Starting the work day with a smile! :D

Sometimes friends/acquaintances ask me why I can tahan working on an island (no, they are NOT referring to Singapore) and despite the extra travel time (and the occasional risk of being stranded), I can say that my work place is pretty special. Whilst literally living the island life (living in an island city state, working on a small island off the "mainland" ;p) I sometimes do lose track of the uniqueness of our workspace, and today we were pleasantly surprised as the boat berthed at St John's Island......

As usual, most of us were catching our 40 winks on the boat, and as the boat was coming alongside the jetty, someone exclaimed "Dolphins!" "Huh? Where?" The few of us who were awake quickly looked out the window to try and spot theses charismatic marine mammals, and sure enough, we saw a sleek grey body breaching the surface of the tranquil waters. And then it was gone again. And then it appeared, further away. Not much surface activity but at least we saw one or two of these strong swimmers as we arrived at work ^_^ Who else can boast of seeing WILD DOLPHINS greeting them near their workplace every once in a while? Unfortunately, they were a bit far for my C905 to be of any use so no photos from me. Will update if I come across any colleagues who managed to take any.
Have marked out on this Google Map the rough location of this sighting.

Click on my "dolphins" tag on the left to read about some of my previous sightings (or just click here)

Click for the rambling...

The Cove - environmental espionage?

Yesh, I'm slow. Just managed to catch "The Cove" with sonnenblume yesterday. It was also kinda apt that I was just reading the news on how Day 1 of the hunt at Taiji was slaughter free, whilst I was on my way to meet her at PS. And am kinda glad that I'm "re-activating" this blog by discussing this docu-movie.... Was supposed to put this up last night but Delphine (that's my 5 year-old IBM) wasn't cooperative... So glad I was still able to capture some of my immediate thoughts on my trusty Touch ^__^

My first impressions when I heard about this movie was that it was gonna be kinda another Sharkwater.... Albeit about dolphins instead of sharks. But alas, first impressions are just that. First impressions. The Cove came out more balanced (in terms of view points), as well as seemingly more objective than Sharkwater. Why seemingly? Mainly because it *is* still mainly a Western perspective of the issues at stake.... But definitely more balanced than Sharkwater. Not that I'm slamming Sharkwater or anything. Sharkwater definitely helped in increasing the awareness on the sharks' plight, even if I felt that their approach was a bit too aggressive and extreme. OPS on the other hand, toed the law (possibly broke quite a few) to get video and sound footage to show the world what was happening in Taiji. This small town in Japan's Wakayama prefecture has been making headlines (at least to me) every year on the dolphin hunt. Would say that every year, without fail, I would be watching depressing Youtube footage of these hunts. But those were random snippets of what was going on there. Nothing quite so coherent as what the OPS team and Ric O'Barry risked life and limb for.

Where Sharkwater did a head-on almost head-to-head confrontation with the shark finning industries, The Cove was more of an adventure into stealth and espionage. The snippet on their FB page puts it really succinctly:

Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, The Cove follows a high-tech dive team on a mission to discover the truth about the international dolphin capture trade as practiced in Taiji, Japan. Utilizing state-of-the-art techniques, including hidden microphones and cameras in fake rocks, the team uncovers how this small seaside village serves as a horrifying microcosm of massive ecological crimes happening worldwide.

The Cove exposes not only the tragedy of dolphin slaughtering in Japan, but also the dangerously high levels of mercury in dolphin meat and seafood, the cruelty in capturing dolphins for entertainment, and the depletion of our ocean’s fisheries by worldwide seafood consumption. We also see how the mandate of the International Whaling Commission has been manipulated by the Japanese Fisheries Agency for its benefit and its subsequent effect on the rest of the world.

That is inherently what The Cove is all about. It is NOT about showing the world the cruelty of these Japanese fishermen, the inhumane slaughter. Part of it is. Kinda. Especially after the intro about Ric O'Barry's days on the Flipper set, and how he turned activist after being on the "darkside" (aka dolphin trainer). BUT, more importantly, I like how other angles of the issue were explored. Like how IWC only covers large ceteceans, and how the issue about bio-accumulation of mercury in ceteceans was generally ignored....

So at least the "killing" section of the hunt seems to be on the winning end... What about the captures for oceanariums/aquariums/dolphinariums? In some ways, they are kinda "necessary evils". Like zoos and the like. How else would the general public get a chance to be up close and personal with these animals? To touch base. To have the same sense of space. And from there, feel for them and their plight. Personally, I wouldn't even think too much about aquariums being too small for large pelagics like whales and dolphins and whale sharks,if not for encountering them in the wild. And yes, I mean the little bit of "wild", that's right here in SG.

Taken off Semakau in June 2009. Courtesy of Karenne Tun.

However, the show is not without it's flaws. The main portion that I really felt was kinda skewed was the section on the interviews they carried out in Tokyo, about whether other Japanese are aware of what's going on in Taiji. I may be wrong, but the logic of those interviews came across as "How can dolphin hunting be a tradition if the rest of Japan doesn't know about it?". Two main issues I have about that. (1)Tokyo is the epitome of modernized Japan, and as with most of the modernized world and countries, there would definitely be some lost in knowledge of culture and traditions. (2)Taiji is a SMALL fishing town/village. Many rural villages have their own local traditions and customs that other parts of the country may not know about. Furthermore, it appears that whale hunting etc. HAS been the villagers' way of life for centuries. At this point in time it would probably be difficult to check with the town if the hunts are truly remnants of their traditional past, as this is gonna be a really touchy issue, with all the bad publicity and all.....

But all in all, it IS a good watch, and definitely a wake up call. At least for those of us who feel that they have a connection to the sea. How many of you out there actually stop to think about how and where do we get our animals in zoos and aquariums? And about how captivity is like for them.... Just my thoughts and all.... Docu-movies like The Cove and Sharkwater ARE a dose of reality amidst all the other run-of-the-mill movies that transport us into the world of story telling....

Taken off Semakau in June 2009. Courtesy of Karenne Tun.

Not even sure if I covered what I wanted to be said and shared... But if you're wondering what YOU can do, firstly, if you haven't caught the movie, go catch it. Preferably bring a friend too. Blog about your thoughts. Write in to you local Japanese embassy (but do be polite!) Read more on the official movie website or here. Write into OPS and/or Ric O'Barry to give encouragement and/or thanks. Sign to petition to WAZA. The list goes on. If this has made some sort of impact to you, get creative and do something positive for the dolphins! ^__^

Click for the rambling...

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...

Welcomed back to the blue by DOLPHINS!!!

Was back at Semakau today. Missed diving, missed my coral nursery, so yep, this divejunkie sure was glad to be back in the blue~~ Was high and dry for a MONTH!! Has got to be a record for me....

Anyways, we were out at the nursery doing some relatively much needed maintenance, as well as bring the Once Upon a Tree filmcrew out to video the nursery and Semakau. Just as I was getting back on the boat, the boatmen went "Dolphin dolphin!" And lo and behold, there they were. 3-4 of them grey ones (think probably bottlenoses) were breaching every once in a while as they went with the currents..... The last time I saw dolphins was more than 6 months ago at St John's, so this was a great treat. Both to welcome me back to the sea, as well as an early CNY ang pow or should I say "blue pow"? And there I was telling one of the filmcrew folk that some of us volunteers suspect that dolphins have a 5-day week since sightings have seemed to be on weekdays only.... *lol* Too bad the delphines were a tad bit too far for either my camera or the video camera to grab any decent footage.... Do hope to see more of these gentle and shy creatures since the boatmen keep telling us they spot the dolphins regularly around the nursery when we are down there doing work...

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL!!

Click for the rambling...

Dolphins in Singapore!!!

Back to work dives with the lab. Today was supposed
to be spent helping the Honors kids get fragments and recruits for their experiments. You can see how excited SY was at the start of the day...


Of course, at ard 12:15h we did indeed find something REALLY EXCITING!!! Indo-pacific humpback/Chinese white dolphins! (also know locally as pink dolphins) Not just a few but an entire family group of possibly 10 or so near the linkage between St John's Island and Lazarus. There were the smaller, grey juveniles as well as the larger almost white-pinkish adults. So cool!! My first dolphin sighting in Singapore!! Enough said, here are the photos and videos that Marco and I took ^^

The photos can only be described as a gallery of random dolphin body parts, but amazingly enough, Marco managed to take shots of just about every part of the dolphins!! Dude, you rock!!



And of course, if a picture paints a thousand words, videos portray a gadzilliong more ^^ Do excuse the Blair Witch feel of the videos since we were on the boat, putting our digicams to their max zoom....Enjoy!!



At least we know that some of our marine mammals still frolick in our waters despite developments like the connection between St John's Island and Lazarus. Now, if only mantas and whalesharks would appear in Singapore too~~~

SY has more photos and videos here. And below are the Wiki links to Humpback dolphins and Sousa chinensis chinensis:
(1) Humpback dolphins
(2) Chinese White dolphins

Click for the rambling...