I forgot to mention Wednesday I was looking after Dive Projects Volunteer Jess for the morning as Ramona had a meeting with Steph and George as Ramona is taking over Dive Project next year. As Dive Project focus on coral and sea grass their volunteers don't get to see many Turtles so I took Jess out for a Survey to PIR. Jess was really nice company and it was a fun survey, we saw 7 turtles. There was a sad thing about this survey was seeing 100 people all swimming around Joelle the turtle with the broken shell. I have got so good at recognising turtles just from one side of the face or a distinguishing feature on the carapace or flippers. Even the juveniles I can spot patterns and know who it is without having to Manual ID. Which is what we did when we got back to the village in the afternoon.
The next morning I was taking the volunteers and Eleanor the Media and Marketing Intern at Marapoh who had been over a few days to try to find ways of promoting the project and things we want our volunteers to know before they come out to the project. We started the tour by going to pick up Nadia and Priyanka from the PIR Jetty, our boat guy was Mat Lias and he asked where I wanted to go with these guys. I knew these guys wanted to see some nice coral and fish so we started at Fish Point. I knew the two volunteers were not confident swimmers so made sure they had life jackets however I thought Eleanor was going to be okay. It turned out Eleanor hadn't even worn a snorkel before, I asked if she wanted a life jacket but she said she'd be fine. It only took 5 minutes and realised Eleanor was not fine, when using the snorkel she thought she could dive down and then wondered why it was filling with water. I sorted her snorkel out and got her a life jacket to make it easier for her to enjoy the coral etc.
Turtle Sightings:
P2F- Polly
P3M- Long Dragon
P20J- Pippi
While I was on survey Dan welcomed two new volunteers who would be helping us out for just under a week. They were staying at PIR but would be joining in with activities during the day. Their names were Nadia and Priyanka, they both lived in Kuala Lumpar Nadia was Malaysian and Priyanka Indian but raised in Malaysia. Dan went through the welcome presentations and took them for water confidence, it turned out the pair of them were not very confident in the water and would definitely need life jackets for snorkel tour and survey. In the evening I cooked for the pair of us, as Wid had only just been shopping there was plenty of food in the kitchen. I decided to go for a pasta as Dan wanted to add his disgusting tinned sardines. I chopped carrots, cauliflower, onions, garlic and a couple of chillis. The chillis is the important part of this as these chillis were fresh, they were only small chillis but even cutting I had a feeling they would be strong. I started cooking the pasta and frying the onions, garlic and chillis. As I was doing this instantly there was this intensity that filled the kitchen I cannot begin to explain, lets just say it made us a bit emotional. Ramona walked into the kitchen and said "What you cooking?" followed by "Woah chillis I can feel the heat from here!" I've never experienced something like it. Once it was all finished we sat and ate my creation, immediately we got a glass of water as it was that strong. Dan started dribbling at one point but it tasted good so we kept eating. We must have finished 2 litres of water between us at dinner.
Eight-Banded Butterfly Fish
The next spot on our snorkel tour was Shark Point, but not our normal stopping spot at Shark Point. This time we went further round in the shallower water, we got off the boat and Mat Lias joined us as he had some tourist that wanted to see some sharks. I went off to the left away from everyone as I saw that my volunteers appeared to be following Mat Lias as well. On my own tour I saw a large Titan Trigger Fish, Blotched Foxface Rabbitfish, Gobby and a couple of Blue Spotted Stingrays
A Pair of Blotched Foxface Rabbitfish
Blue Spotted Stingray
Goby Fish on a Clam
I met up with Mat Lias in the shallows and saw a couple of baby black tip reef sharks however, didn't get a photo unfortunately. We had a quick head count and only got 6 when there was meant to be 7, Eleanor was missing. I climbed on a rock to see if I could see her life jacket or if she was on the boat, however I couldn't see her. We all swam back and when I was on the boat looked around to see if I could locate her, off to the left I saw her with a different group of tourists in red life jackets. Luckily she was in an orange Ecoteer one, Mat Lias brought the boat round to her and she got on. Turns out when she was in the water she lost us and just followed the others, she had a good time and didn't mind getting lost. The next stop was Tiga Ruang Meningis, here I saw another Titan Trigger Fish a Goat Fish and a cool group of Golden Rabbit Fish.
Five Golden Rabbit Fish
Titan Trigger Fish with trigger up!
Goat Fish
The final spot was at the rocks just before PIR, there is a lot of really nice undisturbed coral there. I was tired so just stayed on the boat with Mat Lias, while I waited I did go for a little swim not to look for coral instead to practice my freestyle swimming. We dropped Nadia and Priyanka at the PIR jetty as they needed to get ready for Tiga Ruang as they were going there with me in the evening.
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