New monofin!

Look what has arrived!! My brand new custom made Powerfin!!  It actually arrived weeks and weeks ago but I only got to try it out yesterday due to unforeseen circumstances. But when I finally tried it in the pool, it went preeetty well!

I tried out a few different styles of kicking, just to see which might be the best for efficiency.
Here's a comparison:

From past training records, I have done:
- 50m with my short diving fins - continuous kicks with reasonable power put into each kick - 27 kicks completed in 50s
- 100m with my old Mat Mas training monofin would take around 1min 45s, didn't count the number of kicks unfortunately

Yesterday, I did a series of 50m with new mono (2 attempts each):
1) Continuous kicking at slow and steady pace - 25 kicks in 50s
2) 1 kick 1 glide with more power put into each kick - 12 kicks in 50s
3) 2 kicks 1 glide with power in each kick - 15 kicks in 42s

I'm still unsure as to which is the best for me... I think a series of 100m is in order! Freedivers out there, any thoughts and advice?

Visit to Sisters' Island Marine Park - for guide training!

Yesterday evening, 52 of us trainee guides made our way to Sisters' Island Marine Park, the first ever marine park in Singapore.

Establishing a marine park is a wonderful milestone in marine conservation here, and is a much needed move because:

1)Our local water's are home to
- more than 250 species of hard corals (32% of hard coral species worldwide!! In such a tiny space!)
- more than 100 species of reef fish
- approx 200 species of sponges
- 12 seagrass species (and dugongs that eat them!)

2)Singapore shoreline and waters are constantly undergoing development. For our marine species survive and thrive, they need a protected place to call home!

Our journey started at Pasir Panjang ferry terminal, where we boarded a boat to take us to the marine park.

Most of the photos shown here were taken by a fellow guide Xiuling. Thanks for letting me share the photos!

There is lots to see on the way (as Ria points out in the photo):
- Labrador Park, the last mainland coral reef we have
- Sentosa - popular tourist attraction, but not many tourists know about the reefs around the island. Sadly much of it has been buried under sand due to land reclamation (this is going to be a recurring theme, as many of our islands have been enlarged in this way, at expense of the coral, seagrass, fish and many other organisms that live on the reef.)
- HUGE ships - Singapore is one of the world's busiest ports, with about 1000 ships in port at any one time. And yet, our resilient reefs are still here!)
- several of the other southern islands - Pulau Tekukor (ex-army dump with barely any reef left), St John's island, Lazarus Island

After a 30 minute boat ride, we moored up at Big Sister's Island. Beautiful waters greeted us!

Across the channel is Little Sister's Island

At the jetty, we broke up into smaller groups and set off to see what we could see on the island.

Small lagoon at Big Sisters' Island. Beautiful but unfortunately, reclaimed. Luckily, some corals have managed to settle themselves on top of the rocks and there are patches of seagrass around. 

Here are some of the animals that were seen that evening and night:



Whelk: Scavenging molluscs that have a long siphon that they use to detect chemicals released by dead organisms. They follow the trail of chemicals to the dead organism to feed on it.



Acorn worm casts: The pile of sand there was created by an acorn worm as they swallow sand and mud and eat the edible bits, and excrete out the rest! Much like what an earthworm does in the garden. These guys breathe through gill slits! They can also grow up to 2m long. Massive! Don't try to dig them up though, they are very fragile and will disintegrate.



Common sea star: Contrary to what the name suggests, these animals are no longer so common in Singapore. They used to be found in Chek Jawa (North) and East Coast and Changi, but are no longer found there due to the flooding that occurred in Johor in 2007, which caused a drop in salinity in those marine environments. They are still the most common sea stars in the Southern Islands though. Sea stars eat by extending their stomachs out of their body on their underside, and eating up small decaying plants and animals on the sand surface. Their mating ritual (shown in the photo) is pretty unique among sea stars; the male is on top of the female and they release sperm and eggs respectively. Only one other sea star does this too!



