their clutch of eggs in one of the larger Acropora sp. corals. ^_^ Kept distracting me from what we were supposed to be doing~~~ But again, no photos... It really is true that you see soooo many interesting stuff and photo chances when you DON'T have a camera....

Click for the rambling...

Biodiversity Photo Contest by ACB (22 May-30 Aug 2009)

Zooming in on Biodiversity, the first ASEAN-wide Photo Contest on Biodiversity.

The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has announced that it is now accepting entries to the First ASEAN-wide photo contest “Zooming in on Biodiversity” during the International Day for Biodiversity 2009 (IDB 2009) celebrations at the SEARCA Auditorium, Los Baños, Laguna on 22 May.

Conducted in partnership with the European Commission (EC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC), the photo contest seeks to popularize biodiversity among its stakeholders and the general public through the medium of photography.

“Among environmental issues and concerns regionally and globally, biodiversity Conservation is among the least known, yet one of the most important. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of the global population, mostly scientists and environmentalists, understands the key role that biodiversity plays in Humankind’s survival. This lack of knowledge often translates to the lack of care for the very environment that nourishes us,” ACB Executive Director Rodrigo U. Fuentes told about 100 scientists, ambassadors, students, and media practitioners who participated in the IDB 2009 programme.

He added that there is an urgent need to popularize biodiversity. “One effective way to accomplish this is to use the power of photos. An old cliché but still very true, a picture paints a thousand words. By translating biodiversity and its relationship with health, food security, Climate change and other everyday human issues into powerful images, we can generate a greater awareness for this often-difficult-to-grasp concept,” Fuentes said.

For his part Delegation of the European Commission to the Philippines Delegation Ambassador Alistair MacDonald said the contest "is an excellent means of increasing public awareness on the importance and beauty of biodiversity. One's photographic eye can encapsulate a very complex issue in a single image."

The contest, which will run from 22 May 2009 to 30 August 2009, is part of ACB’s key thrust to promote regional public awareness on biodiversity conservation. It was also designed to increase the involvement of media practitioners, professional and amateur photographers, young photography hobbyists, and the business sector in generating awareness for biodiversity conservation.

Open to all residents of ASEAN Member States Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam, the contest welcomes entries which are exclusive to the contest, unpublished, and not submitted to previous contests.

Entries should capture various images related to biodiversity (plants, animals, marine life, ASEAN Heritage Parks) or the many benefits that biodiversity brings to human beings, its importance, the threats biodiversity face (deforestation, climate change), or how biodiversity affects lives. Photos showing initiatives to protect biodiversity resources such as plants, animals, and marine Species are also welcome. Entries can also depict: biodiversity as source of food (food and agriculture); biodiversity as source of medicine (health and medicine); biodiversity as source of shelter; biodiversity and climate change; the aesthetic value of biodiversity; biodiversity as source of livelihood; and biodiversity and ecotourism.

For more details on submissions etc., please click here:
Zooming in on Biodiversity

Click for the rambling...

Invasive Aliens in Singapore....

So after a two month long blog drought, juan's finally inspired to blog ;p Just got back from Prof Peter Ng's lunchtime talk on Invasive Alien Species in Singapore, and I was live twittering since I had my trusty iPod touch whilst on wireless@SG. First thing I learnt was that twittering's a little tough when you're basically typing with two fingers instead of ten, and secondly, with a touch screen you can look away from the keyboard whilst typing..... First time I did live twittering of a talk, so there were typos here and there, as well a bit of incoherency. Just hope that the folks who were following my twitter page got the gist of the talk. There's a screen-cap of my tweets as well as the relevant replies that I got during the talk..... It's arranged in chronological order so you can get a gist of the ramblings tweets whilst the talk was going on....


Otterman also put up a quick post on the Biodiversity Crew blog on the live twittering. I do hope that most of the stuff that I posted up's accurate, seeing that I was furiously pounding away on my iPod during the talk!

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY DAY!!!

p/s. To help you make sense of the ramblings tweets, here's a link to Ria's very nicely done summary of the talk (with photos too!) ^_^

Click for the rambling...

Off to Manado!!! (09-16 Mar)

divejunkie's long awaited dive trip is here ^_^ Flying off to Manado later, for a week of fun diving at Bunaken and Lembeh. Plus a one day visit to Tangkoko Nature Reserve.

(Photo taken by Jens Petersen, Wikimedia)
With some luck, we should be able to pop by Kasawari Resort and say 'hi' to Tony Wu and the FiNS gang ^_^ Pretty excited about the entire trip as: (1) it's the first time I would be diving out of Singapore/Malaysia, (2) been 2.5 years since I last flew, (3) it's MANADO!!! (more especially LEMBEH!!!) How can I not get excited?!? Didn't manage to get a new laptop before the trip, so even if there's decently charged internet access there, won't really be online.... So I'll see you guys when I get back next week ^__^ Meanwhile, check out Tony's blog as he tries to update from there, as well as the photos he has on Flickr~~~

Click for the rambling...

After the rain....

This year's monsoon has certainly been a bit awkward with more days of bright sun than heavy rain, probably contributing in part to our recent bushfires.... The past few days has marked the return of the rain, and as the rain abated a little on the way home today, this was the sight that greeted me.

A double rainbow!!! Yar, I know, there's only one really obvious rainbow, with a really faint one just above it. Was taking this from the train with my trusty SE C905 as the train was pulling into the station. Quite a few of the other passengers were giving me queer looks but another guy at least was doing the same thing! ^_^ Was too slow to get a full shot but the more obvious rainbow was a full one! Reaching across the horizon, and the faint secondary one was partial, and fading really fast.....
And here's another one from the bus. By then the secondary rainbow faded out quite a bit, and when I showed this to mum, she thought it was just a reflection!

Just got so excited that I posted the photos directly from my hp and they hit the web before I even got home!!

So how to double rainbows come about? Most of us probably know that a rainbow results from the bending of light as it passes through suspended water droplets, resulting in our run-of-the-mill seven coloured rainbow. The colours come about due to the different wavelengths of different coloured light that actually blend together in the visible (to human eyes) spectrum. On rarer occasions, a fainter secondary arc can be observed, with the order of the colours reversed. (I know this isn't really obvious in my shots since it looks more like a shadow of a rainbow rather than an actual rainbow....) The detailed explanation seems to be here. But from what I can understand, as the sunlight passes through the water droplets, it is sometimes REFLECTED aka mirrored after it has been REFRACTED aka bent, resulting in the mirror image secondary rainbow. Cool eh? Probably need to do some tinkering with the image contrast to make it more visible ^_^

The quick Wikipedia search also made me realised that the rainbow has certainly captured the hearts of many people across cultures and heritages. Seems like just about every civilisation seems to have a story or two in their mythology or religion that involves rainbows. The most commonly heard one is probably the one about the leprachaun's pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (which is in fact impossible to find since a full rainbow is basically a circle). Though the one that I am most familiar with is the one from the Bible, where God uses the rainbow to indicate his promise that there would not be another flood like the one Noah survived. (Genesis 9:13-15) It's a good reminder for me even as the recent rumblings of climate change and sea level rise threaten to put me in a frenzy.... That there's still hope ^_^ Interestingly enough, the Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem from Ancient Mesopotamia, also seems to indicate that the rainbow has similar promise of sorts with regards to a great flood....

Here's the links to the original postings:
(1) TwitPic
(2) Facebook (think only friends and friends of friends can see this....)

Click for the rambling...