Conservation Monthly Update Files, Thailand

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update May 2008
May has been a strange month for the project here in Krabi in that for one week in the middle of the month we had no volunteers. In my two years here we have not had this situation, although there was a time in September last year when we only had one volunteer for three days. The gap, however, has given Marie, Knot and myself the chance to develop certain parts of the project further and plan for the busy summer months, as well as taking a welcome couple of days holiday. So, I’ll write this update in two halves, beginning with a description of the live-aboard that Marie mentioned in April’s update, and ending with the arrival of the new volunteers and what they have been up to in their first few days here.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update April 2008
As Marten mentioned in the last update, teaching and conservation volunteers joined forces for 3 days to raise environmental with participating children from NonThale and AoNang. Knot had prepared slide shows about reef and mangroves ecology and marine debris which he presented the first day when we had a 'workshop' with games and a play by the volunteers.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update March 2008
March has been a busy month here in Ao Nang, with volunteers learning about fish breeding during a bio-workshop at Krabi Fisheries Department, releasing anemonefish and damselfish on various local reefs, measuring the corals in the nursery at Viking Cave, designing an environmental-awareness poster, cleaning a couple of beaches, transplanting mangrove saplings and collecting over 1,500 mangrove seeds.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update February 2008
I ended January’s update by mentioning 2008 was International Year of the Reef (IYOR), which is a worldwide drive to raise environmental awareness about coral reefs and the threats they face, and to encourage conservation activities from all sectors of society to help preserve the reef ecosystems. We have adopted Mu Sang Nua as our reef to protect over the year, so in the middle of February we made our first trip there to search for any fishing nets or salvage. We came across two nets very near the surface which made them quite difficult to remove due to strong surface waves and currents, and the need for extra good buoyancy control.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update January 2008
2008 has started well with January flying by amid plenty of hard work and follow up activity from last year’s fantastic efforts and achievements. Continuing with the environmental cleaning accomplishments of 2007, January has seen good results in both reef salvage and land based cleanups. Additionally, we have made three more missions to remove the coral-destructive Crown of Thorns starfishes (COTS) that I mentioned in December’s update, and in continuation of the reef rehabilitation project we participated in at the beginning of December with PMBC, the lead scientist of this project came to run a bio-workshop on the coral research they are conducting.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update December 2007
As I have been away for most of December, this update has been partly written by Marie, our Field Coordinator, who has obviously had far more presence on the project than me this past month. December has been very busy with celebrations and trips for the conservation team in Ao Nang. Two major events were the His Majesty the King’s birthday which we celebrated with scientists and other volunteers from the Phuket Marine Biology Centre (PMBC) and a trip to Klong Naka in the province of Ranong where we camped in the rainforest.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update November 2007
November has certainly seen the start of the high season, with the blazing sun and calmer weather everyone has been waiting for. Consequently, we’ve had a productive marine salvage month as well as having spotted some great marine wildlife whilst diving, planted many mangrove saplings at a new site near a Buddhist temple, and carried out an environmental awareness raising workshop with a local school amongst all the other activities this month.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update October 2007
As the Khao Lak trip is where I left off last month, I’ll begin with that. Though the principal aim was to clean beaches, the trip was a good opportunity to show the present volunteers a wider view of Thailand and impress on them the enormity of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as Phang Nga was the province that was hit the hardest, with whole coastal communities being practically wiped out.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update September 2007
So, with a maximum of five conservation volunteers and at one point down to only one, it has been a quiet month here in Ao Nang. However, on the third Saturday of the month we were joined by the three teaching volunteers and 38 children from Baan Ao Nang school for the International Coastal Cleanup; a day where hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world descend on beaches to clear up all the debris accumulated on them.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update August 2007
Well, August has certainly lived up to its reputation as the wettest and windiest month of the year here on the west coast of Thailand. So much so that we could not go out diving for 10 days, and on some of the days when we did get out, the underwater visibility was virtually zero making for difficult and not such enjoyable diving. Fortunately though, this bad weather came towards the end of the 2nd two week programme, allowing us to complete the open water dive course for these volunteers, as well as fitting in dives for the longer term volunteers whenever the weather abated.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update July 2007
So, July has been and gone, and we are into August already – how time flies when everyone is hard at work and having fun! Looking at the reef and beach clean-up figures I see we have hit some fantastic milestones in our mission to keep Krabi and the surrounding seas cleaner. Starting with the land based clean ups, the volunteers have cleaned three local beaches; Ao Nam Mao, Klong Muang and Ao Tung, collecting 339.7kg of rubbish in total.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update June 2007
Yet another month has flown by here in Thailand and it gives me great to pleasure to report on the fantastic work carried out by the present marine conservation volunteers. Following on from the start of our reef rehabilitation experiment last month, we returned to Koh See to monitor the survival and growth rates of the coral fragments that we planted back on the reef.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update May 2007
The volunteers on the project in May have been busy as always, working hard to achieve great results and battle the periodic spells of wet and windy weather, which threatens (and often succeeds) to disrupt the dive plans. When the winds pick up, it can get a little hair-raising if caught out at sea, especially in a long tail boat. Despite this we have managed to complete the full quota of dives for the month, carrying out reef monitoring, salvage dives, the usual dive courses and the start of an exciting new research project on coral transplantation and reef rehabilitation. I will begin by describing the coral transplantation project.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update April 2007
The volunteers have been involved in various diving activities this month ranging from completing dive courses to releasing seahorses. Open water, advanced and rescue courses have been running alongside other volunteers carrying out reef monitoring surveys and salvage missions. A significant change that was implemented around the middle of this month was to switch the reef monitoring training programme from three phases to two phases, each of two weeks duration.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update March 2007
After a busy and industrious month here in Thailand it is time for me to write another monthly update of all the activities the volunteers have been involved in. As it was held over the first weekend of March, it makes sense to start with a description of the school conservation camp that Projects Abroad helped run with Wetlands International and the Krabi local authorities. It was a pilot environmental awareness-raising exercise involving 30 pupils from Muang Krabi School aged between 12 and 16.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update February 2007
February has been a busy, yet quite challenging month for the project here in Ao Nang, due to the fact that I have had to spend much of the month in Bangkok having physiotherapy after sustaining a slipped disc, and thus having to manage the project from afar. However, for the majority of the month, Pam, our Field Coordinator, has held the fort very well and the activities have achieved the desired results.

Conservation in Thailand - Monthly Update January 2007
With the new project-dedicated website now up and running, I feel very proud and privileged to be writing the very first monthly update of the Projects Abroad Marine Conservation Project here in Ao Nang, Thailand. The project, which has been running since May 2005, has grown over the year and a half since its conception, into an exciting and constructive project benefiting the environment and local communities within the Andaman Sea and Krabi province.