Every year, University Malaysia Terengganu will organize a turtle conservation SEATRU program for volunteers. This is a weekly program whereby there will be a group of about 10 volunteers depart to Chagar Hutang in Redang Island to carry out the conservation program.
This annual program is quite popular and really need to book ahead or be sorry. This could be due to the fact that it is located at the beautiful Redang island.
Our journey started by taking the Penang to Kuala Terengganu night bus. We reached there around 4am in the morning and when the sky getting brighter, we hopped into the taxi to UMT. With full of excitement we waited until our program lead, Lea, arrived. She brief us on the turtle program, distributed the voluntary T-shirt and then off we go to the jetty.
The ferry ride took about an hour to two to reach the Redang jetty and followed by transferring to Chagar Hutang. I've been several times to Redang and Perhentian Island but for this beach, I felt like I own the entire beach as no tourist is allowed to this place. Upon arrival to Chagar Hutang, we were welcomed by SEATRU research crews, Mann and Adie. Another two, Gary and Harry went back hometown and will be back in a couple of days later.
Our accommodation in Chagar Hutang. There were several hammocks to enjoy the sea breeze during breaktime.
We brought additional food, drinks and snack for the week supply. Took turns to cook....Very Tension!
This place depends on solar energy to generate electricity. It was like back to nature, where there is no fan and proper mattress to sleep on which reminded me on my scout experience during schooling time. At night, we were advised to use light source minimally as that will confuse the hatching direction into the sea as well as distracting the mother turtle from ascending the sea bed to lay eggs.
We were in crew V and divided into 4 small groups of two and each group will go through every 2hrs interval job rotation to scout along the beach. We ought to trigger our research crew when there is any intruder eating the eggs.
The first night was a kind of disappointment as there was no turtle came to lay eggs. Never mind, we still have many days to go since averagely, there will be about 20 nestings in a week. In the next morning, with Mann and Adie guidance, we went to each checkpoints (about 25-30 checkpoints as far as I can recall) and checked on the turtle nest.
Every day, there will be turtle eggs invaded by natural predators such as the fire ants, monitor lizard and ghost crab. The invasion normally occurred on those nest with eggs started to hatch. The hatched eggs will release a fishy smell which attracted these predators. Our research crew will dig the invaded nest and we began to safe as many hatchlings as possible.
Saved Hatchlings
Hello..Can anyone help me outta here?
Unhatched turtle eggs readily to be relocated from the invaded nest.
Hatching data taken daily to record the number of hatched turtles, unhatched, dead and relocation details.
Sadly, there will be some hatchling mortality. For those non hatched eggs or hatchlings that were still within the eggs, we will relocate them to a safer place and placed them in an artificial self dig nest. Those that already came out from the shell or injured ones will be transferred to a temporary hatchling area and only released the fit ones at night. By releasing them at night, the survival rate for the hatchlings will be higher since the day time will have even more predators in the sea such as small sharks and octopus.
Putting the sad moment aside, we did get to see this hatchling from the moment before and during the time they were released. These cuties were actually quite defenceless when young which is the reason why only a handful of them survived and reach adulthood. Upon releasing them into the sea, there was a moment of joy when these young hatchlings crawl into the sea and begin its new challenging chapter of life.
What are you looking at? I am still sleeping and stop disturbing me. I need to conserve energy before go into the sea and battle with sea creature for survival.
Ok. I am awake now. You can release me when night approaches....
Me too...
There was one late evening when Gary saw the hatchlings crawled up from their nest.
This freezing technique came from the natural instinct of the baby turtles. When they had crawled too early to the surface before night fall, they will freeze themselves to avoid any predator to take notice.
And then...Poof...All baby turtles rushing out suddenly and crawled into the sea.
I took a candid shot of Gary at work but was caught by him. Jokingly he added 'Kenapa ambil buntut I' which means why taking his butt photo....
