Day 37-39- Beach Clean and Night Patrol with Ramona

Monday morning I was scheduled to take four volunteers to one of the beaches on the north of the small island to do a beach clean. This beach was called Tanjung Butang, as we approached it didn't seem to have much rubbish on it. However, when we arrived looking into the vegetation we could see loads of rubbish. We split up I went with Anne, Ramona's friend. Between the two of us we filled 15 bin bags while the others three volunteers filled 7. After collecting 22 bags of rubbish we went for a quick swim to cool off and saw a couple of baby reef sharks. When the boatman arrived, Joju, he only brought his small boat. We both looked at each other like this was going to be interesting getting all the bags onto the boat along with the five of us but we did it.

We got the boat on Monday around 5:30pm with all our gear for Tiga Raung. We set up camp and made sure all the tourists left the beach before 7pm. There was a couple who said they booked a return boat at 6:30pm, but it had not arrived so we arranged another one for them and as we did their boat arrived. Tourists are leaving it later and later until they leave Tiga Raung which is getting annoying. Anne asked if I wanted to join her for some meditation on the beach before we cooked dinner. This was so relaxing watching the sunset listing to a cool song. Anne like I said was German, she lives 2 hours from Berlin and was a Police Woman. She recently has got a new job in a new department for the German government. It was interesting listening to how different and similar things were at the project when she was here compared to now. Even the landscape at Tiga Ruang had changed, not only the fallen tree from the other day, but there was some rocks she often slept in front of was now buried in sand. I was doing the late shift with Tanya and Spencer, while Ramona and Anne did the early shift. They went on patrol at 8pm and soon after Anne came back at 8:30pm saying there was already a turtle. This was the earliest there had ever been a turtle when I had been there, the sun had only just gone down. We joined Ramona and Anne at the turtles nest, this was a good turtle it made one body pit and one egg chamber so by the time we got there Ramona was already collecting the eggs. I helped Ramona with measurements of the carapace and filled in the data sheet. This turtle laid 83 eggs, as we left the turtle the turtle was camouflaging the nest it started to rain. We got back to camp and the heavens opened, it did not stop raining til 2am. At 2 I started my patrol with the volunteers, but no more turtles that night.

The next morning it was a slow morning everyone was very tired. Anne was quite sporty and wanted to do a mini workout in the morning and I joined her for a bit, even early in the morning it was still very hot and sweaty. After this I made my new favourite breakfast, fried bread, bananas and condensed milk. They use a lot of condensed milk over here. We chilled during the day in the hammocks and on the beach. Our volunteers went snorkeling and the rest of us shared stories. Time goes so quick on Tiga Ruang. We checked for tourists that hadn't left the beach and then made dinner. After dinner, me, Ramona and Anne went to watch the sunset in front of the ship wreck. It's so beautiful here and we got some awesome photos. We were all so chilled out and enjoying the beauty of these islands. Later I started patrol, this time I did the early shift this time, again with Tanya and Spencer. We had no turtles, but we did release some hatchlings, 182. A lot had to be excavated due to ants invasion into the nests.  We had a bit of a storm here that woke me up, but soon passed. The storms here don't tend to last too long however when they are here they are quite ferocious. Anne and Ramona had one turtle nest on their late shift, she came up at 3am and didn't leave until 6:30am. She laid over 100 eggs. In the night Tanya got very ill and was throwing up. This was weird as we had all eaten the same things but she was the only one ill. I asked if you wanted to return to the village the next day and they said yes.

During the day Wednesday, we had the guys from the Community Project come visit us with our volunteers from our project. The interns at community hadn't visited Tiga Raung before and their reaction when they got here summed up how nice it is here. They had been trekking to long beach from the village and then up to the windmill and back to long beach which is a decent walk. They had their lunch and we gave them a tour and an explanation of what we do here. They weren't here long and just as they were leaving they shouted for us. A few hatchlings had come out of one of the nests and were trapped against the hatchery fence. I grabbed the hatchery key and went in to rescue the hatchlings with Ramona and Anne. When we got inside we noticed red ants had got inside three of the nests and started attacking hatchlings, some that hadn't developed yet. I dug out the three nests and we put the hatchlings into buckets depending on their condition. A few hatchlings had been bitten so much they were already dead. Almost all of them had needed ants to be removed, the larger red ants have a very strong bite that you have to pinch the head of the ant to remove it otherwise the ants head stays stuck in the hatchling. This was such a depressing part of the job seeing these ants affecting so many hatchlings. While we were working in saving as many hatchlings as possible, tourists had started crowding round the hatchery taking photos. When we were done as we were trying to leave the hatchery, people crowded us trying to get photos of the hatchlings, but we quickly stopped this and told them no. We don't want people to be encouraged to come to the camp looking to take photos of hatchlings. One guy still tried to attempt to take a picture, but Ramona saw him and told him off. Tanya and Spencer went back with the others. Back at camp we sorted through all the hatchlings ready to release in the evening.

