Tropical underwater Christmas (tree) worms are greeting you to wish you happy holidays from East-Kalimantan. Unlike in The Netherlands, here is no snow, no party but we celibrate the fact that we reached our goal of catching 300 turtles, with some rice, fish and onde-onde (sticky sweet green things)!
Udayana University (Denpasar, Indonesia) and the joint program WWF Berau, was so kind to provide one of their fastlock gps systems (Sirtrack) to track a green turtle from Derawan to study the movement on its foraging ground. Jaya Rata came all the way from Denpasar to Derawan to attach the Sirtrack transmitter. He has tagged a lot of turtles in Indonesia.
From left to right Turtle guards Darjon & Dody, Jaya (Udayana Univ./WWF), Sjoerd, Me, and Rusli (WWF-TNC Berau)
Turtle “Mayo” is sunbasking and waiting for the epoxy to dry before she is released again.She is 78,5 cm (CCLmin) and 70,9 cm (CCW). Her weight was 58.4 kg.
This Autumn our seagrass researchers team from Radboud university Nijmegen and NIOO Yerseke visited our seagrass collegues in the Wadden Sea Station Sylt Germany. Besides the presentations we had some wonderfull excursions to the seagrass in the bay behind the institute. And our hosts Harald and Ragnild Asmus also to took us out to dinner to tast some of the local seafood. A wonderfull trip, enjoy the pictures!
Derawan did not changed a lot since I left 10 months ago. This time Wawan and me came for only a few weeks to do 3 experiments on Derawan Island and to go to the other important Green turtle foraging grounds on Maratua (40km from Derawan) and Pulau Panjang (8 km from D). What did we do?
Terimah kasih Wawan for some of the pictures!
In short: At Derawan island the turtles were still grazing the seagrass by digging out complete Read the rest of this entry »
If you arrive on Derawan, especially with low tide, you will notice one thing immediately: GARBAGE. It’s everywhere! People living next to the shore throw everything in the water/on the beach; Garbage, toilet contents, everything. So one day when we were on our way to Maratua but when we had to return due to dangerous high waves (July and August is wave season / widow season) and we had the rest of the day off, we decided: let’s clean the area around our house!
Some kids were interested in what Wawan, Ibu Heldi, Ade (her son) and I were doing, and joined us. 5 hours later we gathered 3 m3 of garbage, consisting of 120 batteries (around 1 house only!!!), ±30 kg glass, ±10kg metal and a lot of plastic (even ½ fibre boat). The problem was where to leave this. Because they only have a place behind the football field were they gather and burn al the garbage. No waste sorting centre like you find in every Dutch city here, even not on the mainland cities! So the only thing what we could do Read the rest of this entry »
Before I can start with experiment 1, I have to start from scratch with the collection of the materials which are needed to start experiment 1. The family of the homestay in Balikpapan are pro-actively helping me with every weird thing that I carry to their house. After showering I exitedly noticed that the father of the house already started cutting the 360 pieces of steel.
I love this one, the details are very precise.
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