Maybe it’s true, that I can’t live without you… Yes, it’s true. SMUX Divers can’t live without the world underwater.

This time round, SMUX Diving Team has travelled to Malapascua and Moalboal in Philippines for our year-end holiday trip. It isn’t just one diving location, but TWO. Of course, two is better than one!

The journey there wasn’t very tiring as the flight’s short. Look at the enthusiastic faces below when we arrived at the airport!

We were hungry and went to eat Jolibee, a KFC a-like fast food restaurant. Their chicken is awesome! After 5 hour bumpy rides in the van and a boat transfer, we’ve reached Malapascua and checked into Slams Garden. The place’s quite decent, except that the cocks continuously give morning call at anytime of the day.

We had to wake up early in the morning at around 5 am everyday to catch the thresher sharks. They are so cute! They swim slowly in around monad shoals as it’s a cleaning station, where the cleaning fishes eat the dead skin and bacteria on their body. We have also seen the mandarin fishes mating before sunset. Research has found out that mandarin fishes starts courtship 20mins before sunset and mates daily!

After our endeavour in Malapscua, we took a 4 hour van ride to Moalboal to look for sardines. Jolibee’s so nice that we went to eat it again. Bob and Remus shared a meal that consist of 8 piece chicken and 4 plates of sphagetti. YUM YUM!

SARDINES HERE WE COME! Look at them below! It’s like an army of ants but its millions of sardines! They can block of the bright sun into the water.

FANTASTIC! It’s the first time all of us seen so many fishes at one time. When we dive towards it, the school of sardines will make a ‘hole’ for us to dive through. How cool is that! We managed to see a school of jackfish preying on sardines. The jack fishes will swim slowly towards the sardines and ‘chiong’ towards the sardines. Poor sardines, being one of the bottoms of the food chain, get prey on by almost any other fishes and sharks. We went on to another other dive sites to look for a plane wreck and a sunken island. The wreck we’ve seen is a copton plane and some of us have taken the pilot seat and trying to start the plane. If only it could work….

On the last two days of Moalboal, we went to look around Moalboal for nice places. We went to see a waterfall nearby our town. The water is great and refreshing! It’s even better than swimming pool! The next day, we went to see cock fight but we were 20 mins late. So sad! Fortunately, we managed to eat some appetising chicken at the roadside stall and it is really cheap and good!

The trip was tiring but a fruitful and meaningful one. We took back not only images and memories of the trip, but also the message on the memorial that is deep in the sea that we saw.

It is not the years in a life that counts, it is the life in the years..

Since its inception in 2004, Reef Alert has been an annual marine conservation project led by students from the Singapore Management University Extremists (SMUX) Diving Team, aimed at increasing marine awareness and social responsibility of divers.

Unlike previous years whereby Reef Alert entailed the performance of reef surveys on Pulau Dayang, Malaysia, Reef Alert 2011 took on a different direction. This year, in collaboration with the conservation divers from Gill Divers, as well as the privileged representation of a mediacorp artist, Dasmond Koh, Reef Alert took place on the south-eastern offshore islands of Bintan Island. On the weekend before the expedition, Gill Divers sent four men from the 2011 team to Bintan to examine the water conditions and visibility, as well as to mark the dive sites the team was venturing into. Subsequently, for the expedition itself, the team of 21 participants embarked on four dive sites, planting mooring lines to protect the coral reefs from boat anchors, and descending divers from landing on them.

Just a food for thought, whenever an anchor is dropped in a coral reef, a quarter of the corals’ growth is ruined, and should the anchor be dragged, it could potentially ruin half of the reef! Hence, the mooring lines used by the team, not only marks out a descent line for divers undergoing diving courses to descend safely, it also acts as a weight for boats to secure on to, without having the anchors to damage the reefs.

The mooring line structure includes a cement block stabilized by stainless steel, which was lowered to the seabed with a line tied to a buoy. The cement was mixed with sand and organic matter to promote the growth of corals. With a total of sixteen cement blocks, each dive site had four cement blocks lowered, and tied adjacent to one another on the seabed. The team was tasked to push the blocks together and tie bowlines around the four blocks to secure them.

Bintan Island was chosen, as it is a relatively new site recently opened to divers, and infrastructures to protect the coral reefs are yet to be in place. As such, this site allows for maximization of conservation efforts.

Following this expedition, the team intends to hold exhibitions at the Singapore Management University and two other public locations to showcase their project efforts, and raise awareness within school students with regards to marine conservation.

In time to come, the Reef Alert 2011 team looks forward to further develop diving infrastructure through future iterations of Reef Alert. Until then, they are proud to say that their inaugural mooring line project was a success.

On the way there..

As usual, we met up at LKS Library to board our bus for Mersing Jetty in Malaysia. Everyone’s enthusiasm was rubbing onto one another as we knew that this was yet going to be another exciting weekend amidst our busy weekday schedules of summer work and internships.

Despite having been on past dive trips before, none of them felt as meaningful as Reef Alert. We are going to Dayang with a real purpose – to survey the marine life and to check its health instead of merely enjoying ourselves underwater. Beyond the depths of the seas, nobody really knows what is happening underwater, and it is our job to let others know the deteriorating condition of the reefs.

The bus journey towards Mersing was full of ups and downs – literally. The road was filled with turns that made some of us wake up from our deep sleep, disturbing our rest. Upon arrival, we had to wait until 2am for the tide to come in before the boat can leave. While some of us stoned around the jetty, the rest went to have supper. When we finally boarded the boat, all of us fell asleep on the way to Pulau Dayang.

And so it begins..

We woke up the next day afresh at 9, had a fulfilling western supper of sausages, eggs and beans and set off for our first dive site. This first dive was meant to be a revision and served as a practice session for us to try and apply what we have learnt in our lessons. We had a hands-on session to test ourselves on whether we actually recognize what we see in reality instead of photos.  Basically we have to survey 3 segments – fishes, invertebrates and substrates, and all of us scored pretty well in this mini-test. Few of us were even lucky enough to catch a green turtle swim across during our descent to the seabed. It’s a sign of things to come!

We returned to camp for a chicken rice lunch, and moved out for our 2^nd dive, which was our actual reef check. During this dive, we noticed the relatively weaker health of the reefs, evidenced by little fish and invertebrates reef health indicators and lots of coral rubble on the seabed. Reef degradation is caused by a multitude of reasons, such as fish bombing, overfishing, as well as global warming.

Another lucky few of us got to catch a blue spotted ray resting in a crevice, but fled when more of us tried to catch a glimpse of its beauty.

Done with the 2^nd dive, we headed back to shore for our tea break of desserts and sweet potatoes. Some of us were already anticipating the fantastic buffet dinner that is served on this exotic island. We moved out again, with some of us already had “hard corals”, “giant clams” and “diadema urchins” constantly stuck in our minds. This time, all of us witnessed a huge school of barracudas parading themselves in the water. As all of us were so focused on our work, a challenge would be to spot rare creatures like the green turtle we met during the first dive.

Finally, we had our long-awaited dinner. While some of us went ahead with the exciting night dive, the rest of us did not hold back for the appetizing dinner. Among the 8 of us on land, we took 5 full plates of lamb chops, 1 full satay plate, 2 plates of honey glazed barbequed chicken wings and a plate of chilli squid, enough to satisfy the hunger of any man.

The next morning..

We woke up early at 6am, so that we can finish up our final 2 dives. This site was relatively better, with reef health condition better than the previous. Lucky peeps saw another blue-spotted ray. Zzz.

Zeehan, our marine biologist commended our efforts for the reef check, and said that the few checks we did should contain enough information for our survey. Thus, as a reward we had a leisure dive just before we head back to civilization. Our last dive site was the famous whale look-alike rock called Rayner’s Rock. At the right times, we would be able to see the black-tip shark and more turtles. We did not chance upon one, but we saw an enormous Humphead Parrotfish, which was probably at least 50-60cm in length. It is one of the positive reef health indicators that we were supposed to look for. Other than the parrotfish, we saw a Triggerfish that was trying to protect its territory from Cedric, who was naturally intimidating in size to all of us. Lol. Up and in between the rocks, we tried to locate dugongs, whalesharks, rays and sharks but to no avail. As the divers always say, “You see what you see, you don’t see means you don’t see.” This means that if you’re that lucky to see it, you will see it, if not its just dumb luck.