Our luck finally came on the second night. We saw three green turtles landing and two of them laid eggs. It took about 1.5 to 2 hrs for the mother turtle to complete the egg laying process. Once it found a good location to lay egg, it will start body pitting. After doing so, it started to use its hind flippers to perform egg chambering and laid about 50-150 eggs before covering the nest and descend to the sea.
Picture was quite dark as we were not suppose to shine lights towards the turtle(except the backside to view the eggs) as that will distract the mother turtle.
Hope of Life
The flipper strength could give a nasty sand blow if we stand at wrong side. I had that once (nothing serious) when we helped one of the mother turtle struggling to get out from one of the checkpoint. I got to know that there were some checkpoint locations not suitable for turtle eggs incubation and will need to relocate the eggs fast within a short time, or else it will be too late. The following morning, we will start to collect data on these new turtle nests.
We measured the nest location from the the checkpoint and record down nest numbers etc.
Each nests were indicated in each post. Take note on the mesh that covered the nest are meant to prevent the monitor lizard from digging the nest and eat the turtle eggs.
This once week program not only covered the turtle conservation alone but also covering some activities during break time. We got the chance to visit the other beaches, Pasir Panjang at Laguna Resort Redang island. I think I'd been to this beach before in late 1990s and now had changed a lot. Well, we had some Kodak moment and explore the beach before headed back to Chagar Hutang. Personally, I prefer Chagar Hutang as it gave me an untouched feeling and tranquillity environment.
Pasir Panjang Redang Island
Boat at Pasir Panjang Redang Island. The crystal clear seawater still retained well from my last visit sometime 10 years ago.
Besides that, Lea guided us to a nearby waterfall for prawn spa. Hmm...Prawn spa. I wonder whether it will be like the commercial fish spa that blooms in urban city.
As soon as we reached the site and started dipping into the waterfall, small prawns started to crawl onto my foot. Ouch...it was quite painful indeed when these small freshwater prawns started to use its claw (can't see any way as it was too small) to clean my foot.
We had great time to snorkel at Chagar Hutang beach and there were plenty of marine life to see. It was like living in another world.
Beautiful bed of unspoilt hard corals at Chagar Hutang.
This is not a sea urchin or see rambutan whatever you call it. It is the Crown of thorn starfish, second largest starfish in the world and also feed on sea corals.
Clown fish live in a symbiotic relationship with sea anemone. They will not get stung by the anemone tenticle and get very curious when my camera got nearer to them. This fish are protandrous hermaphrodites, which means all are born as males initially and can change sex later.
We did have some frequent visitors. During lunch or tea time, we were entertained by cautious squirrels searching for easy food. They were quite daring and a few did actually have a tug of war with the food on my hand. Not forgotten too that my Canon 350D digital SLR camera RIP a few days before the program ended. Sigh....It had served me well for past few years. I had to use my fiancée SLR camera after that.
I forgot to mention that there were a few young adult green turtles that were injured in KLCC Aquatic Centre and transferred to Chagar Hutang. Some of them were handicap with one hind leg bitten off, unable to dive (maybe had air trapped in between the turtle body and the carapace) etc. We had some time to play around with these turtle. They seemed not afraid of us and were very greedy. We were told that some fit ones had been released into the sea and will be releasing turtle 'D' in a day or two. It was a great experience to witness the releasing of turtle 'D'. A few days before release, turtle 'D' was brought into the sea to get familiar with the surrounding.
On the day of release, I had quite a mix feeling. I was happy for him/her to be set free into its real world but at the same time missed its daily greeting for food.
I was lucky to swim along with turtle 'D' and observed the turtle getting used to the surrounding. The first few attempts saw the turtle was quite sloppy and occasionally its hard carapace hit the coral reefs but was slowly getting use to that.
Mann, our friendly research crew, took us to explore the cliff at Chagar Hutang. It was a spectacular view on top of the cliff and we could see a few turtles swimming around the Redang sea.
