Can we estimate the exposure to river plumes for coastal ecosystems? During my PhD fieldwork I had the opportunity to collaborate with a multidisciplinairy team of hydrologists, physical geologists, modelers, coral reef biologists to study this in East Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Category Archives: Indonesia
Fieldwork Derawan 2014 photo series
I had the opportunity to go back to Derawan for 3 more weeks of fieldwork, thanks to the Schure Beijerink Popping foundation. I gathered samples for food web analysis, checked the current turtle density and seagrass biomass, recaptured green turtles and made a new series of aerial photographs with a kite (with super assistant Sipke …
Green turtles threaten their own food source in MPAs: New paper Proceedings B
Our new paper is out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B! Green turtle populations have expanded so much in Indonesia’s east coast islands marine protected areas that they are adopting new feeding habits, degrading the ecosystem and threatening their own conservation. Read more about “Habitat collapse due to overgrazing threatens turtle conservation in marine protected …
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Time Lapse Derawan
After all those weeks behind the computer I am already longing back to my view from my research base in Derawan, enjoy my time lapse video. Do you see the tide rising? 2 last hours of sun on a typical fieldwork day.
Green turtle stuff around Derawan
In total now we captured and measured more than 800 green turtles around Derawan and tagged 500 of them. The WWF guys (Udin, Darjon), some locals (Jeffrey, Tiar) and we catched them using the rodeo technique. This year we recaptured some individuals that we tagged previously in 2009 on Derawan Island. These turtles grew 3-6 …
Experiment finalized
The last fieldwork of my Phd is finished! While writing this blog post in Dubai on the way back to the Netherlands the dried seagrass samples patiently wait on the seat next of me, together with the other 70kg of equipment where I travel with. The first unofficial results are promising. On the aerial pictures …
Green turtle foraging in Raja Ampat
Our second destination in our quest to find the green turtle foraging grounds was Raja Ampat. Some of the tracks of the GPS tagged turtles show foraging greens that travel all the way from Raja Ampat to Kalimantan. We were based at Kri with papua diving and did 2 short expeditions; 1 to Batanta & 1 to Wayag …
Green turtle Foraging areas in Wakatobi
After spending so much time on Derawan where green turtles are so abundant we wanted to compare Derawan with other foraging grounds in Indonesia. Wakatobi was our first destination. In contrast to nesting sites of which a lot is known. It is unclear where the green turtles forage in Indonesia, so the majority of the …
Article in Seagrass Watch
I was delighted to be requested to provide an article for Seagrass Watch magazine. The articles is published in the November issue. You can download the issue from their site (my article is on page 6) or download directly from the Seagrass Watch site (big pdf of 22MB). Enjoy the reading!
The latest experiment on Derawan
Just got back on the mainland. Last month we succesfully set-up a large experiment on Derawan to look at interactive effects of hydrodynamics & turtle grazing on seagrasses. This involved building 30 cages and 15 large underwater wave-bunkers for which we almost used al the sand from the nearby sand spit. To determine the location …