My Thoughts

Although I’ve only been diving for the past year, it is clear that the marine life is not what I had expected. The beautiful shoals of fish that are broadcasted over advertisements are merely few of the footages that some lucky divers shot. Although Pulau Dayang is famous for its reefs, what I saw was not the many schools of fish and beautiful corals, but a seemingly dying and unpopulated marine life, which was once abundant according to the Divemasters and instructors. There is no point getting emotional over what’s been done – but I believe our focus should be on what we ought to do to save these reefs.

Oh well, this marks the end of Reef Alert 2010, and it has been a fruitful one. All of us gave in our best be it the challenge of counting fishes, navigating up and down in between cracks and crevices to find reef health indicators and carefully maintaining buoyancy on the seabed to check out the substrates. But what we learnt most from Reef Alert 2010 is the importance of marine conservation. Every organism in the sea contributes to the ecosystem in the sea and every little thing we do on land, e.g. asking for an extra plastic bag, turning on the air-con, consuming sharks fins or even releasing balloons into the air, can result in adverse effects on the marine environment. It is important for us to be aware about these issues and do our part in conserving the environment.

Wait a minute; we still have an exhibition to conduct! We’ll keep everyone updated on our Reef Alert exhibition, till then!

Written by:

Terence Ho

Participant

Reef Alert 2010

And we’re here!

At our resort, preparing for first dive!

Off we go! First dive of the trip: Shore dive
what an experience! The tank is FREAKING heavy.

Under the seaaa,

Under the seaaa~

Happy people after dive!

The things we do…

1)      Drive the speedboat

2)      Act cool

3)      Fight on ship wrecks

4)      Then descend into the black unknown of the ship wreck.

5)      Take photos at the big lovely heart at the More More Inn

6)      Discover cute diving quotes

7)      Left our mark at Redang (spot the sticker)

Not to mention all the eating that we did.

Finally, time to go home.

Till the next dive!

“Save the sea, be a diver!”

That was the message being brought across to divers and non-divers alike at the Asian Dive Expo (ADEX) 2009, held at the Marina at Keppel Bay from 23^rd to 26^th April 2009. As the diving exhibition placed particular emphasis on marine conservation, the SMUX Diving Team was given a platform in the Environmental Quest Corridor.

The team used this platform to educate the public on the impact of neglect on the marine environment, on how our actions adversely affect the ocean and their marine life, and how dependent we actually are on the oceans. Another feature was the reef checks that we conduct in Reef Alert, our team’s annual conservation project.

ADEX also had various operators exhibiting, varying from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), diving operators, diving magazines, and dive sites being featured. It was a good experience walking along the aisles, talking with divers with similar interests, ranging from conservation to photography, or even the basic enjoyment of underwater treasures. This was definitely an event not to be missed by divers!

The first day of dives ran rather smoothly. I took the openwater course and was pleasantly surprised to discover that diving turned out to be easy! It was even easier then stepping from boat to boat at the jetty. Furthermore, it’s possible to dive with a semi-blocked nose and ear. Submerged underwater allowed me to perceive reality differently – time seemed to stand still, everything seems so near, but when you reach it and turn around, the people you left behind look really small.

However, it was annoying to have other people landing on you when their buoyancy control goes haywire in the quest to attain Floating Buddha status. Nonetheless, it was easy and definitely fun to take revenge on others!

The second day of diving was interesting. Beginning with the fresh faeces on our first dive to the stormy conditions we faced when diving to our dive boat abandoning us due to unforeseen circumstances, it was one great adventure after the next. Sadly the time came when we all had to leave Tioman, but not before ??-ing (taking away) the legendary roti bomb of Tioman.

The best part about diving is that I didn’t feel tired in between dives, perhaps a little cold, but nothing a little sunshine on the boat deck couldn’t cure. However, I was extremely exhausted the morning after returning from Tioman, but that’s probably because there’s no more dives. For now.

By Hu Jinjie

Open Season Marketing IC