Tape seagrass: Seagrasses are the only flowering plants that grow in the sea. They have roots, flowers and fruits, just like plants on land. These are some of the features that you can use to tell them apart from seaweed (you can find more here). Seagrasses form important habitats (like underwater forests) for marine animals, and provide food for others, such as turtles and dugongs. The next time you are
looking at a seagrass bed, look for dugong feeding trails, which are look like clear paths through a (sea)grass field.



Arrowhead crab: On closer look at the seagrass, we saw a few tiny (0.5-1cm long) Arrowhead crabs. These guys, as their name suggests, have a triangular body with a pointed tip between the eyes.

We saw many different types of coral! Pictures of just a few:

5 spot anemone shrimp on a carpet anemone: Named after the 5 spots on it's tail fan. These shrimps are usually found in a male and female pair, one pair per anemone. The anemone provides shelter for them, and they may feed on the leftovers from the anemone's meal of fish, crabs or snails. 

And we were lucky enough to see this rare (and dangerous) creature, a cone snail! Cone snails are highly venomous and hunt by shooting a tiny harpoon through which venom is injected into their prey (mainly fish). However, the same mechanism can kill a human within minutes. So if you ever see a cone snail, or anything that looks like it, DO NOT pick it up. 

And this is something that I have always wanted to see while out diving, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine seeing it while walking in shallow water in a lagoon! Can you see it? It's a perfectly camouflaged frogfish. This one in particular had eggs attached to its left side, indicating that it is a male. A super cool find! 

Giant clam: These big clams feed on the sugars and proteins produced by algae that live in their tissues, and also filter and eat plankton from the water. They can actually control their growth rate depending on water conditions. If conditions are good, you can see that they are growing by the white mantle on their shell. In some countries, giant clams are harvested for their meat, which has unfortunately lead to decline in their numbers.

Leaf slug: These slugs belong to an order of slugs called sap-sucking slugs. They feed on the sap of seaweed by piercing a seaweed cell and sucking out the contents, hence the name. The chlorophyll of the seaweed is what gives the slug its green colour and good camouflage! Leaf slugs in particular are believed to eat Hairy green seaweed, which you can see in the picture.

Besides all these animals, many more were seen! Including the hermit crabs, Spider conch, octopus, yellow-lipped sea krait, ghost crabs, monkeys and monitor lizards.

At the end of the night, we were all extremely happy at seeing and learning about so many cool things on the island. And of course, completing the guide training!

To sign up for the next guided walk at the marine park (and have a chance to see all this amazing stuff!), check out the Nparks website: http://www.nparks.gov.sg/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=207 . I might see you there!

A new marine park for Singapore... and training to be a nature guide there

In August, the first Marine Park in Singapore, Sisters' Island Marine Park, was established. This marked a happy milestone for marine biodiversity conservation in Singapore! After decades of having our reefs and seagrass beds reclaimed, we finally have a little piece (approx 40 ha) that is protected. What a great initiative by our National Parks Board.

More about our local marine park here

As part of managing the marine park, NParks organizes guided tours of the park a couple of times each month. Last month, I got to know that opened up opportunities for the general public to sign up as guides at the park. Seeing this an opportunity to get to know our marine life hotspots better and spread the conservation message more widely, I signed up!

But before becoming a guide, I have to be trained first! The first part of the training was classroom-based, which was held earlier this week and last week. But this was no ordinary boring classroom theory lessons. Following the principles of The Leafmonkey Workshop, the classroom sessions (2 in total) were interactive and fun, involving engaging presentations, discussions and collaborative note-taking (using google docs, one of the best inventions ever) and role playing. Being a marine-themed workshop, this naturally involved many people morphing into marine creatures :P

Local conservationist Ria Tan giving a presentation (one of many!) on the finer points of guiding 

A little role-play action: how to deal with "difficult" visitors

A giant clam in the classroom!

The main message I took away from the workshop is that guiding is not as simple as bringing a group of people to a place and telling them about the organisms living there. It's way more complicated than that! Mostly, it's about putting yourself in your visitors' shoes and thinking about why they decided to visit the nature park in the first place. From there, you can connect with them help ensure that they have a good time. If they are having fun learning and discovering, they will want to listen to what you have to say, and then you can pass what you want them to know. If they had fun, they will want to come back, and let all their friends know about what a great time they had!

Here's a little sharing on some tips I learnt from the workshop on how to be an effective guide (thanks Ria for allowing me to share the workshop contents!)

1) Think of the top 3 things you want your visitors to Think, Feel and Do. Sure, it's great if you can pass on your scientific knowledge to your visitors, but in the end, it's how they FEEL after the whole experience that will cause them to want to make a difference.

2) Put yourself in the visitors' shoes and think of 3 things a visitor would WANT to do during the nature walk. If you can structure the way you guide according to their (reasonable) needs, you have a happy visitor :)

3) Think of the top 3 things YOU can do so that the visitors enjoy the walk, and the top 3 things you should NOT do.

4) Have a "Station 0" before the walk starts to let your visitors know that with every step they take, they can potentially kill something. Or hurt themselves. Therefore, stay on the designated trail!

5) If you come across a completely new organism you have no idea about, it's ok to admit you don't know! After all, we are volunteer guides, not walking encyclopedias. And of course, new species are being discovered constantly! If you can't identify it, either ask someone more experienced, or take a photo and look it up on the spot or on the way back (the power of smartphones), or encourage the visitors to take a picture and look it up themselves! Self-discovery is one of the best ways to learn.

And tomorrow we get to put all this knowledge into practice... because we are going out into the field for some hands on training! Stay tuned to see how it turns out.

A wealth of resources on Singapore's marine life... that most people don't know about. Hopefully this will change with the publicity and education that comes with opening up the marine park for guided walks! 

Mantas deserve to be free too

A couple of weeks ago, I received the news that 2 manta rays at the Marine Life Park in Sentosa died. (Two manta rays at Resorts World Sentosa's marine park die)

This topic is extremely close to my heart as I have dived and freedived with manta rays many times, volunteered for manta conservation efforts and did my own research project on them. Read about my manta experiences here: Project Manta

I wonder what the justification for getting more mantas was. After all, the park already has 3 manta rays. Given that these animals are classified by the IUCN as Vulnerable, and have population trends that are decreasing, my personal opinion is that it was not necessary to capture more mantas from the wild to keep them in the aquarium.

Some people might say this is a good educational opportunity for those who will never see mantas in the wild. I have already demonstrated my view of the "catch and display one(or more) for the good of many" idea in a previous post about captive cetaceans - To be free. I firmly believe that there are other ways to educate the general public and that it is really not necessary to display an animal in captivity to the masses in order for them to learn about it.

To prove my point, I would like to share my personal experience.

Growing up in Singapore, I never saw any live mantas up close and personal. The closest I got was on the television in nature documentaries. When I started diving, I was dying to see one in the water! So when I heard about Project Manta. I jumped at the chance to not only see mantas in the wild, but to help with research about them. One thing lead to another and before I knew it, I was doing my own research project on the rays, as part of the Project Manta team. So you see, it was actually because I had never seen a manta ray before that really motivated me to make the effort to see them in the wild. Imagine what this could do for ecotourism if most people thought the same way!

One thing that aquariums and zoos could do if they wanted to display big animals with a large home range is to display life-sized models or even the skeletons of those animals. Standing under a skeleton of a whale or crawling through its fake aorta is quite awe-inspiring! Furthermore, these models could be used in a much more interactive manner than a live specimen.

Despite this, I do appreciate and applaud the conservation efforts of the S.E.A Aquarium (of which the Marine Life Park is part of). They recently announced a collaboration with Conservation International to tag 30 mantas in the waters surrounding Indonesia, which could result in more information being known about their lifestyle. As they say, knowledge is power, and hopefully this power will be used to form plans to effectively protect these amazing creatures. More information about the project can be found here: http://www.rwsentosa.com/Portals/0/RWS/pressroom/2014/PressRelease-MantaRayTagging.pdf

I hope with all my heart that no more mantas have been or are going to be brought in to replace the ones that died at the Marine Life Park.