Conservation - THAILAND Monthly Update for Conservation Programme - April 2007

Thailand Marine Conservation Project - April 2007

So, April has ended, the Thai New Year (Song Kran) has been and gone, taking us into the year 2550 in the Buddhist calendar, the rainy season seems to have begun, and its time for me to write another monthly update for April's activities. This month has again been a busy one, full of hard work, fun and satisfying achievements.

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. After piloting the three phase programme for five months we found that volunteers were only just finishing the programme by the end of their stay, even if they were here for three months. We realised that volunteers were not getting to carry out many Reef Watch surveys, and consequently we were not sending as much data to Phuket Marine Biological Centre to analyse as we would have liked. Having now restructured the programme and added an extra dive into each phase, volunteers will move on to Reef Watch sooner but with hopefully the same level of observational skills as before.

We also had a test run of a new survey system called Coral Watch, which is aimed at establishing the level of coral bleaching on the reefs across the world. Collected data is sent to Queensland University in Australia for analysis. Using colour charts, it is intended that divers record the lightest and darkest patches of selected corals. Volunteers went down armed with torches and colour charts, but unfortunately came up with quite differing results for the same corals. As is often the case when implementing a new activity or survey method, these teething problems are hopefully only temporary. We are looking into how these conflicting results can be prevented on future Coral Watch surveys, and will try again once we have worked out the best method.

On the last day of the month, we were invited by the Krabi Fisheries Department and Rayavadee Hotel to help in another one of their animal release programmes. Our mission was to release fifty seahorses on the reef surrounding Koh Talu, one of the local islands. With twenty five seahorses in two bags, one group of volunteers went down to a pre-selected Gorgonian sea fan at 13m depth, into which they gently tipped out the seahorses. Then for the next four hours, we provided them with constant surveillance by changing dive group every forty minutes. Seahorses have a very low survival rate under natural circumstances, so even if only one out of fifty were to survive from the release it would be classed a success. At the end of four hours, we were down to just four seahorses on the sea fan; the rest either having drifted off to another location in the current or having become lunch for groupers or snappers in the vicinity. We will return sometime during the next few diving days to see if any remain - let's hope so! Even if we cannot find any, seahorses being notoriously difficult to spot, they could still be there under our noses or have found a safe home close by.

We've had three specific salvage dives this month at Koh Mae Urai and Mu Sang Nua, where small bits of net remained from March's monumental salvage effort. The total collected on these dives was 13.1kg; admittedly not a huge amount of salvage this month, but along with the random bits of debris collected during reef monitoring dives, this amounted to 40.45kg. However, low debris levels are a positive sign that the reefs visited by the volunteers during April didn't have much damaging debris on them. Maybe this is a changing characteristic of the reefs in the Andaman Sea; we shall have to continue our efforts and data collection to see if this is a reality or not.

Amongst a multitude of fantastic marine organisms spotted on the dives this month, volunteers have seen ornate ghost pipefishes, five black tip reef sharks, two trumpetfish, five tigertail seahorses, a scribbled filefish, four nurse sharks, four circular spadefish, two leopard sharks with remoras attached to them, a bamboo shark, various species of moray eel, a banded seasnake, and two seagrass ghost pipefish.

Volunteers have taken part in four days of beach cleaning in April at three different beaches as far afield as Phuket. Near the beginning of the month, everyone went on a two day mission to camp at the Marine National Park Operations Centre on Phuket Island. Two different beaches were cleaned with the help of five of the staff from the Operations Centre. Of note was the volume of glass found on the first day - 184.5kg, increasing the total weight collected that day to 364.5kg. The camping was enjoyed by most, despite the fact that they were not allowed to have a fire on the beach and so couldn't toast any marshmallows. The other two beaches had similar levels of debris, again with glass being the predominant debris item found. The complete figure for land salvage in April came to 857.5kg - a great effort by all involved.

Good progress has also been made in the mangroves this month, with the addition of another species of seed to our research nursery. One day was spent collecting 1372 Bruguiera sexangula seeds, and 200 Xylocarpus granatum seeds which were given to the local community to plant themselves; we kept the Bruguiera seeds for our own purposes. The next day the volunteers went to our nursery site at Baan Thung Prasan to clear more land for four more plots, two in the waterlogged region and two on higher, dryer ground. However, there was a surprise in store on arrival at the site; the bridge crossing the klong had been washed away by a very high tide. Not to let this prevent the day's work, the adventurous team of staff and volunteers waded, swam and climbed across the waist deep river, and completed the clearing mission. A few days later, everyone returned to build the structures to provide shade for some of the seeds in our experiment, and planted 800 of the collected seeds in the same varying conditions as the Ceriops tagal, the first species we planted back in January. As well as expanding the nursery, the volunteers monitored the growth rates of the Ceriops tagal for the first time. Having had two and half month's growing time, the seeds were well on their way. It is too early to say definitively which are faring better but from a look at the data it seems as though the seeds under shade show better growth rates than those at the mercy of the sun all day. Whether the seeds grow better in bags or planted straight into the ground, it is not so clear just yet but will hopefully become more apparent in the coming months.

In addition to the productive work carried out by the volunteers all over Krabi and Phuket this month, volunteers have enjoyed the festivities of Song Kran. Traditionally, it is time spent with the family and a time of cleansing; giving thanks to and being blessed by the head of the family, going to a nearby temple for a ceremony and to receive blessings from the monks, having a spring clean of the house and throwing out all the unwanted items that have accumulated over the year. Over time, the idea of cleansing has expanded to being blessed with water by everyone you walk past on the streets for the following three days, and has now developed into the biggest water fight in the world. It is three days of frenzied water throwing from high powered water pistols, garden hoses, buckets of ice cold water, and anything capable of carrying water. The volunteers were out in force, driving round in the bus and joining in with the fun and madness - an experience I'm sure they will never forget.

And from water thrown from humans to water released from the sky, we have definitely entered the rainy season now; it has rained for the last five days, winds prevented diving yesterday and cut short the diving today, and Ao Nang feels empty now as the majority of the tourists have all suddenly left. The repercussions for the project are that we all have to be very flexible and accepting that the schedule may change overnight, diving may be postponed several days running, and we will all be very wet a lot of the time. But the project and previous volunteers have survived through the rainy season before and I am confident that this year will be the same.

Marten Meynell
Conservation Manager
3^rd May 2007
Projects Abroad

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