Day 55-57- Dua Penyu Mati

Wednesday morning Dan set off for his visa run, he was getting a taxi up to the Thai border and the original plan was to stay a night and come back to Malaysia Thursday. Instead he managed to go up there go round the shops for a few hours then pop back down to Kota Bharu where he was staying a couple of nights with his family before joining them for a few nights in Kuala Lumpar and finally then going back to Kota Bharu for a couple of nights to chill. My Wednesday morning consisted of going on a Beach Clean to Teluk Keke or Fish Point. I went with Tammam, Nadia and Hazel. Fish Point is a popular snorkel spot and also some dive shops use it for confined dives. A confined dive is the first dive you do when you start your open water as it is in controlled predictable conditions. We were collecting rubbish and one of the dive shops had already done a bit of a beach clean and collected a couple of bags. Its nice to see other people rather than just us looking after the beaches. In total we collected 12 bin bags between the four of us. In the afternoon I was originally meant to be going on snorkel tour with Nick and our volunteers however, Ainn and her community wanted to join so offered to sit out. I really enjoy snorkel tours but was due to do one the following week and I had stuff to do around the house. While I was sitting in the house on  my own doing work I got a message from Wid saying that Joju spotted a dead turtle at Shark Point. I tried getting hold of Joju but couldn't get through. I had then run out of credit so couldn't call or text anyone. Wid was messaging me over Whatsapp with possibilities to get a boat. I locked up the house and went down to the jetty. I at first tried to find Jarr as he owns a taxi service as well as being a member of the department of fisheries. However, I couldn't find him so my next option was to ask one of the boat boys who run the boat taxis. I told them there was a dead turtle at shark point but because I was on my own they wouldn't take me. While I was down the Jetty I bumped into Dan's family they were coming to visit the village and wanted to go to Pitani. They asked me what I was doing and I told them about the dead turtle situation, I needed to go back to the house to get internet again and they kindly offered to buy me a milkshake as they could see I was hot and sweaty from running all over the place. I showed them to the path that leads to Pitani and then headed to the house. When I got back I saw a message from Wid that Joju would pick me up at 5:00pm. I finished my washing and then headed back down to the Jetty at 5. As I headed down their the guys had just got back from snorkel tour, I grabbed Nick and told him what had happened as Nick had more experience in dead turtles than I did. We got in the boat with Joju and headed for shark point. It had been a good 2-3 hours since the turtle had been spotted so it was a bit of a mission to try and find it. We went close into the rocks as we had assumed it got washed up or stranded on some rocks. Both me and Nick were looking and couldn't see it, then all of a sudden Joju points and moves the boat round. He had spotted it wedged between two big rocks. We climbed onto the big rocks to get a closer look and when we got there the turtle was to put it kindly a mess. I could see it was a male which sucked as their aren't that many males in our population around the Perhentians. The turtle was quite clearly hit by a boat propeller it looked like it had hit the face as well as the carapace. It was way to decomposed to ID or do a necropsy on so we had to leave it, the smell was so bad I can't even describe it.

We got back and showered before Malay dinner at 8pm. We were all going to Kah Dar's house my favourite place for Malay dinner. We got there and all sat round, at Malay dinner you have to wear a sarong, eat sitting on the floor and eat with your right hand. Kah Dar had made a chicken curry, vegetables, two different types of fried fish and spicy omelette. It was all delicious and I ate 2 of the fish and around 7 bits of chicken. After dinner I stayed for a bit when everyone else left to watch a Kuala Lumpar games football match, it was Malaysia vs Singapore and Kah Dar's husband was really into it. It was quite a good game and Kah Dar didn't mind me staying, I left at half time and it was still 0-0. When I checked later on I saw it was 3-1 Malaysia, kinda wish I stayed as their was very late drama.

Thursday I went on survey with Hazel, Tammam and Nadia in the morning. We set off at first boys in one kayak and girls in the other. However, as we set off I realised if I wanted to be back in time for lunch and still survey for a decent time I'd have to swap someone. I took Nadia in my kayak and Tammam went in with Hazel. This made us a little quicker getting over there. We had a good survey seeing 5 turtles, we saw Luis who is one of our males we don't often see. When I checked the photos back at the house I noticed that I had accidently slipped the camera onto art setting which made a weird but cool effect on the photo. Luckily you could still see the facial markings. 

I took the guys out for lunch and rather than just go to the food court/jetty we took a trip to one of the cafes by the mosque. We sat down and ordered and I spotted this specials menu selling chicken pizza for 13RM so of course I got that. It wasn't the biggest but that didn't matter as there was so much proper cheese on it that made it so tasty. Tammam ordered the Fried Sausage expecting it to be burger instead it was just a plate full of sausages with some fries. I also got a strawberry float which was so good.

In the afternoon the guys were set the task of redesigning one side of our awareness board. The old board had a tragic picture of a turtle on and wasn't very eye catching. The first task for the guys was to paint over the old turtle, they went for a blue and added some yellow on the bottom for sand. Once the paint was dry the next step was drawing on the new turtle. We used the project logo and projected it on and Tammam and Hazel drew round it. The next step was painting the turtle we went for a dark green and made the pattern in the middle yellow. While some were painting the others were drawing some marine life to add to the board. The guys painted some coral and sea grass on the sand and Tammam added sand on the yellow to texture the sea bed. We ran out of time to finish it so the plan was to finish it friday. 

Friday morning the guys finished touching up the painting on the awareness board and Nadia had done some awesome drawings of a clownfish and pufferfish which I helped scan and print to put onto the board. While the guys were working I got a call from Wid telling me about another Dead turtle sighting on the way to long beach. I went and met Joju on the jetty and headed to long beach. When we got round the coast we saw the turtle floating on the water. We got closer and I noticed that it hadn't been dead that long as there wasn't much decomposing occurred. I could see that cause of death was likely another boat strike as there was a large crack in the back of its carapace. I took some photos and saw that it was a young female, as it was still fairly fresh me and Joju pulled it out of the water and onto the boat to bring it back to the village for a necropsy. This was really sad as this was the 3rd dead turtle in a week, there had been a male found Saturday that Ramona saw. 

When I got to the village Maisy had just come back from survey and Nick had just got back to the house as he had been out for a walk in the morning. We moved the turtle to the end of the village beach away from tourists and locals and Nick brought down the necropsy kit. The turtle had already started to smell a bit. The necropsy was to work out cause of death but also to assess the health of the turtle before dying. Nick and Maisy started by cutting underneath the belly to get to her internal organs. After a while Nick asked me to carry on and showed me how to cut and not to cut to deep as I didn't want to puncture anything inside and release a bad smell. Nick went and dug a pit to put the turtle in when we were done. I had almost done my whole side and Nick was finishing off the hard spot by the neck. Nick was cutting away the tissue from the belly and I started doing the same then I felt something nip me, my finger started bleeding rapidly. Turned out nick had acidently clipped me with the blade. I really don't have much luck with my fingers. I went back to the house to get it cleaned up and disinfected it was only a small cut. When I got back down there most of the necropsy was done the heart was removed along with the liver. Maisy was checking the stomach and found this little turtle died with a nice full belly of sea grass. Nick checked the lungs and that was all fine so it was really sad that this was a very healthy turtle and if it wasn't hit by a boat would have been fine.
When we got back to the house we all showered and washed our clothes as everything stunk of dead turtle. As the turtle was discovered just after 12pm and we did the necropsy straight away no one had been for lunch and everyone was hungry. We went down for food and while we were eating this military jet zoomed through the channel between the islands really low must have only been max 200m from the sea. They did this a few times circling round the island it was awesome, turns out their is a Malaysian air craft carrier off the coast of eastern Malaysia somewhere. Back at the house the guys then carried on with the awareness board. Chloe and Cassandra had made a really cool clam to put on the board as well as some extra notices and information to put on. It wasn't quite finished but we would finish it tomorrow.