Later on Ramona and Anne went for a snorkel. While the others were gone some tourists came to the camp while I was reading my book (which I've almost finished) asking about the project. I answered her questions and she asked if tourists could stay at Tiga Ruang one night. I politely told her no only if she joined the project for a week and that the beach was only allowed staff and volunteers from our project on the beach at night. She didn't seem to mind to much and thanked me for the information I gave her. After she left I saw Anne coming back to camp followed by a family. As they got closer I could see that the young boy was bleeding holding his head. He had slipped playing on the rocks and cut his head, hand and knees. We got the first aid kit and cleaned his wounds and put a plaster on his hand. The family were German so Ramona and Anne comforted the boy and the family were very grateful. Again not all heroes wear capes. That evening we sat and watched the sunset again before making dinner. We all ate so much and was really tired and full. I played rock paper scissors with Ramona to decide who does the early or late shift. I won and was doing the early shift and Anne would overlap on both of our shifts. I started my patrol and Anne decided to join me anyway to watch the stars. Due to the lack of light pollution the sky if there are no clouds are so clear, I've seen the milky way one day. On return to camp I was about to walk into the hut when I heard a noise, I shinned my torch and saw this really angry looking crab probably the size of a size 9 shoe.On the next patrol we released most the hatchlings that had been excavated earlier. Their were a few that had died but considering how many ants some had on them this was not surprising. After this we waited at the end of the beach and could see a storm rolling in on the other island. It was all in one very large cloud and we could see bolts in the cloud and striking the ground. As we sat there the beach started getting darker like something out of a horror film so we walked back. When we got back to camp this strong wind came in and we had to get anything loose that was out and put them into boxes or inside the hut. The wind was quite refreshing and it didn't rain which was good. When the wind died down we did another patrol as we were walking down, Jarr one of the fisheries staff who speaks good English was waiting by the hatchery. I have developed a nice relationship with Jarr we always say hello to each other in the village and ask how each other. He asks me in English and I ask him in Malay. He is slowly teaching me more Malay but is often happy talking English with me. Jarr had some hatchlings to release when we met him, we went a bit further down the beach and released 72 in total. I didn't have any nesting turtles on my shift and neither did Ramona. In  the morning we packed up and just before we left we saw a snake in the branches by camp. It was a green whip snake, this was the first snake I had seen on the island so I was super excited.

Day 36- Day off after Tiga Ruang

I got back from Tiga Ruang and was looking forward to my day off. It again didn't really happen . Instead we had a staff meeting and I had work to do. Dan had got ill the evening before from food poisoning so I had to look out for volunteers while he died all day. I was also off to Tiga Ruang the following day and there was two new volunteers coming so I had a lot of stuff to get ready for that. We had a lot of bedding to wash. It made me really appreciate what my mum does as she runs a holiday let and has to clean a lot of bed sheets each week. I've really enjoyed my responsibilities here at the Turtle Project, sometimes it has got stressful and tedious, but most of the time it's been great. I have a good team I work with and although it's very close living conditions there is opportunity to have your own space of the need it. As I said earlier I'm off to Tiga Ruang tomorrow, I'm going with Ramona as Nick is still on Visa run. We are going over with Ramona's German friend Anne who was volunteering here last year and the American couple Tanya and Spencer. 

