Marine Ecology Research

Category: Events

  • My First ISTS Sea Turtle Symposium

    My First ISTS Sea Turtle Symposium

    Before attending the symposium there were 2 obstacles to take: Waiting before it was safe again to fly from north-europe after the gigantic ash clouds following the  eruption of Eyajallajokull. And secondly, getting my businessvisa (3 days at the visa office) from the Indian Ambassy in The Hague. But the day before departure I finally received the visa and planes were flying again, so Goa, India, here I come!

    After 2 days of pre-symposium workshops on stabile isotopes, south (-east) asia, and opportunities to include dugongs in turtle research, the main symposium began. After a very interesting talk of Teresa Alcoverro on Turtle Grazing, it was time for my first presentation for the 700 seaturtle people in the ecosystem functioning session (invitation only). Based on a lot of positive feedback afterwards the talk was very succesfull. Attending the symposium, its many interesting presentations and meeting so many seaturtle people from around the world motivated me a lot. Thank you all!

  • Turtle Cake

    Finally, the Article that Arie and me published, is online: “Abundance, edge effect, and seasonality of fauna in mixed-species seagrass meadows in southwest Sulawesi, Indonesia” in Marine Biology research (fieldwork from my master-thesis in 2005). In addition Kiki Dethmers received her “Dr.” titel after her defence last week in Nijmegen, here is her thesis. So 2 times cake time. A special turtle cake 🙂 I love this one, the details are very precise.

  • Happy Holidays!

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    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)!

     Cheers Marjolijn

  • Mayo tagged with Fastlock GPS

    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. 

    The route of Mayo the green turtle can be followed here: http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?tag_id=53005  Have a look! Will she stay around Derawan or travel to greener meadows?

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    From left to right Turtle guards Darjon & Dody, Jaya (Udayana Univ./WWF), Sjoerd, Me, and Rusli (WWF-TNC Berau)

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    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.

  • Sylt Seagrass Workshop

    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 Bersih

    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 (more…)

  • NAEM Posterprize 2009

    NAEM Posterprize 2009

    10 February Judith Sarneel and me found our way back (was it a Levy walk?) to Conference centre “De Werelt” for 2 days of total saturation by Ecological research during the Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting in Lunteren: At daytime listen to “Allee effects”, early warning signals by spatial patterns, plantquality-herbivore interactions and at nighttime getting inspired from foodweb interations compared between seagrass, Serengeti-Mara, Hluhluwe (S.A.), and Barro Colorado (Panama) ecosystems.

    The second day it was time for Madelon and me to present our poster “Overgrazing by Green Turtles?” (PDF) together with 45 others. The poster were evaluated on scientific quality, clarity and attractiveness. Not without succes, like you will see below we won the NERN and NECOV 2009 posterprize, and 300 euros! We are very happy with this result, now its time to write an article from it to apply for the PhD paper award next year ☺

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    The only critics on the poster: increase fontsize of the author names

  • Enhalus acoroides in Marine lake!

    In august I visited Maratua for some measurements on the seagrass there. When I arrived the water was too high to work; time for some exploring! So I asked a man from the village about the marine lakes there. Off we went, through palm forests and mangroves with a “parang” cutting out our way. And then we reached this marine lake. The jellyfish were a lot smaller then those of Kakaban lake and the other more famous lake of Maratua. And when I reached the opposite of the lake I found … Enhalus acoroides!! I still have to check the literature but it’s very interesting to find this species here! This marine lake has a lower salinity (26-28‰) than the surrounding ocean (33%-34%) because of the filtering effect of the coral and years of dilution by rainwater. I know seagrass can cope a large range of abiotic factors but finding this species here suprised me. Do you know more about this, and have you seen this somewhere else? I’m pleased to receive your comment! The lake was also very turbid at the shore as you can see on this pictures (click for more pics).

  • My first cage

    Before my supervisors arrive and the experiment will be started I’m first testing my cage set-up. The cages are build out of concrete-iron with fishing nets on the sides and on top of the cage, attached by cable ties. The net is 5cm in diameter to prevent the turtles from getting stuck into the net. Within the cage I’ve tested the best way to sample, harvest and count the seagrass shoots. And also tested how long it takes for the seagrass leaves to grow back. The locals are very interested in the strange things that I’m doing underwater so it’s never boring. I’m leaving to Balikpapan know to pick up my supervisors and check the seagrass in Balikpapan bay and after that the experiment can start. Finally! Click on the photo for more pictures.

  • Hello world!

    Welcome to Lamun.wordpress.com. “Lamun” means “Seagrass” in Bahasa Indonesia and is the main subject of my PhD project. The tropical seagrass which I’m going to study in the Berau delta in front of the island of Kalimantan, Indonesia.

    I will add more information on my project and other nice things to know very soon, so come again!