Saved by Sound

I've been doing the field biology thing for a little while now. Over the last couple of years I scoured the desert ground for a lot of herps, sometimes for official business, but mostly for thrills and pleasure - the pure fun of it. One thing I came to know quickly: listening matters, a lot. Sure, you need a solid set of eyes to find what you're looking for, but keeping your ears open and paying attention to the audio cues around you is also mightily important and useful. Good thing I’ve only seen two Dinosaur Jr. shows in my life, cause a collection of their ticket stubs has to affect one’s hearing.

Listening enabled me to see Desert tortoises duke it out and a Tiger rattlesnake woof down a mouse. I found a lot of Gila monsters and tortoises this way, plus zoned in on quite a few snakes. And since they shout out for all to hear, following the calls of toads and frogs usually rewards you with a slap-happy monsoon pool of amphibian copulation that is always comical to see. The point is: keep your ears open and sometimes it's alright to just shut the hell up in the field. And soak up the sounds.

Louise the Green turtle laying her first nest of 2012 on Mentawak Beach on  April 14th.  All red light photos of Louise are from previous landings, not the night I'm writing about now. Call it red-light photo turtle fatigue.

On June 6th turtle watch was on. Louise (named after my Grandma and pictured above) was expected to grace us with a clutch of eggs for the sixth time. Since Green turtles can nest up to seven times, but often fall short of this number we weren't completely positive our first Mentawak Beach mother of 2012 would return. At 20:23 hours Alli and I saw that she did, except we messed it all up. 

When patrolling a nesting beach the ideal spot to walk is between the high tide line and vegetation, which is up on the beach away from the water line. The Lady and I were not following this rule at all. We were strolling at the water's edge for some reason. I honestly don't know why. Alli shined her red light ahead of us and there was our large female breaking the surf and coming onto land. The light went right into her eyes. After a few quiet, but startled "Holy shits," we retreated away in hope she would still come on shore. She didn't. We scared her off. She was coming ashore between JTP and Lagoon, a resort at the end of Mentawak. Now she was back in Juara Bay and (hopefully) plotting to get onto the sand sometime later tonight. Usually when you interrupt a turtle like this it's the equivalent of being walked in on in a bathroom stall. You feel semi-violated for a moment and stop what you're doing, but eventually the process continues. Past experiences say the turtle would make another landing, especially since it was still early.

She fell in the pit definitely to the tune of Parks and Rec.

I did a stealth walk of the beach with no light and (of course) up higher, but this discovered nothing. We then decided to continue our regular walking schedule in hope she would return.

At 23:05 I was strolling the beach and heard some intriguing noise, which sounded a lot like sand whacking leaves (I need to work on more mysterious foreshadowing). Not much on the beach this hour makes noise besides turtles flinging sand, tourists being soused, or your occasional cat mucking about. I heard it again and again, the sand ramming against the vegetation. I was walking near the high-tide line and saw no turtle tracks in the area though. None. The moon was assisting, and along with my red light, I couldn’t find any tracks at all. I kept hearing the noise and after a minute or so decided to investigate regardless of the lack of tracks. I got down low and crept toward the sound, eventually losing all my dreams of becoming a suspense novelist, but I did scope out the turtle we spooked earlier.

I rang the gang and since she was close everyone got there fast. She laid 125 eggs between 23:50 and midnight, and left for Juara Bay about 70 minutes after that. But this is merely the standard data and numbers I’m regurgitating back to you all.

Slip slidin' away... to the tune of Paul Simon, duh...

This night is inimitable for another reason: no tracks existed because they were covered up by people. When folks showed up they commented on the absence of tracks too. After she was done laying eggs, we started to poke around. There were no standard turtle tracks leading up to the body pit, but a lot of other markings made a nice trail to our female. Zig-zag patterns from the ocean to her were present. Imagine slowly walking on a beach and moving one of your feet back and forth, left and right, like the scraggly line on a heart rate monitor, but vertical instead of horizontal. At the water’s edge a smattering of footprints existed too, with the zig-zags heading up from there.

Before long we knew what the jig was. Other folks found the turtle before us and covered up her tracks, with the hope of leaving us in the lurch. We never see the tracks, find no nest, stop our patrols for the evening and they come back, dig out the nest and have 125 eggs at their disposal. No other options were feasible.

The kicker is no one was around when I found the turtle. And nobody was seen while we hung out in anticipation and then collected the eggs. After our people-covered-up-the-tracks hypothesis was agreed upon, we all hung back as Louise covered up her now empty nest. Sitting in a quiet circle, enduring the dead wind and ravenous sand flies, we chatted quietly about the covered-up tracks. It’s disheartening to think people, only a couple minutes walk away from JTP, would so obviously try to trick you so they could take some eggs. Frustration and dismay were in the air, along with relief that we got the leg up this time. Nights like this exemplify in bold letters with an exclamation point why our daily beach patrols are necessary. JTP’s been going for six years and after all its time here people still want to take eggs next door from us. Conservation work is a prolonged slog. We obviously haven’t convinced some people a turtles’ eggs are worth more in the ground than out of it.

Her one-way track back to the sea the next morning. I tried getting a photo of the covered up tracks but  after so long they just looked like plain ol' disturbed sand.

Around 00:45, as Louise was still covering up, we heard the “bip bip bip” sounds of an alarm on a stop-watch. A reminder for the covered-up track crew that it might be safe to dig out the nest? Maybe. Nobody showed and shortly after Izati and I sleuthed around with our torch lights to see if anyone was milling about or hiding. Nothing. Five minutes later though we heard two motorbike engines rev up relatively close by and head off. Coincidence? Could be. We’ll never know.

People were thrilled I found the turtle without seeing tracks. Not me. If we had followed protocol and walked the beach the correct way, Louise wouldn’t have gotten rattled. Eggs would have been laid much earlier in the evening. Considering the location of her first attempt the tracks, most likely, would have remained intact and not become a thing of the past. Saved by sound tonight? Yeah, you could say that. But I wonder if there are a collection of past ghost tracks we’ve never found. With tracks being deliberately disguised on the beach JTP resides on and having already endured our first poached nest of 2012 in May, it’s going to take a lot more than open ears, and even eyes, to alleviate the challenges these sea turtles face on their natal beaches. We’ll gladly take this nest for now, but it just shows the present and future have a noisy disposition.

Sweaty Man and the Banana Stand

Forgive our lack of posting, but we had to do a visa run to Singapore, which in itself is another story altogether. Soon it will be told via this blog. I also recently am a novice Kindle Fire owner due to a birthday present from my Dad. I'm still getting used to the device and my old-school media stubbornness has also not totally subsided yet either. A Kindle in the the hands of someone who subscribed to two newspapers, frequently purchased used books and possessed a prepaid Nokia before we left for Asia is an uphill battle. But I might be on the verge of being beaten down.

Mostly because hauling around an assortment of books in a large backpack in a tropical humid climate leads to a lot of perspiration, stank and less room for other essentials, like clothes and coffee. One issue I do have with the Kindle is that Blogger don't work on it so that's why no posts were blasted out into cyberspace on our holiday in Singapore. Now that we're back in Juara, and I'm in a jolly writing mood, we'll get back to our semi-regular broadcasting schedule.

Speaking of sweat (and maybe because my photo collection is lacking at the moment), the moment captured below is of me pruning one of our many banana trees. I'm also sweating profusely in the afternoon sunshine. We got a lot of bananas on the property and once in awhile someone needs to get our extended pruning machete out to chop down dead leaves, and other riff-raff we don't want on or near the trees. I love doing it, but I'm not quite a master banana manicurist yet. I might have accidentally scalped some banana fruit just a few minutes after this photo was taken. Luckily we still harvested the bunch some days later and all were delectable, except for the three I had decapitated. The bugs, and later the chickens, ate those.

Prune them banana leaves!

Sandy Eyes and the Explosion

On June 25th a bundle of Green turtles rose up. The one above was a few of the first to reach the surface, but it faced a small problem: blindness via sand. Outta the ground, but still in the dark. These front runners made it out first, but took their sweet time before they fully emerged and let the impending explosion boom out. The above photo is just a few Chelonia, but after these youngsters finally got out of the way, the whole gang shot up in spades. Seventy-nine total by sundown; with them all let loose to the ocean at 2am the same night.

Dead Malayan Bridle Snake

As Alli and I finished our beach patrol tonight she reminded me she saw a dead snake by the large rocks on the beach near where JTP is located. Say what!?! "How come you didn't tell me earlier?" I asked quickly while I ditched the serious conservation we were currently in. "Because you weren't here" she quipped. Fair enough. Lucky for me the dead herp was still there, laying on the sand, with a chunk missing from the lower third of its body, and still being very dead. Since it was a new species I hadn't seen before I scooped it up and brought it back with me. My apologies in advance because the photos didn't turn out so hot.

View of the entire Malayan Bridle Snake (Dryocalamus subannulatus). Notice the chunk missing.

One Malayan Bridle Snake (Dryocalamus subannulatus) was in our possession. It's a small, slender snake, but not too long, clocking in at only 56.4cm total length. According to the in-house field guide these are rarely seen, but do fancy boulders and tall trees, plus they can do a stellar gecko impersonation: going scansorial and crawling on the vertical surfaces of rocks and tree trunks. Hell yeah.

Two close ups of the chunk. Gnarly views huh? I'm thinking a cat or some other mammal on the prowl got it. I could be very wrong though.

If they get spooked though they'll drop off their higher habitat onto the ground. Maybe a cat scared 'em down and that was that. If so, it was probably Bucket, the feistiest and most claw happy kitty we have round here. She's also my favorite, but the damn feline probably kills anything with a pulse. The snake is found throughout SE Asia, but only on three of the 62 islands in the Seribuat Archilpelago, the collection Tioman is located in. Below is how you try to preserve dead stuff with limited resources (the clear liquid is very old Smirnoff vodka). Glad the empty jar of sub-par chocolate almonds is getting a second life though.

How you preserve a dead snake on limited resources: use a disappointing, but empty  jar of duty-free chocolate almonds and add some old Smirnoff vodka to it.

Photo(s) of the Day: Bizarre Breakfast Trio

Alli and I have decided that it would be cool to follow in the footsteps of a million bloggers and photographers, along with plenty of the dead tree media, and publish a photo or two on a somewhat daily basis. Now, we're not gonna do one or a couple everyday because as soon as I start slippin' then that'll reflect poorly on us, specifically my problems on being punctual. Brian time is always slower than Alli time. Most people (especially Alli!) won't argue this.

What we want to do is just share some visuals on everything that we do, see or deal with on a daily basis. This could be (duh!) pictures of sea turtles or anything else encountered here throughout our day: from branching corals and our lunch, to what we unload on the cargo boat, or even the pathetic dirt hole we unsuccessfully dug out that was originally going to be a new septic tank, but will now settle for only greywater. The point is to show you that life and work here is much more than turtles, sand, beaches and palm trees. Self-indulgent? Absolutely, but isn't that what blogging is all about! Enjoy the photos folks. Comments are always appreciated.

Just to start if off right and show that it ain't all about photos of cute-as-a-button baby turtles here at the JTP, the inaugural photo is of Alli indulging in the most absurd breakfast plate of all time. This took place about one week ago. On her plate is deep fried potatoes and leftover Nutella chocolate cake from Dani's birthday the night before. What she is about to take a bite of is egg salad on toast. So there you have it: fried taters, chocolate cake and egg salad. An oddball breakfast trio if there ever was one. Makan makan!

Down it! I'll admit cake and taters for breakfast was lovely, but egg salad too? No thanks. Never been a fan of that stuff, especially when its warm and reeks of mayonnaise. Alli loves it though! 

Juara Raking Team

Here at the JTP there is one piece of yard equipment everyone gets to know real well: the rake. After living in the Sonoran Desert for the last four-plus years I sorta forgot it existed. I mean, ain't many leaves to be getting rid of unless you live in manicured suburbia or atop one of the desert's sky islands. I don't think anyone will admit they regularly rake up those dinky mesquite tree leaves that fall to the ground.

I know what you're thinking. Is he really going to write an entire blog on raking leaves? Maybe I am, but I promise it'll be much more interesting that just your average, everyday yarn about raking. Or maybe it won't.

Alli don't mess around when it comes to raking! Sassy strokes.

When everything is open (no doors, flung windows) and you're sandwiched between the beach and jungle it's too damn easy for everything to get dirty, dusty and sandy very quickly. So of course when Alli and I first showed up here we had to jump right in when it came to getting the morning chores done. Wiping down tables and counters? Yeah that's okay. Changing the foot bucket water? Too quick. Sweeping the big house deck? Whatever, never been an enthusiastic broom fan. But getting my rake on while listening to UGK, Baby Huey or Funkadelic? You had me from the first morning JTP (or maybe the second, jet-lag is lame).

Uncle Rake Wants You!

The chain of events is simple and goes like this: most of our facility is located under trees, leaves fall from them and clutter the ground we're on. These leaves get everywhere, all over JTP's grounds, from the visitation area to around our chalets and gardens. A large amount of leaves awaits us every morning. Because of this we get our rake on, on the regular. Some people say cigarettes and coffee go hand-in-hand, but that's a basket of hogwash. Caffeine and raking are the duo, especially when sweet milk tops it up to a glorious trio. Side note: Malaysia loves the phrase "top up." It's like fill up or get more of something. Example: I have to "top up" minutes every two weeks on my cell phone here.

Putting leaves into piles around our fire pit and garden table area. I love piles, just ask Alli! She misses all the newspapers piles I had in the U.S. so much.

If we don't rake on a daily basis not only will the ground disappear under leaf litter, but our place will look rag-tag and half-assed. Since we are open to the public and are pretty much the only conservation organization on Tioman, it's vital we look good. Representing the face of sea turtles and trying to embody the novel idea of environmental stewardship doesn't work too well if your place of work resembles an unkempt dump.

That girl know how to sift! I'm going out on a limb here, but I think Alli fancies raking to Beyonce.

But the reasons to embrace raking just keep on coming. All the leaves are sifted to get rid of sand, collected in a wheelbarrow and thrown on top of our bursting-at-the-seams compost pile. We wait a little bit, stir that sucker every week or so, and after everything has taken its time to break down (including weeds, crusty old food and more) you can ram a shovel in the pile and bring out a nice heaping scoop of grade-A quality dirt. Alli loves this dirt. She plants new things in it, such as pumpkin, along with the standard-bearers here: okra and cucumbers. 

Our giant soft compost pile with the chicken coop in the background.

The cycle keeps on going. Leaves fall, we rake, we wait and then the dirt comes. The process is stupendous for us since soil quality here is not too, well, quality. We also have three compost boxes in effect now so that's speeds up the process of getting soil too. I must now take a moment to thank my parents who made me rake our yard in Maryland growing up all the time. I don't think I appreciated it back then as much as I do now. We've been joking about getting some volunteer shirts made here at the JTP that say: "I came for the turtles, but stayed for the raking." Now I should heed my own advice. Raking starts in about five hours. Time to go.

General Life Update and Snorkeling ol' Renggis

Please forgive my doozy of a gap in blog posts. We've been super slammed here at the turtle project. Turtle activity was bumpin' in the beginning of June (cue JTP Facebook plug here). To keep it short: nests on all three beaches plus a lot of hatchling action. Then Alli, Charlie and I took a trip to Mersing, the gateway town to Tioman on mainland Malaysia. It's the burg the ferry boat shuffles to and fro from. It was Alli and I's first trip off-island in exactly two months and it can be summed up quite succinctly: delicious Chinese pork, shopping for supplies, sweating in the heat (no jungle shade there) and a bad action movie in the hotel room.

Then we hopped back over to Tioman and a few days later 19 Singaporean polytechnic students came to JTP for 4 nights. It was a total blast. We cleaned Jo's tank with them (complete with sea turtle diarrhea), did a bunch of manual labor, taught them how to rake leaves and whack wood with a machete, took 'em snorkeling (conclusion: rough waves plus first time snorkelers equals Alli and I having our hands full, but I did scope my first ever Cuttlefish!), heard them scream multiple times in response to the spiders running around in their chalets, and totally fooled them all into thinking our plastic turtle we have was a nesting female who came up at early afternoon. Plus tons of other rockin' activities. A solid bunch of city kids who got a all-too-short respite from the urban world.

That's ol' Renggis off in the sea in the background there, our destination.

Now to make things a little confusing the rest of this blog post is a narrative of a snorkeling trip Allison and I did over one month ago (15 May) to ol' Ringey aka Renggis Island. A tiny rocky nubbin,' which is located on the other side of Tioman just south of Tekek. The trip was phenomenal and began with a sweaty jaunt from our chalet to the beach (at the behemoth Berjaya resort) where we swam out to the island from. But first we had to read the sign and take notice of the monstrous sea urchin. In reality there was more than one in the sea, actually there was a ton. Lost in translation for sure.

Oh yes, beware! I love that the words tell us to watch out for one, but the pictures three.

Eyes on the prize. View from the beach where we swam out to get our snorkel on.

Top photo: More Rengiss, which below is also my shoreline hair twin for the day.

The swim out was filled with urchins and dead coral unfortunately. I've heard the corals here 20 years ago were still full of life, but now it's just an urchin, rock, sand and giant purdy clam party. *** Remember: all these photos enlarge if you give them a click. Also, a larger Facebook photo album can be found here.

Urchins and clams, from far away and close up.

After a solid chunk of time we made it out to the island and it was a fish frenzy from the get go. A truly large number of fish were swimming all around us, but the reason for this was very lame. Some boat drivers who shuttle tourist snorkelers out there feed the fish sandwich bread so when we first arrived Alli and I were caught up in the scaly barrage. They were coming at us from all angles. I've never been surrounded by so many fish in my life. Some were bumping into my mask and legs. You could see them gobbling down the soggy bread. Alli had to break free and get some space. I don't blame her. But the underwater terrain around the island was gorgeous. Shallow water and coral everywhere you looked.

Sassy Tern on a boat/swimming platform.

Floating with the fish, bout to get surrounded by these bread deprived creatures.

Underwater coral scenery.

Eventually we broke free of the bread fiesta and boat platforms and did a loop around the joint. All kinds of fish were seen: several species of parrotfish, Bird wrasse, Orangespine unicornfish (what a name eh?), Titan triggerfish, False Clown anemonefish (made famous by Nemo), large schools of needlefish, Virgate rabbitfish and many more! A bountiful loop I must say. The shallow water and abundant sunshine made for stellar visibility.

Top two photos: ain't no party like a parrotfish party cause a parrotfish party don't stop!

Grumpy False Clown anemonefish who were not content with us up in their space. One of the best photos by far from the day.

Orangespine Unicornfish - what a name and what a creamsicle colored spot by the tail too.

After our loop we chilled out on the swimming platform for awhile soaking up some sun. A few boats with folks pulled up when we were there. It's amazing how quick they snorkel, as some only stuck around for 15 minutes or so. A few of the snorkelers couldn't even swim but luckily had PFDs on. But even with the floatation help they still struggled. Basically without it they would have drowned. I thought I was going to have to bust out some of my old lifeguard moves for one lady who could not move forward at all and seemed to be drifting away. Thanks goodness she caught the rope and pulled herself back. Gotta love people who jump in the ocean over beds of coral that can't swim!

More shallow corals spinning out and doing their thing.

We plopped back in the water for one more look around, which proved to be the right call. Plenty more parrotfish were spotted, along with a large barracuda and two Blacktip reef sharks, one of which swam by me just a few meters away! Can't beat an ending like that. It was Terminator 2 good. After another dry out session we swam back to shore, taking the more direct route and saving a ton of time. After over two months on Tioman now this spot ranks pretty high on our favorite list. Thankfully neither of us was assaulted by "the urchin." We'll be back again sometime in the future. And anyone out there who comes for a visit, we'll be taking you here too. That's all that's fit to type at the moment.

Ya Got to Keep Ya Feet Up... I think Tupac rapped something similar to this.

Sometimes fish gotta photo bomb too.