Day 28-35 Month into the trip

Been here a month already and starting to get a little bit of Island Fever. This week we went up to 10 volunteers when we are only meant to have a max of 8. This meant on Monday four went off to Tiga Ruang with Dan, while the other five stayed in the village. Our five new volunteers consisted of an 18 year old couple from California, Tanya and Spencer. They were on a trip around south east Asia, the girl was Vietnamese American and they were planning on visiting family after this. They had been at our jungle project in Merapoh. The next volunteer to arrive was Ella, she was 20 from Durham and at Durham University studying English. Durham University are one of the organisations that help fund this project with a support fund called Ducks, forgotten what it stands for Durham university something, something. We also gained a volunteer who had done 3 weeks with our dive project who was doing a week with us. She was called Marie and she was a French Canadian. Our last volunteer had been here last year and was a friend of Ramona's. She was German didn't get how old she was but had a horrendous 28 hour journey so she was very tired on arrival. Before going to Tiga Ruang on Thursday I went on 3 Snorkel Surveys in a row with different sets of people, safe to say my Kayaking has got pretty good. The new camera is really good if not a little bulky and on one of the surveys I saw 8 turtles in the space of an hour. On Wednesday we had another Malay dinner this time at a new house I hadn't been to before we brought 5 volunteers along with me and Melissa. Had some spicy chicken, squid as well as rice and vegetables. The surprise at the end of this Malay dinner was when our host brought out this Banana Cake. It wasn't normal Banana bread as it wasn't baked, it was steamed. I had doubts at first but it was so good, by steaming it made it very moist and moreish. We asked how she made it, so might attempt to make our own at some point.

As I said earlier Thursday I was off to Tiga Ruang, I was going with Wid as it was time for Nicks Visa Run. He was headed to Langkawi and then Thailand for a week. We went to Tiga Ruang with 5 volunteers, Marie, Annie, Ella, Tanya and Spencer. First night of patrol no turtles lay but did spot one false crawl. We had some hatchlings we released instead, 72 in total. During the day we did a beach clean around site and collected four bags of rubbish, there are more and more tourists turning up to the beach during the day. Second night four turtles laid and one false crawl. We missed one of the turtles laying as I didn't wake up for my 6:30am patrol and it was only because one of our volunteers at 7:00am spotted it that we found it. She was already camouflaging her nest when we got to her and marked it before she went into the sea, we managed to get facial photos but no measurements unfortunately.

During the day on Saturday we had a lot of tourists snorkeling and hanging out around our end of the beach. I had to tell several they couldn't use our toilet as it's private despite the sign on the door . This is due to our limited water supply. Later on I found that a tourist had snuck in and managed to break the flush on our toilet that I had to fix later on using a bit of string/rope. One girl I spoke to just wanted to hear about the project and more information on turtles and conservation. She was from Canada but had been travelling for 2 years, she had done a year in Australia before touring South East Asia, she couldn't volunteer at our project as she didn't have enough time to commit for a week. Later on I went out on the paddle board again and tied myself to the buoy line and just sunbathed and floated for a while. On the last night it rained 9:30pm til midnight so we were unable to do our patrols as we can't take the eggs when its raining heavy. While we waited for the rain to pass we played cards in the staff house I taught some of the volunteers how to play a couple of games, Trumps and Hearts of 8. At 11:30pm the rain died down a bit. The volunteers and I decided to attempt to patrol, I took one step out of our porch and saw a turtle by our bench. We backed off and waited for her to settle, at this time the fisheries staff had just arrived. I waited to see if she would lay her eggs as she was in an awkward spot near the fallen tree and she did. I told the fisheries staff who are more experienced than me and they dug the eggs out keeping them dry. They also did the one from the night before, the one form the night before laid 100 eggs and the female from tonight laid 83.

New Camera Photos

These photos were taken with the new camera that the school group from Tonbridge got for us through fundraising before coming out to the islands. Its an Olympus Tough with a extra waterproof casing that means the camera can go down to 40 metres. This means that we don't have to swim so close to the turtles like we do with the GoPros and get much clearer images. These are some photos I took with it: Top photo is Polly, Middle is Joelle and Bottom is Baby Kev.