Chagar Hutang sees two species of turtles landing. They are the Green turtle and the Hawksbill turtle. Green turtle is herbivorous and mostly feed on various sea grasses and can reach a lifespan up to 80 years. On the other hand, hawksbill turtle distinguished by its curving beak-like mouth, feed on jelly fish and sea sponges. The landing of Hawksbill turtle is lower and the size is smaller than green turtle. We did not have a chance to see Hawksbill turtle landing in Chagar Hutang throughout our 1 week program but previous crews did see them.
It was good to see many of the tagged green turtles returned to Chagar Hutang to lay egg. The number significantly increases from less that 10 tagged turtle returning to about 70 of them in 2008.
Our crew had 20 turtles landing and 17 of them successfully laid eggs in Chagar Hutang. I was hoping to take a picture of a mother turtle when there was sun light.
Finally, on the last night, a mother turtle came to lay eggs around 5.30am and started to return to sea around 7.30am. We had some great photos and the mother turtle nonchalantly crawl into the sea and disappeared.
I remember that Rantau Abang used to be a very popular destination for another species of sea turtle landing. They are known as the Leatherback turtle and is the largest among all the turtle. This turtle is unique in such a way that its back lack of bony carapace, leather like look and not as hard as other sea turtles bony carapace. This place used to be one of the largest landing spot which totals about 10,000 nests per year but massively declined to 2 landings in 2008 and the eggs were infertile. It was reported that the decline was due to turtle egg collections. This is really sad and hope with more conservation programs take place, the leatherback will come back. So, for anyone out there who read this, please “SAY NO TO TURTLE EGGS”
Some decorations in Chagar Hutang.
Chagar Hutang promised us with spectacular evening sunset view in the later part of the day. In the morning, the bluish and crystal clear sea water gave a very warm welcome for us to have a refreshing morning swim.
This program was a very meaningful experience for me. I'd learned a lot on this turtle conservation program and brought back many wonderful memories. There were sadness to see the hatchling killed by natural predators and illegal turtle egg seller but on the other hand, I did managed to save many turtle eggs and witness the hatching begin its new life when they journey into the sea. It was a good place to relax my mind from all the working pressures and enjoy the beauty of our mother nature. It also reminded me to appreciate the comfy bed, fan, lights etc that I have at home. I strongly recommend that to anyone out there to take part on this voluntary program to protect our sea turtles from extinction and learn the modest way of living in a limited facilities and utility.
Seguros Team
Domina Team
Some riders in Domina team getting ready for the last criterium race in Dataran Merdeka.
Luciano Pagliarini from Lampre Team was one of the popular names in this annual event. He had made some impressive stage win and friendly to his fan.
Our Malaysian Cycling team coached by Joo Ngan also took part in this annual prestigious annual event.
David George,yellow jersey winner of LTDL 2006 posing for photos with his teammates.
This was one of the photo taken during the Genting Climb. This climb proven to be a very challenging climb upon reaching the peak of Genting Highlands. International cycling team from Columbia Selle Italia are popular of producing many great climbers and many had succeeded in grabbing the yellow jersey during this Genting climb.
Colourful convoy vehicles can be seen before the criterium race start.
Is David Beckham joining LTDL? He really looks like David Beckham...
Luciano Pagliarini from Lampre team warming up....
Musairi Musa, our local rider had once won the Overall Asian Team when he joined the Telekom Malaysia Team. The panning shot was done by photoshop.
The first lap was just flagged off and the cyclist had to do 12 laps of 6.7km each at the Merdeka Square.
Many riders in colourful cycling outfit sprinting to more than 45km/hr to complete the race.
Some of the telephoto shots....
Another cycling panning shots using photoshop motion blur...
Sayuti Zahit from Letua Team in action....
There were many different photographing methods to try out from wide angle to telephoto. This is one of the successful panning shot taken by my camera without post processing.
One of the past yellow jersey winner in action...
Malaysia weather is unpredictable. The LTDL 2006 criterium was canceled due to heavy downpour.
The winners of LTDL at the podium.
This cycling race requires all the combination of great mental strength, focus, teamwork, endurance and techniques to be the winner.I hope the event will continue to flourish in next year and subsequent year.
