FAD’s moorings and wrecks! Brunei to Davao; 31May to 21July 2012.

Travelling north from Bruneii and Labuan is definitely revisiting the past except this time we got to sail back to KK in a brilliant following breeze, well 25 knots that had the locals ducking for cover behind every island. Back in KK the word was engine repairs and yet again pondering heat exchangers and a crew change with Lasse leaving and German Sebastian coming on for the passage across the Celebes Sea to Davao in the Philippines.  Before all of this though we decided to head out to Gaya for some diving and beach timeand to see if we could sneak past the enjoyment police at the resort, without paying for multiple guides to follow us around on the national park tracks. Simon was with us this time to show us the sneaky way past the resort people but to no avail as when we were spotted they couldn’t understand Lasse’s Swedish or for that matter  Geoff’s Welsh, no surprises there really! So it was off on the national park tracks (the guides are really to allow you through the resort it seems) and a visit to the resort, forest, canopy walk.

Spot their new mooring!!

We had come through here a year or so earlier and whilst managing to get a swim in the resort pool and even being given a free cocktail (quite accidental on the resorts part) we were told very clearly to anchor to the sides of the bay. It seems a view of grotty yachties and their boats detracts from the whole resort experience or something.  So to avoid any angst we slipped  over  to  the south side of the bay and Trevor parked the Gadfly on the mooring that we had swung on last time before heading for Layang Layang; in this case a nice fat rope attached to a big-arse coral pinnacle on the bottom. Sadly the coral wasn’t up to the job as that night a squall to take ones breathe away hit us and with the boat nearly on it’s side in 50 knots of wind the mooring let go. Bit of a worry really, 2.30 in the morning, pitch black and in wind and rain one cannot look into the boat is bouncing up and down on the reef. Well when in doubt look for sea room so off into deep water we went dragging the bottom of the boat across the reef only to work out we still had a sodding great lump of coral hanging from the front of the boat, oh joy. To make matters worse our snubbing rope was now tangled in the mess of mooring line giving the appearance of a ‘Gordion’ knot. Ah well, these squalls do blow themselves out so eventually with the wind subsiding we deposited the resort’s mooring in a new location and went on the pick in the middle of their bay.

Lankayan.

Back in KK after sorting various repairs and some new awnings for the cockpit we headed north hopefully for some diving with the new Hookah (surface supply compressor). It was also back into some old haunts of Lankayan , Sandakan and Kudat where we caught up again with the Rubicon Starlets (Tim and Barb). On Lankayan they had built a great big and beautiful new restaurant and bar just for us it seemed and we spent a couple of days here snorkelling, diving and seeing the sights. Sandakan of course remained the same right down to the foul ground and fasteners out in front of the yacht club. Last time we were here the anchor was turned inside out courtesy of some fishermen helping extract it and sure enough this time we fouled again, this time on whopping great sunken fishing boat.  We were actually anchored well clear of all the fasteners but dragged in a squall and spring tides and after dragging into the , tide changes figure-eighted the chain a couple of times in and over the wreck. Geoff had a go at getting it off first and came up rather wide eyed as there really is nothing like diving in zero visibility, with current, on a wreck with all sorts of ‘things’ washing past; south-east Asian ports are not the most aesthetically pleasing places to dive in. We eventually got our chain off with Trevor grovelling around on the bottom wrestling chain from behind steel plates and fishing nets and in the dark although one doubts the bottom here has seen sunlight for a long time anyway.  Handy to have the hookah at this point and all but in the absence of a full-face mask there was considered thought to what new vaccinations might be in order!!

The Rubicon Stars!

Moving east was back through familiar territory, Dewhurst Bay, Tambisan, TunSakaran and Semporna. We did head direct from Tambisan towards Davao but a friendly Philippino fisherman suggested we shouldn’t go past a couple of islands as “they are pirates”, “very bad people”, “Abu Saiaf”; okay we will go the other way back to Semporna! So a few days later it was off on the 400 odd miles across to Davao and back into the Philippines. This involved three nights at sea in what was pretty calm and easy conditions except for hundreds of unlit navigation hazards. Daryl on Metana had given us a heads up on this and it seems this whole part of the Celebes Sea is used for fishing with FAD’s or Fish Attraction or Aggregation Devices. There are hundreds of them, whopping great steelbouys about 6 metres long and anchored in anything from 100 to 5000 metres of water. Local fishermen work the FAD’s with boats all over the place including one fellow 20 miles offshore in his rather small ‘banka’ asking us if we wanted to buy his dolphin fish. It seems the dolphin fish hang around the bouys and assorted palm fronds and such things that the fishermen attach to the bouy and rope underneath. At night these things are a worry, they only paint up on radar in smooth water at about half a mile and even when a fishermen is tied up at night to one, they only turn their light (flashing disco style) on when they a see a boat close by. Apparently they don’t want to flatten their batteries, makes interesting night passages in this part of the world!!

Fishing boats at night! Quite random!

Tun Sakaran. Good place to anchor. Sea Gypsy territory.

Watch out for the pirates.

First port of call on this new Philippino adventure was Bulot Island at the bottom of the Davao Gulf, a visit to the town then some of the islands for snorkelling, swimming and visiting the locals. At the island across from Bulot the locals were very keen to investigate (don’t see too many yachts in these parts it seems) and we eventually had half of the little beach community on the boat for lunch. They even helped us clean the water line on Gadfly and thereforegave us  an opportunity to give away ‘cargo’ that meant much to them and good kharma for us; old sunglasses, monofilament not used for two years, old ropes, redundant stainless pots and crab traps amongst other things; these are very poor people.  We day hopped the hundred odd miles into Davao eventually going into the marina at the top of Samal Island just over the water from Davao town. Not many good anchorages here as the beaches are all quite steep to with deep water. Did let us see how the locals get by though and when swinging on a postcard of shallow water near the reef in one bay we could watch the locals carting on their backs loads of copra (coconut husk) in sacks to lighters that then carried the sacks to boats further out. They do it tough in this part of the world. On other boats here the ferries across from Samal are interesting with an ‘engineer’ sitting aft responding to the helmsman via a ‘telegraph’, in this case a steel bar banging on a metal pipe when the helmsman tugs on a piece of string; love it!

The Spanish have a lot to answer for!!

Cargo!

Of course as always on ones own boat boats things rarely go according to plans and in this case after arriving at the Samal marina Trevor decided to work out what that oil leak was all about. Well we arrived on the Wednesday and on Friday we pulled the engine out of the boat, ah yes, boat maintenance in exotic locations. Sorry about the delay in news. Cheers from the Gadfly.

Fish Attraction (or Aggregation) Devices.‘FADs’.

A fish aggregating (or aggregation) device (FAD) is a man-made object used to attract ocean going pelagic fish such as marlin, tuna and mahi-mahi (dolphin fish). They usually consist of buoys or floats tethered to the ocean floor with concrete blocks. Over 300 species of fish gather around FADs. FAD’s attract fish for numerous reasons that vary by species.Fish tend to move around FADs in varying orbits, rather than remaining stationary below the buoys. Both recreational and commercial fisheries use FADs.

Before FADs, commercial tuna fishing used purse seining to target surface-visible aggregations of birds and dolphins, which were a reliable signal of the presence of tuna schools below. The demand for dolphin-safe tuna was a driving force for FADs.

Fish are fascinated with floating objects. They aggregate in considerable numbers around objects such as drifting flotsam, rafts, jellyfish and floating seaweed. The objects appear to provide a “visual stimulus in an optical void”, and offer some protection for juvenile fish from predators. The gathering of juvenile fish, in turn, attracts larger predator fish. A study using sonar in French Polynesia, found large shoals of juvenile bigeye tuna and yellowfin tuna aggregated closest to the devices, 10 to 50m. Further out, 50 to 150m, was a less dense group of larger yellowfin and albacore tuna. Yet further out, to 500m, was a dispersed group of various large adult tuna. The distribution and density of these groups was variable and overlapped. The FADs were also used by other fish, and the aggregations dispersed when it was dark.

Drifting FADs are not tethered to the bottom and can be natural objects such as logs or man-made.

Moored FADs occupy a fixed location and attach to the sea bottom using a weight such as a concrete block. A rope made of floating synthetics such as polypropylene attaches to the mooring and in turn attaches to a buoy. The buoy can float at the surface (lasting 3–4 years) or lie subsurface to avoid detection and surface hazards such as weather and ship traffic. Subsurface FADs last longer (5–6 years) due to less wear and tear, but can be harder to locate. In some cases the upper section of rope is made from heavier-than-water metal chain so that if the buoy detaches from the rope, the rope sinks and thereby avoids damage to passing ships who no longer use the buoy to avoid getting tangled in the rope.

Samal Island. Holiday Oceanview Marina!

Love the engineers telegraph!

Philippino taxi ornamentation.

The engineer.

Swimming in Mud. Kota Kinabulu to Brunei May 13-30 (2012).

Royal Brunei Yacht Club.

At the Royal Brunei Yacht Club at Muara in Brunei (about 20 miles from town), they don’t sell beer. In fact like the rest of Brunei they don’t sell any alcohol at all. Instead intrepid yachties need to bring their own grog with them or put up with an extremely dry argument. You see they are quite Moslem here and the Sultan is none too keen on alcohol so the place is dry (well if you look really hard you might find it somewhere!!).  However, only 20 miles away across the water is Labuan, a duty free port that sells the cheapest alcohol in Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand; we will leave the Philippines out here given the Aus$1.50 bottles of Rhum and Gin available there! The arrangement here is that those boaty types who hang around for a while, every now and again do a mercy dash across the water and bring back enough grog to possibly float their boat. Fortunately for all concerned at the RBYC the locals have an arrangement where those heathen enough to drink and those lacking adequate religious substance (or both) can bring their own beer ashore (best in your own bucket also) and the bar will provide you, free of charge, ice to chill your beer; perfect. It doesn’t really help the Philippinos who are working here (and having to quite unwillingly ‘go on the wagon’) go about getting a drink, but knowing the drinking proclivities of most yachtie types these guys have dramatically improved their English skills with phrases like “got any rum”, “what about gin”, yes “brandy will do”! It was either that, buy a boat or swim.

We are in Brunei chasing the cheap diesel after hanging around in Labuan getting the cheap beer. We slipped away from KK on the fifteenth with Welsh Jeff and Hilary on semi retirement from the UK, Swedish Lasse backpacking as far as he can and Trevor of course trying to keep on top of boat maintenance. First port of call was the old haunt of Police Bay and the obligatory BBQ on the beach. The big item here though was testing out the new ‘Hookah’, or for those non-diving types, the new ‘low-pressure surface supply compressor’. Trevor had been building this for the past week in KK with help from ‘Charlie’, the aluminium welder from Inanam (KK industrial area) who usually specialises in fabricating aluminium bits aimed at making small cars go as fast as possible. Building this had been quite a saga that fortuitously coincided with Gini coming out from Australia and carrying around 20 kilograms of compressor parts; no surprises really that Simon was more than happy for Amanda to go back to Aus for a couple of weeks and do the same! Anyway the new gear is running swimmingly heralding a whole new phase in diving capabilities. Whilst at Police Bay (Pulau Gaya) we were also reacquainted with that brilliant aspect of Sabah tourism, “no you can’t possibly go for a walk in the forest on your own”, “it is far to unsafe” and “for your own safety, we will give you a guide for 200 Ringgit”, (Aus$70). Unfortunately this seems to be becoming the norm here where travellers and tourists are charged large sums for even the mundane and up to six times what the locals are for anything more than mundane. We just might have to sneak past their resort when we go back that way!

Panel 5

From Gaya to Pulua Tiga is about 35 miles with the opportunity at the end of the day to jump in mud. Tiga is a national park with a small resort of sorts, the obligatory diving operation and a ‘mud volcanoe’. You simply walk up the track behind the resort, go about 1.5 km, jump in the mud, float around for a while then walk down the beach to wash it off. Of course there is a sign advising all yachtie types to register at an office somewhere but you then probably run the risk of having to pay to take a guide with you, for your own safety of course, before you jump in the mud. The locals here trumpet the mud as good for your skin, health, complexion and as a remedy for most skin afflictions. It must be a bit of a girl thing these mud baths though as Hilary was more than happy to embrace the concept, porpoising around in the outdoor health spa. For your trusted blogger however the concepts of ear infection, conjunctivitis and parasites come to mind as possibilities; god knows what the locals might do with their mud to take the piss out of the punters. Washing the stuff off took more than a while as well and we all probably still have mud in our ears; we are sure Jeff has gone a bit deafer since.

Amphibious again it would seem!

The next forty miles took as back to Labuan and with the new crew another day of running around checking out the same locations as July last year; they haven’t changed but we did get to marvel once again at the plastic fish in the Marine Museum. It meant also that we could locate the plaque with Jenny’s (the librarian) uncle Jack’s name on it; ‘John Kenneth Cameron’. Jack died on the Sandakan death march and is remembered in the Labuan war cemetery on Panel 5, soldiers with unknown graves. His grave might be unknown but with the number of unidentified soldiers in the Labuan cemetery he is probably there. Adjacent to Labuan over on the mainland and just 10 miles away is the entrance to the Klias River. This is a navigable river with water deep enough to take a keel boat 26km up until a set of power lines blocks any further moves north. There are several rivers like this in Borneo where boats are actually a normal form of transport especially the Rajang back in Sarawak and the Kinabatangan over near Sandakan. When one says transport on the longer rivers though, what you are really doing is considering moving yet more logs downstream from the rapidly disappearing rain-forest! We spent three days up the Klias checking out some of the smaller tributaries, yet more proboscis monkeys and the bird life. Interesting concept it is, trundling along a river with banks at times no more than twenty metres apart and cars passing on a highway half a kilometre away. A lot of fun but as for the Kinabatangan, just past the forest on the banks when there are hills, you can see the palm oil marching off into the distance. After the Klias we also went to the bird sanctuary at the top of Labuan and then went out to try and dive on the war wrecks out the other side of Pulau Kumaran; but without a marker on the wrecks we probably need some better tools to locate them.

Thyme headed north.

Brunei itself is probably one of the more affluent parts of SE Asia (excluding Singapore). Here the locals have the highest pay rates for this part of SE Asia, there is no real poverty, nobody starves, they pay no income tax and most infrastructure is provided by the Government, i.e. the Sultan who would appear to have a very definitive interest in keeping his subjects happy. It is also a bit dull, no bars of course, no theatre, not much of anything really and unbelievably for Asia there is it seems only one Karaoke place (can’t say bar) apparently fully equipped with signs prohibiting touching; wonder if the men sing love songs to each other here? The affluence of Brunei has come from oil of course but with no more oil to export and gas being the big financial provider one does wonder what will happen when the money starts to run out; one doubts that it will worry the Sultan’s family too much.

We are due to get away from here the day after tomorrow after a visit to town and a look at the water village housing around 30,000 people, wonder what they do with their sewage, nasty thought that one. From here it will be some food shopping in Labuan, diving on Tiga, diving and BBQ on Gaya then back to KK for some more boaty work. After that north for Kudat, back to Sandakan then east headed for Indo and the Philippines.

To drown in mud you would have to be held under or wear a very heavy weight belt!

Mud Volcanoes

A mud volcano may be the result of a piercement structure created by a pressurized mud diapir which breaches the Earth’s surface or ocean bottom. Their temperatures may be as low as the freezing point of the ejected materials, particularly when venting is associated with the creation of hydrocarbon, clathrate-hydrate deposits. Mud volcanoes are often associated with petroleum deposits and tectonic subduction zones and orogenic belts; hydrocarbon gases are often erupted. They are also often associated with lava volcanoes; in the case of such close proximity, mud volcanoes emit incombustible gases including helium, whereas lone mud volcanoes are more likely to emit methane.

Approximately 1,100 mud volcanoes have been identified on land and in shallow water. It has been estimated that well over 10,000 may exist on continental slopes and abyssal plains.

Philippines

In the Turtle Islands, in the province of Tawi-Tawi, the southwestern edge of the Philippines bordering Malaysia, presence of mud volcanoes are evident on three of the islands – Lihiman, Great Bakkungan and Boan Islands. The northeastern part of Lihiman Island is distinguished for having more violent kind of mud extrusions mixed with large pieces of rocks, creating a 20-m (66-ft) wide crater on that hilly part of the island.  Such extrusions are reported to be accompanied by mild earthquakes and evidence of extruded materials can be found high up the surrounding trees. Submarine mud extrusions off the island, have also been observed by local residents.

Other Asian locations

China has a number of mud volcanoes in Xinjiang province.

There are also mud volcanoes at the Arakan Coast in Myanmar (Burma).

There are two active mud volcanoes in South Taiwan, and several inactive ones. The Wushan Mud Volcanoes are located in the Yanchao District of Kaohsiung City.

There are mud volcanoes on the island of Pulau Tiga, off the western coast of the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo.

A drilling accident offshore of Brunei on Borneo in 1979 caused a mud volcano which took 20 relief wells and nearly 30 years to halt the eruption.

Lusi (Indonesia)

Drillingor an earthquakemay have resulted in the Sidoarjo mud flow on May 29, 2006, in the Porong subdistrict of East Java province, Indonesia. The mud covered about 440 hectares, 1,087 acres (4.40 km²) and inundated four villages, homes, roads, rice fields, and factories, displacing about 24,000 people and killing 14. The gas exploration company involved was operated by PT Lapindo Brantas and the earthquake that may have triggered the Mud Volcano was the Yogyakarta earthquake of May 27, 2006. In 2008, it was termed the world’s largest mud volcano and is beginning to show signs of catastrophic collapse, according to geologists who have been monitoring it and the surrounding area. A catastrophic collapse could sag the vent and surrounding area by up to 150 metres (490 ft) in the next decade. In March 2008, the scientists observed drops of up to 3 metres  in one night. Most of the subsidence in the area around the volcano is more gradual, at around 0.1 centimetres (0.039 in) per day. A study by a group of Indonesian geo-scientists led by Bambang Istadi predicted the area affected by the mudflow over a ten year period.More recent studies carried out in 2011 predict that the mud will flow for another 20 years, or even longer. Now named Lusi – a contraction of Lumpur Sidoarjo, where lumpur is the Indonesian word for “mud” – the mud volcano appears to be a hydrocarbon/hydrothermal hybrid.

An Island Somewhere. Bombonon to Kota Kinabulu via the Cagayens: April 04-May12 (2012)

From Bombonon to Puerto Princessa is around 300 miles; that is if you go north up the coast of Negros to Sipilay and then run west, pretty much across the middle of the Sulu Sea. Most of the other boaty types that we know were going further north and day hopping up through Cuyo, but what with Gini on board and her longing for a trip to the Kinabatangan River over near Sandakan, the pressure was on to move a bit faster than usual and head south back into Sabah. We were down to two crew for the next month, Gini back to escape for a whle the approaching winter in Tasmania and getting back to PP with all haste was going to require at leat two overnighters after we cleared away from the Negros west coast. The good thing here though was we would no longer be pushing hard against tradewinds but hopefully picking up some of the last of the NE monsoon (Amihan) or at least get the transitional variables. So after about three weeks of idle lassitude, beach Karaoke (and normal boat repairs) we slipped out past the fishing boats at the Bombodon entrance, waved good-bye to Nigel and the bar by the water and headed west then north-west for a day hop to Sipilay. By the way, the beach bar Karaoke here was a scream, half a dozen Philippino fishermen sitting in a dirt floor bar drinking copious quantities of Rhum, not a woman in sight and all taking it in turns to sing love songs to each other; just brilliant.

We spent a couple of days above Sipilay at Cartegena Beach north of town and decided our lives wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t visit ‘Coral Beach’, described in a well known travel guide as one of the star beach attractions in SE Asia. Finding the place became a bit of a dilemma with our tricycle driver getting comprehensively lost along the way and then having to get a (banka) ferry ride to get there. After our visit we were left to marvel at the creative nature of travel book writers and to ponder what incentives those travel writing, researching, back-packer types get paid to write some of their stuff, enough said!!! The next day bright and early (2.00 AM) it was off for the longest hop of our Sulu Sea sojourn with a longish run of 150 miles to the Cagayens way out on their own in the middle of nowhere. The departure was great, pitch black, dodge the fishing boats and do not run onto the reef in the middle of the bay. Of course for our two days the wind went quite variable, all over the shop really requiring just about every combination of sails and trim imaginable; at least it wasn’t on the nose for the trip. The word here though is hot. Think of hot in the back of a boat then try and think even hotter, yea and then hotter again. With the sun frying our transom, rising as usual in the east and us running west, the only way to survive was temporary awnings using the dinghy cover. Nigel was on the money when describing the transition as the summer and bloody hot. Apparently this part of the world up until a few years ago was also something of a no go zone for many yachties with the ‘pirates’ chasing away any brave soul that ventured out on the water. Well at least that’s how it comes across from the locals when you talk to them although Nigel has been up this way for years and hasn’t at this point suffered any piratical outrage. There is of course the possibility that the stories are somewhat apocryphal or that after raising enough money the pirates are at home enjoying hard earned air-conditioning!

Anyway after two days of sailing sauna we got our first sight of the Cagayens and wondered whether our waypoints would get us into the lagoon. The charts here have an offset of around a quarter mile (500 yards) and when one plots the GPS latitude and longitude directly onto the electronic charts you end up running across the reef and eventually onto dry land behind the village; somewhat disconcerting. Of course the appropriate course of action would be to get out a paper chart and plot ones entrance using a compass, but when in Rome as they say, trust the force and follow the fishermen. So after seemingly running across the reef and becoming quite amphibious we dropped the pick in front of the town pier just in time to see most of the towns people jumping onto large banka’s’ (big Philippino style, outrigger, spider boats) and leaving. Initially we thought that perhaps we had offended everybody without even trying but then discovered that we had arrived in ‘Holy Week’ (basically Easter) and after doing the family thing half of the islands population was going on holidays for a few days.

Great place the Cagayens, clear water, reef to snorkel on, a really cool village to check out and aside from some diving types on live-aboard banka’s’, not a tourist in sight. The town here has to be one of the cleanest you could find in SE Asia and spectacularly different to the open tip and rubbish strewn waterways we had seen in many parts of Indonesia and Malaysia. At the local church (they are quite religious here but somewhat flexible on their application of religious pursuit….), they even keep score on how the local congregation is managing in the tidiness and sustainability stakes. Out in the lagoon there is the mandatory seaweed farm (Calerpa racemosa) and according to that guide book again, the main diet out here is fish and seaweed, shades of the sea-gypsies; the town is of course much more salubrious and not nearly as poverty-stricken as that guide book makes out.  There is a huge Spanish-Colonial church here that the locals are fixing up, interesting walls with hundreds of large sea-shells embedded in the mortar rendering. There is also the worlds smallest ambulance that for any average westerner would require amputation of ones feet before getting in. The locals still draw their water here from wells and after watching the water carriers it became very clear why it’s handy around these parts to have children.

The next part of our Sulu-Sea sojourn was the hundred odd miles across into PP running again almost due west trying to find somewhere to hide from the sun. This was another overnighter with an arrival nice and early into Abanico and a revisit of the old haunts of Puerto. Thyme (Simon and Amanda) and Rubican Star (Tim and Barbara) were not far behind and after getting in we were all forced to check out some of the local nightspots; Gini starred here with her cave-woman routine literally dragging Trevor (on his back) to the dance floor while Tim’s secret hippie background was on display with his attraction to the bands Bongo drum. A week later it was southward bound for another 300 miles in company with Thyme and island hopping back into Malaysia. More beaches, more villages, more pearl farms more sea-gypsies. After stops on Sombrero Island, Arrecife Island and Brookes Point we had plotted a night off Bowen Island, north of Bugsuk. Unfortunately we weren’t terribly welcome here and the pearl farm security very nicely and with many smiles escorted us through their farm to Pandanan Island five miles further west. It was explained of course that this was for our own safety (this is the standard line in this part of the world when the authorities or others want you to go away) and we weren’t inclined to argue too vociferously given the large piece of artillery the security guide was carrying (M14, big bullets and no photos allowed).

Next island on the southward progression was Candaraman, almost out of the Philippines and a few drinks for Trevor’s birthday. We had arrived here in the middle of  a ‘Christian Youth Camp’ although the local Parish Priest explained that anybody up to 45 was welcome as long as they were single; he explained that they patrolled the sleeping area and tents to make sure the genders stayed separate!!!  We were down into part of the more Moslem area of the Philippines and the army and police had a presence at the camp to discourage any ‘trouble’ although there “is no trouble around here”. Probably not very likely given the serious amount of hardware stacked in the trees next to the military and police hummocks. Next day it was off to Balabangan in Malaysia and an evening and morning thinking of things to give to the sea-gypsies; petrol, soap, apples, biscuits…etc etc etc. Thyme bid their farewells here heading for Kudat and new crew while the good ship Gadfly slipped around the most northerly point of Borneo and headed south for a one hundred mile overnight run into the Sutera Harbour Marina at Kota Kinabulu.

The plan at KK was to leave the boat and travel overland to the Kinabatangan River and Sandakan where Gini would take lots of photographs of every animal that passed in front of her camera.  There are a number of ecolodges along the Kinabatangan River where tourists can go to check out what’s left of some of the previously abundant and spectacular Borneo wildlife, orangutans, monkeys, elephants, birds, deer and so on and the visitors get taken on river cruises, day walks and night spotlighting trips. The trouble is that most of the rain-forest (jungle) has been removed, logged and then replanted with palm oil and what one sees is small remnant forest areas along the margins of rivers or isolated refuges around sites such as the Nyah Caves Park inland from Miri. The Kinabatangan elephants might be easy to keep track of but no surprises there really as most of their habitat has been destroyed and they have to stay next to the river. There are orangutan refuges and shelters at a number of places (Sepilok at Sandakan) with no shortage of animals as their habitat is being constantly destroyed and the orangutans are shot or persecuted if they walk into the palm oil plantations. These isolated and fragmented forest areas are also a problem for the larger mammals and especially apex predators of the forest as there is no opportunity for them to move between locations and the loss of habitat and fragmentation of the forests places survivors under significant (environmental) stress from multiple sources. The smaller mammals, birds and bats may manage to adapt but for the larger animals there is probably insufficient range to maintain long-term, viable breeding populations (not to mention loss of genetic diversity). Sadly this is the trend and a problem for most of SE Asia.

At the Tungog Rainforest Ecocamp, the guides speak in awe of the Australian fellow ‘Martin’ who had worked with the locals for 15 odd years to establish the ecocamp and encourage the locals to embrace nature based tourism and homestays as an industry involving their forest. Martin has been back in Australia for several years and since he has left stands of forest adjacent to the river and near the bridge at the ‘Kinabatangan’ village have been cleared and planted with palm oil. The locals in the meantime are growing seedlings, attempting to rehabilitate nearby, degraded areas and expressing interest in buying back areas to re-establish forest.  They explain that it is the ‘Chinese’ who are doing most of the damage but couldn’t elaborate as to whether that meant ethnic Chinese Malays, Singaporean Chinese, or Mainland Chinese. At the ‘Lubuk Bay’ Proboscis Monkey refuge near Sandakan the Chinese owners have made a video extolling their virtues for saving the Proboscis Monkeys in the area, this after they cleared the area to grow palm oil leaving a tiny fragment of habitat for the monkeys, habitat no doubt unsuitable for palm oil; quite staggering really. In the meantime the video they have produced waxes lyrical about the abundant rainforests that “stretch from the mountains to the seas of Borneo”, not to mention adjacent seas that apparently teem with huge schools of massive fish, clearly now fish and forest figments of somebodies imagination!  They also charge twenty dollars (Aus or US) a person to enter their ‘refuge’ and three dollars more to take photographs (one does wonder where the money goes but doubts it is going to forest rehabilitation). Still it is worth having a look at those parts of what was once a spectacular ecosystem and hope that common sense might one day prevail over greed and corruption. In the meantime the Government and operators in Sabah are selling tourism packages on the basis of come and see our abundant wildlife, spectacular forests and magnificent diving; just pay heaps and don’t look too hard!