Day 26-27- Tree Falls Tiga Ruang

Saturday was my day off and originally my plan was to go on an adventure, however the morning was so hot I decided against it. Instead I caught up on some sorting out around the house as well as planning some dissertation ideas. After lunch I read a research paper my boss gave me on turtle carcass strandings. It was an interesting read discussing how currents and wind effect where a dead turtle may originate from based on seasonal patterns. It also talked about how it is hard for researchers to know the exact mortality rate, as sunk carcasses by the time they arrive on land can be very decomposed and take longer to strand. Later on community project asked if we'd like to join them for some volleyball. I hadn't played volleyball in 4-5 years but was keen. We went down to the sandy playing pitch and set up the net. We played 4 v 4 with two people holding the net alternating when a point was scored. Community had a new intern arrive this week Lennie who was a 6ft 3, 18 year old German. It turned out he plays volleyball for Germany and his serve was insane. After a few games we got kicked off the pitch for the locals to play football so we moved to the hard surface pitch by the jetty. This was interesting as we couldn't dive like we were in the sand. We played several games with different teams from each of the projects and we started getting a bit of an audience. The locals were sitting round watching us play, some got involved calling referee decisions. Then some of the younger locals asked to give us a game. As my team was winning the most we played the locals first. The locals were good, I quite often see them playing foot volleyball and that's impressive. Anyway, it was a close game but we just about managed to win. We played a bit more and then we saw Nick, Maisy (interns) and Annie (our volunteer) who had been at Tiga Ruang at the jetty. Turned out that a giant tree had fallen right next to the staff house at camp. The tree had destroyed our bench, two chairs Nick made as well as some of the roof. Apparently 5 minutes before the tree fell, Maisy was sitting on the beach. Back at the house we had some dinner, Maisy showed us her laptop that was hit by the tree that somehow survived. It still works despite the damages to the hinge and case which was a relief as it had a lot of our turtle data on. Nick explained how the tree had broken the water pipe and electricity to camp. The cruelty of nature. Everyone stayed in the village that night and we planned to take as many people over tomorrow to assess and clear the damage.

The next day turned out the fisheries guys had managed to fix the water and electricity and also cleared some branches off the tree. Wid told Dan and I that we were staying overnight if we can get it livable again. We brought over saws, axes and Nick's Machete. When we got there and saw the tree it was shocking. This was a large tree that has snapped from the base of the stump. We started clearing branches off the trunk. Wid got a really cool time lapse video of us working away. When we cleared enough that we cleared enough that we could navigate around camp again we had lunch and discussed the plan of action. Seeing as it was livable Dan and I would be staying for night patrol while the others would be going back to the village. When they left we had a sunbathe and I took the paddle board out, the sea was so calm and was really relaxing. I came back and sunbathed some more before making dinner before patrol. Again I had no turtles on my patrol, but Dan had one that laid exactly 100 eggs. I was sleeping in a hammock under the shelter by the staff house. At around 5:30 I was woken up by this huge downpour of rain. I immediately sprinted into the staff house with Dan. The rain went on for over an hour and was very noisy it kept me up. The boat in the morning was picking us up at 9:30am so I attempted to go back to sleep when the rain stopped.

Day 25- Trip to Rawa

Today I went on a Survey with Maisy in the morning, we kayaked over to PIR. There we started our survey we saw 5 turtles while we were there, including one that Maisy discovered a very small juvenile which she named baby Kev. He is very quick, but we both managed to get a photo of him.

After survey I went on a snorkel tour with the two couples. We were going somewhere different today, to some nearby islands called Rawa. They are off the north west coasts of the Perhentian and have a lot of undamaged coral and a chance to see different marine life. 

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We went to three sites around the islands and saw cuttlefish, pufferfish and was lucky enough to see two blue spotted stingray. 

Friday was data analysis in the morning, we identified all other individuals from the survey the day before. They were all frequent visitors to PIR, a male, 2 females and a juvenile. In the afternoon I went on a snorkel survey with our Turkish volunteer Selen. We saw 4 turtles, including one of my favourite Long Dragon, named by the Long family Long meaning Dragon in chinese, I think. For dinner we had Malay dinner there was almost as many staff to volunteers who went, with me, Dan and Ramona that went. Malay dinner like always was so good, we had so much food and we all went away feeling very full. 

Survey Photos

When we go on Snorkel Survey, we go over to PIR (Teluk Puah), on Perhentian Besar.

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Here there is a lot of sea grass which is the turtles main food source, so there are a lot of feeding turtles there. We kayak over from the village. When we see a turtle we free dive down and try to photograph the left side of the face, the right side of the face and the top of the turtle. The left and right side of the face is to determine individual. The top of the turtle is for determining gender as males have a long tail and the females have a very short tail often hard to see from above. Juveniles we can't sex as they don't mature and grow their tails if they are male til they are 15 years old. I have done quite a few surveys and I am starting to identify individuals who return weekly by certain markings or tags. These are some of my best shots I have taken so far: