Good Friday on St John's Island

Sorry that this post is coming way late. The coral workshop is some what logistically challenging and there's not too much free time for me to do up this post. Least ways not after I have grabbed my photos and gotten some off other photographers. >.< Boy was the beach on St John's crowded on Good Friday! My Geography teacher from secondary school, Mrs Chua, contacted me about arranging for a guided nature walk for her friends and their family. Interestingly enough, Mrs Chua also facilitated my first ever visit to St John's Island for a geography fieldtrip. That trip stuck in our memories mainly due to the fact that after visiting the mangroves, we were caught in a rather heavy downpour at the rocky cliffs. At least this time around we had better luck with the weather.

Since I was in the middle of the SECORE workshop, and we made the arrangements in less than a week, it was a rather informal affair with Abby (who also happened to be on St John's for the workshop) kindly helping to guide half the group. It was nice sharing to a group of enthusiastic family group. Lots of questions asked, and a couple of them were also pointing out some of the raptors that were flying around the vegetation on the rocky cliff!

The group kept us pretty busy with their zeal for nature, and we were constantly talking and sharing stories with the group, so much so that I actually didn't take many shots of the organisms.

In fact, we stayed out until the tide was starting to look like it would cut off our route back! Some of the group was still heading further along the rocky shore at this point, and we had to quickly start ushering people back to the entry point.

But of course, spending Good Friday out at the shores would call for a group shot, and Abby was quickly loaded with an assortment of cameras to help with that. Really couldn't resist sneaking in a shot of her managing at least 5 cameras!!!!!

At the end of the walk, Mrs Chua and another geography teacher took over for the geography portion of their outing. The students in the group did a little exercise in beach profiling while Abby and I headed back to TMSI to check on the preparations for the first night of expected coral spawning before the group came up to TMSI.

Dr Michael Laterveer (Rotterdam Zoo) was kind enough to do a quick presentation for the group, introducing them corals, mass spawning, and the work that we hoped to get done during the ongoing SECORE workshop.

The visit was wrapped up with a quick peek at more marine life in the TMSI touchpool before the group headed back to the beach for a picnic lunch. ^_^

It's also heartening to read that the visit to St John's turned out pretty well in spite of the rushing here and there! Certainly hope the group would come back to St John's for another visit!

Click for the rambling...

SECORE workshop - setting up

A continuation from my previous post, the folks involved in the our first ever coral spawning workshop aka SECORE workshop here in Singapore came over to the Tropical Marine Science Institute facilities on St John's Island yesterday, and Manon has done up a real quick photo blog of yesterday's orientation and settling in.

Settling in including having a quick intro to TMSI, as well as round 1 of talks/presentations by the various partners. Dr Paul Erftermeijer (Deltares) gave an intro to some of the research that Deltares does, as well as the research areas that Singapore Delft Water Alliance covers. Dr Mary Hagedorn (Smithsonian Institution/HIMB) followed that with talking about some threats to coral reefs and how freezing coral sperm may help in preserving some genetic diversity. Dr Michael Laterveer (Rotterdam Zoo) wrapped up the series of talks with a summary of what was done in the previous 4 SECORE workshops that were conducted in Rotterdam and Puerto Rico.

So on to today.... Or at least the first half of the day. Our shopping crew headed back to mainland Singapore to get piping, hardware, tubing, liquid nitrogen, more drinks and snacks, etc. that would be required to tide us over the long Easter weekend as we get busy with the spawning. Here you can see one of the DBS students in discussion with Michael on setting up rearing bins for the coral babies. Our many thanks go out to Abby, Ned, Mark, Roy, and Juward who spent the morning rushing around for the stuff that we needed, especially for getting everything in time to meet the mid-day ferry back to St John's!


The other (luckier?) team went out to Kusu to get some coral colonies for spawning in the tank. (Yes, Jamie's in the back of a vehicle again XD) Hopefully Mei Lin or Siti would share what happened during the dive. We should find out further tonight if the colonies we have in the tanks spawn. Can't wait!


And what about the rest of us who stayed on at St John's? Here's Dr Mary Hagedorn looking pretty cheery as she prepares for the talk on coral reproduction and spawning that she's currently giving as I'm quickly finishing up this post. And me? I was hoping to get this out before lunch in between troubleshooting here and there. Time to give today's talks my full attention, and we still need to sort out the dive roster!

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...

Launch of IYOR in Singapore!!

Whoppee! Singapore's finally gonna officially launch the International Year of the Reef, and on our National Day (9th Aug) too! And guess what, Singapore's very own coral nursery would also have a display area as well ^^ Mainly gonna be a slight update based on our ADEX exhibition booth earlier in April this year. Don't worry, it's not going to be just a 2D display of poster panels, there's also gonna be some things for visitors to look at and touch for themselves! ^^ So do come down and join us at the Singapore Botanic Garden's Botany Centre (just above the Taman Serasi foodcourt)on National Day! Hope to see you guys there! Ria has done up a nice summary of the day's events and activities here @ the IYOR-Singapore blog (http://iyor08singapore.blogspot.com). There's gonna be talks, children's activities, sharing our shore (and marine!) stories, star adoptions, and so on. So why not make this 43th National Day a special one and join us as we bring out shore life to SBG? =^-^=

Click for the rambling...

Talk about the regional wildlife trade

Spent the end of the last workday of week listening to Chris Shepherd from TRAFFIC SEA share about a bit of his work and the effect of wildlife trade at this talk that was held at SBG. It was a full 1.5h presentation by Chris but he managed to keep me attentive for the entire session. Well done!

There was a little intro that was accompanied by pictures of many many dried geckos, semi-dissected mammals, bear paws etc. And a glimpse into the world and daily lives of the team of dedicated individuals from TRAFFIC as they do a bit of espionage in tracking down dealers of illegal trading (this part reminds me of the excitement and scariness of agents that try to bust drug trafficking, and am pretty sure many of the problems and issues they face are similar to that of illegal wildlife trade), as well as the capacity building aka training for local law enforcement units, and getting countries to strengthen their national laws on wildlife trade. Signing CITES is one thing but actually incorporation CITES guidelines and rulings into national laws and all is another....

To quickly sum things up, the main drivers aka push factors for wildlife trade are (1)medicine and superstitious beliefs, (2)the pet trade, (3)furs and skins, trophies, stuffed figures, and various other novel decorations/accessories, (4)for zoos, birdparks, and aquariums (shocking but true, some actually get the bulk of their animals through the shadier routes), (5)for mass releases.... Think I missed out some but these should be the main ones. With these in mind, it really is pretty much a fauna focused trade rather than a flora one since things that are large and move (thinkg tigers and elephants and slow loris) are way more charismatic than say a plant. Big money involved here and weighing the cons of illegal wildlife trade against those of drug trafficking, it's small wonder why so many animals and plants are still being shipped around the world in so many crazy ways. It really gets bizarre.... Especially when Chris started talking about the innovative ways traffickers hide their loot, especially when using air transport.... The tighter the security that these folks need to pass through, the more inventive they get....

What do I mean? How does hiding eggs in pantyhose that's somehow stuffed in you underwear sound? One fellow even got caught because one of the eggs hatched and the critter started making noises! Not gonna put any more examples here, so as to avoid giving people crazy ideas about how to smuggle some cute animal back from one of their overseas trips. Interesting to hear how forthcoming some of the petshop owners are when Chris goes around doing his surveys of what species are in the shops and how many etc., seems like people wanting exotic pets is pretty much run-of-the-mill for them, eh?

And how does Singapore fit into all of this? Given our strategic position in SEA (as we all get drilled about in social studies), it is not suprising that there is quite a number of shady movements of wildlife through our airport. International airport with many flights and many linkages between high demand countries like China and USA, and supplier countries in SEA. Momentary urges come at this point to join customs so as to get my hands dirty to nab these bad fellas who subject animals to crazy conditions when moving them in BULK from one country to another.... Despite my anti-affinity for reptiles of the slithering kind, seeing photos of the behind-the-scenes stuff makes my blood boil.

Besides, being ordinary people not living in the world of TV dramas, nabbing dealers is way outta our league. So what can we do as consumers? Firstly, we can reduce the demand for this poaching and trafficking of wildlife (whole, processed, or otherwise). Basics of economics, right? No demand, so no need for supply. Especially for medicinal products made from like deer, tiger, horns etc., as well as jewellery and other souvenirs made from animal parts. Secondly, when buying pets, know what you are purchasing. What species it is, is it protected under CITES, and where the petshop is getting their animals from. Doing a little more backgrounds research on your potential pet would probably do more good than harm since you also have more info on hand to *hopefully* make a better decision on whether you can manage a LONG TERM commitment of having a pet. Releasing an animal back into the "wild" (as defined by you) is likely NOT to be the best thing for you ex-pet or the animals already living in that habitat or area. Thirdly, you can spread conservation messages by sharing with family, friends, and love ones about being pro-active consumers. Do stop and spare a thought for where something comes from before going ahead with a purchase just because it is appealing at the point in time... Hopefully we can be even more creative than the dealers and traffickers in doing our part in curbing illegal wildlife trade. Remember, every little drop would help fill up a bowl, no matter how large it is!

How I wish Chris Shepherd would have talked to us while we were taking the conservation module back at NUS. Would have tied in nicely against the gloom-and-doom picture painted by our two profs by letting us know about some of the more positive changes in legislation and management of such trades... Anybody who wants to hear more about the talk and all, please feel free to IM me, visit the TRAFFIC homepage or even drop an email off to the folks at TRAFFIC.

Click for the rambling...