After our river sojourn it was back to KK and Gini’s departure for her PhD program back in Tasmania researching Tasmanian Devils and Quolls. Fortunately her flight was cancelled and she was forced to stay another five days until the twelfth when Jeff, Hilary and Lasse arrived; new crew for southward moves to Labuan and Brunei.

Habitat fragmentation

 

As the name implies, ‘habitat fragmentation’ describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism’s preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation can be caused by geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment (suspected of being one of the major causes of speciation^]), or by human activity such as land conversion, which can alter the environment much faster and causes extinctions of many species.

The term habitat fragmentation includes five discrete phenomena:

Reduction in the total area of the habitat

Decrease of the interior : edge ratio

Isolation of one habitat fragment from other areas of habitat

Breaking up of one patch of habitat into several smaller patches

Decrease in the average size of each patch of habitat

Habitat fragmentation is frequently caused by humans when native vegetation is cleared for human activities such as agriculture, rural development, urbanization and the creation of hydroelectric reservoirs. Habitats which were once continuous become divided into separate fragments. After intensive clearing, the separate fragments tend to be very small islands isolated from each other by cropland, pasture, pavement, or even barren land. The latter is often the result of slash and burn farming in tropical forests. In the wheat belt of central western New South Wales, Australia, 90% of the native vegetation has been cleared and over 99% of the tall grass prairie of North America has been cleared, resulting in extreme habitat fragmentation.

One of the major ways that habitat fragmentation affects biodiversity is by reduction in the amount of available habitat (such as rainforests, boreal forests, oceans, marshlands, etc.) for all organisms in an ecological niche. Habitat fragmentation invariably involves some amount of habitat destruction. Plants and other sessile organisms in these areas are usually directly destroyed. Mobile animals (especially birds and mammals) retreat into remnant patches of habitat. This can lead to crowding effects and increased competition.

The remaining habitat fragments are smaller than the original habitat. Species that can move between fragments may use more than one fragment. Species which cannot move between fragments must make do with what is available in the single fragment in which they ended up. Since one of the major causes of habitat destruction is agricultural development, habitat fragments are rarely representative samples of the initial landscape.

Area is the primary determinant of the number of species in a fragment.The size of the fragment will influence the number of species which are present when the fragment was initially created, and will influence the ability of these species to persist in the fragment. Small fragments of habitat can only support small populations of plants and animals and small populations are more vulnerable to extinction. Minor fluctuations in climate, resources, or other factors that would be unremarkable and quickly corrected in large populations can be catastrophic in small, isolated populations. Thus fragmentation of habitat is an important cause of species extinction. Population dynamics of subdivided populations tend to vary asynchronously. In an unfragmented landscape a declining population can be “rescued” by immigration from a nearby expanding population. In fragmented landscapes, the distance between fragments may prevent this from happening. Additionally, unoccupied fragments of habitat that are separated from a source of immigrants by some barrier are less likely to be repopulated than adjoining fragments. Even small species such as the Columbia spotted frog are reliant on the rescue effect. Studies showed 25% of juveniles travel a distance over 200m compared to 4% of adults. Of these, 95% remain in their new locale, demonstrating that this journey is necessary for survival.

Additionally, habitat fragmentation leads to edge effects. Microclimactic changes in light, temperature and wind can alter the ecology around the fragment, and in the interior and exterior portions of the fragment. Fires become more likely in the area as humidity drops and temperature and wind levels rise. Exotic and pest species may establish themselves easily in such disturbed environments, and the proximity of domestic animals often upsets the natural ecology. Also, habitat along the edge of a fragment has a different climate and favours different species from the interior habitat. Small fragments are therefore unfavourable for species which require interior habitat.

Habitat fragmentation is often a cause of species becoming threatened or endangered. The existence of viable habitat is critical to the survival of any species, and in many cases the fragmentation of any remaining habitat can lead to difficult decisions for conservation biologists. Given a limited amount of resources available for conservation is it preferable to protect the existing isolated patches of habitat or to buy back land to get the largest possible continuous piece of land? This ongoing debate is often referred to as SLOSS (Single Large or Several Small).

One solution to the problem of habitat fragmentation is to link the fragments by preserving or planting corridors of native vegetation. This has the potential to mitigate the problem of isolation but not the loss of interior habitat. In rare cases a Conservation reliant species may gain some measure of disease protection by being distributed in isolated habitats. Another mitigation measure is the enlargement of small remnants in order to increase the amount of interior habitat. This may be impractical since developed land is often more expensive and could require significant time and effort to restore. The best solution is generally dependent on the particular species or ecosystem that is being considered. More mobile species, like most birds, do not need connected habitat while some smaller animals, like rodents, may be more exposed to predation in open land. These questions generally fall under the headings of metapopulations island biogeography.

(From Wiki…..).

The Fish Frighteners; Kudat to Puerto Princessa, more coral blasting and into the Philippines. November 28 to January 08 (2012).

When boats arrive at Puerto Princessa on Palawan in the Philippines, the local fisherman have their own ways to use them to catch fish. The procedure is to lay a net around one end of the at-anchor boat, say 50 metres across in an arc, then move around the boat at the other end in your boat and frighten the fish into the net. The best way to do this is take a long pole with a large ‘drain or bath  plunger’, (the same piece of high tech equipment the Daleks in Doctor Who used to carry about) and use said hi-tech equipment to make loud banging noises while striking the water.  It does seem to be very effective although the fish they catch are quite small and probably easily frightened.  However and all the same, size presumably doesn’t matter that much when something to eat is better than not much else.

Puerto Princessa is half way up the eastern side of the island of Palawan, one of the most southern islands in the Philippines. This is the preferred island to travel along while headed north from Malaysia. The island is long and skinny so you can go up either the east or western side of Palawan and give Mindanao a very wide berth. In Mindanao (SE about 280 miles) abduction and ransom is still very much a growth industry and while some of those unfortunate enough to run across the modern incarnation of the Moro Pirates may have friends affluent enough to bail them out of trouble, it’s extremely doubtful these yachties could raise the funds to get themselves out of such shite.

The passage up from Kudat involved 220 miles travelling in either very light conditions or motor-sailing, close hauled into the north-east monsoon; with of course the occasional squall and the usual thunder, lightning and torrential rain. Off ‘Brookes Point’ the rain was so heavy we were obliged to run something of a race track a mile offshore while waiting for visibility to get better than 100 metres. We stopped at Banggi down in Malaysia, Balabac town (on Balabac Island of course), skirted east around Bugsuk Island to spend a night under Iglesia Point near Rio Tuba, Brookes Point on November 01, a night off the mangroves at Rassa Island and a longish hop direct into Puerto Princessa just in time for the Sunday Buffet at the ‘Abanico Yacht Club’. After all of the doomsayers on weather and conditions the trip up was straightforward if to windward and hot! So hot that on one day of sweltering along the fishermen in their little boats hiding under a towel a couple of miles offshore looked so parched we decided they were in need of a beer. These guys sit in the blazing sun, no shade, a few miles offshore, in the smallest of boats jigging for a few fish; the beers appeared to go down well. Around Bugsuc Island we marvelled at the inshore fishermen engaged in far more high tech fishing pursuits happily blowing what’s left of the reef here to pieces. You could actually watch the columns of water leaping into the air after they tossed their home made hand grenades away from their boat and into the water. They didn’t appear to be particularly perturbed by our presence and enforcement would appear to exist only as a fantasy. It shouldn’t however be to hard to catch them, apparently you can pick the explosives fishermen by counting the number of fingers. We did manage to catch one fish (a tuna) ourselves coming up but also managed to lose our last good lure on something very big; probably a really large model of those smelly Barracuda.

The Abanico Yacht Club at Puerto is run by (Big Nose) John and Cissy and is such a chilled and laid back place to spend time that in Amanda’s words, it seems to be something of a ‘black hole’ for passing yachties; many of whom takes months or years to leave. Sissy is the driving force here with John acting as social organiser in the open lounge each day; good place to visit and hard to leave, would you like another glass of wine? John also has some moorings out in the harbour so this was a good place to leave the boat and head back to Australia for Christmas and New Year. Of course the best laid plans and all almost came to grief as two days before flying out the cyclone season gave it’s last hoorah. There we all were, two in the morning, extra anchors ready, sails off and everything conceivable lashed down while waiting the passage of tropical cyclone ‘Washi’ which in the end was supposed to pass directly over Puerto. An eventful night with all the boaty types waiting, waiting, waiting, but by the time it passed 60 miles or so north the winds up there were only about 40-50. The storm did however manage to kill around 1000 people in Mindanao with flash flooding along rivers washed through the shanty areas where so many of the poor people live.

The island of Palawan is becoming apparently one of ‘the’ places to visit while at the moment not suffering from the excesses of tourism that abound in parts of Malaysia and most of Thailand. Top of the list of things to do here is visit the ‘Underground River’ on the islands west coast at Sabang. The river is in a large national park and was in 2011 declared one of the seven, natural wonders of the world. The only way to visit the river is to utilise the local (parks) boatmen who take you in their little ‘paddle-boats’ about two and half km upriver. The (underground) river system actually extends some tens of km underground with tributaries and smaller offshoots all over the place having carved an extensive network of tunnels through the limestone bed-rock.  We are back in Karst country here similar to Phang Nga Bay back in Thailand, except without the same scale of crass, over-development (at least not yet). The tunnel trip was interesting although the boatmans observations about the landscape were pretty much restricted to, ‘the rock to your left looks like an onion’, ‘this rock to your right looks like a mushroom’; many vegetables involved here. There were also the obligatory religious observations, ‘the face on this rock looks like Jesus’, ‘that rock looks like the Virgin Mary’, ‘this rock looks like the last supper’, of course they all looked just like rocks. Ollie did make the observation that one rock might look a bit like a Priest doing interesting things to an alter boy, this did draw a few strange looks from others in our boat party! There are also the vestiges of past visitors (described as vandals) who left their names or boat names painted on the walls of the tunnel. Interesting thing that some of the writing is barely legible, while some of the more notable graffiti (English and Japanese soldiers for example) all seems fresh and new and appears to be have been touched up with the same white paint; now who would have thought?

On January 08 we dragged ourselves away from Puerto headed north for El Nido, about 16 miles south from the top of Palawan on the west coast. On board now were new crew, Ollie and Sally from the UK and Jamie from Canada. Ollie is headed generally back toward home after 18 months of travel in India and Asia and after sailing in the Philippines is looking toward a train ride across China and Russia with a skiing sojourn thrown in on Lake Baikal!!!  Sally is fresh from Thailand and Malaysia after completing the 2011 Sail Indonesia rally, while Jamie is taking a couple of weeks of boaty travel before braving the travails of a five star holiday around Papua New Guinea. Jamie is also quite the creative type and artist so before he leaves we will finally get our special ‘Gadfly’ T-shirt design. The weather of course is still NE, sometimes ENE and we are departing amidst tales of doom about what the NE monsoon is going to do to us if we dare move north. Must go though before being swallowed up by the Abanico black hole.

Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park

PPUR (National Park) is located about 50 kilometres (30 mi) north of the city centre of  Puerto Princessa, Palawan, Philippines. The river also called Puerto Princesa Underground River. The national park is located in the Saint Paul Mountain Range on the northern coast of the island. It is bordered by St. Paul Bay to the north and the Babuyan River to the

east. The City Government of Puerto Princesa has managed the National Park since 1992. It is also known as St. Paul’s Subterranean River National Park, or St. Paul Underground River. The entrance to the Subterranean River is a short hike from the town of Sabang.

Geography

The park has a limestone karst mountain landscape with an 8.2 kilometer navigable underground river. A distinguishing feature of the river is that it winds through a cave before flowing directly into the West Philippine Sea. It includes major formations of stalactites and stalagmites, and several large chambers. The lower portion of the river is subject to tidal influences. Until the 2007 discovery of an underground river in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the Puerto Princessa Subterranean River was reputed to be the world’s longest underground river.

The area also represents a habitat for biodiversity conservation. The site contains a full mountain-to-the-sea ecosystem and has some of the most important forests in Asia. It was inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site on December 4, 1999.

Flora

The Park has a range of forest formations representing eight of the thirteen forest types found in tropical Asia, namely forest over ultramafic soils, forest over limestone soils, montane forest, freshwater swamp forest, lowland evergreen tropical rainforest, riverine forest, beach forest, and mangrove forest. Researchers have identified more than 800 plant species from 300 genera and 100 families. These include at least 295 trees dominated by the dipterocarp type of species. In the lowland forest, large trees such as the Dao (Dracontomelon dao), Ipil (Intsia bijuga), Dita (Alstonia scholaris), Amugis (Koordersiodendrum pinnatum), and Apitong (Dipterocarpus gracilis) are common. Beach forest species include Bitaog (Calophyllum inophyllum), Pongamia pinnata, and Erynthia orientalis. Other notable plant species include Almaciga (Agathis philippinensis), Kamagong (Diospyros pulganensis) Pandan (Pandanus sp.) Anibong, and Rattan (‘Calamus sp.)

Fauna

Birds comprise the largest group of vertebrates found in the park. Of the 252 bird species known to occur in Palawan, a total of 165 species of birds were recorded in the park. This represents 67% of the total birds and all of the 15 endemic bird species of Palawan. Notable species seen in the park are the blue-naped parrot (Tanygnathus lucionensis), Tabon scrub fowl (Megapodius cumunigii), hill myna (Gracula religiosa), Palawan hornbill (Anthracoceros marchei), white breasted sea eagle (Halitutus leucogates ).

There are also some 30 mammal species that have been recorded (Madulid, 1998). Most often observed in the forest canopy and along the shoreline feeding during low tide is the long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis), the only primate found in the area. Other mammal species in the park are the bearded pig (Sus barbatus), bearcat (Arctictis binturong), Palawan stink badger (Mydaus marchei) and the Palawan porcupine (Hystrix pumilus)

19 species of reptiles have been identified, eight of which are endemic (Madulid, 1998). Common species in the area include large predators like the common reticulated python (Phython reticulatus), the monitor lizard (Varanus salvator) and the green crested lizard (Bronchocoela cristatella). Amphibian fauna include ten species. The Philippine woodland frog (Rana acanthi) is the most dominant and frequently encountered. One species, Barbourula busuangensis, endemic to Palawan was also observed in the area.

Notable are the nine species of bats, two species of swiftlets and whip spider (Stygophrynus sp.) found in the cave, and the sea cow (Dugong dugon) and the hawksbill sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) that feed in the coastal area of the park.

International notability

Puerto Princesa Underground River was entered as the Philippine entry – and topped the first round of voting – in the New7Wonders of Nature competition, and on July 28, 2011, after the second round of voting, it was declared 1 of 28 finalists. Mayor Edward S. Hagedorn extended his gratitude to all those who supported and voted for the PPUR.On November 11, 2011 it was provisionally chosen as one of the “New7Wonders of Nature”, together with the Amazonia, Halong Bay, Iguazu Falls, Jeju Island, Komodo Island, and Table Mountain.

The voting was criticized, especially the Philippine voting. Nothing in the New7Wonders voting procedure prohibited repetitive voting, making the results subject to government and tourism industry campaigns to vote often for local sites with the financial incentive of increased tourism. Philippine president Benigno Simeon Aquino III, in his speech during the official proclamation launch of the Puerto Princesa Underground River as one of the 28 finalists, urged the country’s 80 million cellphone subscribers to vote PPUR via text: “We send two billion text messages a day, all we need is one billion text votes for the Puerto Princesa Underground River so (we can accomplish) that in half a day,” the President said. “I urge everyone to vote to the maximum for the Puerto Princesa Underground River as one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature” he reiterated.

Now who would have thought????