Last Labrador monitoring: seagrass has turned brown!

The Seagrass Angels Danielle, Jolyn, Xinyi made their last trip to Labrador to check out the seagrasses there.
Alas, they discovered that many of the Thalassia had turned brown!

Read all about their trip on their labrador blog.

Labrador: last monitoring

The Labrador Angels just did their last monitoring of the seagrasses there. Unfortunately they have some sad news to report:

Compared to our last few trips, however, we have very bad news! The seagrass meadow, especially the Thalassia Hemprichii that is closer to the shore were almost completely black and rough with white patches, we have no idea why that is the case.

Read more on their Labrador blog.

See also Kok Sheng's entry about his recent trip there on his wonderful creations blog.

More blog entries about Labrador.

A bad week for dwindling dugong population in Thailand

Phuket Gazette 7 Feb 09;

CAPE PANWA, PHUKET: A top marine mammal researcher is drawing up a national action plan for conserving the country’s dwindling population of dugong, three of which were found dead this week.

“We have a national action plan for dugong and seagrass in Thailand to conserve the seagrass habitat, reduce mortality, continue monitoring numbers and study behavior,” said Kanjana Adulyanukosol of the Phuket Marine Biological Center (PMBC).

Miss Kanjana was quoted by the state-run Thai News Agency earlier this week saying the dugong faced extinction locally within 20 or 30 years if the government does not take urgent action to protect seagrass beds, their natural habitat.

About 200 dugong remain in waters along the Andaman Coast, she said.

Setting up the action plan would lead the way to Thailand signing an international memorandum of understanding (MOU) on dugong conservation, which has already been signed by 42 countries.

“The MOU was established by the Australian government after meetings held in Thailand in 2005 and 2006. Then in 2007 there was a meeting for the first signings in Abu Dhabi, followed by another meeting in Bali in 2008,” she said.

Thailand has not signed the MOU because it has to do more to co-ordinate the efforts of the six government agencies involved, including the National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, Fisheries and Marine Transport departments and the Foreign Ministry.

“I think Thailand is going to sign the memorandum very soon,” she said.

Coastal development and sedimentation is the main long-term threat to seagrass beds, she said.

"However, for an individual dugong the greatest threat is from human activities and various kinds of fishing gear,” she explained.

“This has been a very bad week for us. We got one dead dugong from Satun on the first of February, then two on February 3: one each from Trang and Krabi,” she said.

An examination of the first two carcasses revealed that the dugong had thick blubber – indicating that they were healthy at the time of death.

“The second one was still fresh. There were no traces of outside trauma and the pericardium was full of liquid, which indicates a sudden death, possibly from shock. So we guess that it went into sudden shock and died, probably drowning from fishing activity,” she said.

Overall seven dugong deaths have been reported to the PMBC, she said.

More media reports on the wildsingapore news blog.

Eelgrass Beds Receding From Chesapeake Bay Waters

WKTR 10 Feb 09;

Eelgrass beds in the Chesapeake Bay serve as a haven for crabs and other marine life but have been receding in recent years.

Marine scientists say they may never come back

In 2005, Tom Powers of Poquoson, Virginia, saw the 30-acre eelgrass bed he crabbed in disappear.

The bed at Hunt's Point and thousands of other acres of eelgrass vanished when water temperatures climbed beyond normal in the lower Chesapeake Bay.

Temperatures peaked temporarily between 2.5 and 3 degrees above normal during the summer of 2005.

Scientists at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science fear that more eelgrass beds will disappear.

Intense efforts to replant eelgrass seedings and scatter eelgrass seed in Maryland waters have failed.

Pulau Semakau (7 Feb 09)

A small happy team headed out yesterday to check out the vast seagrass meadows on Pulau Semakau.Although these meadows lie next to our landfill and near major petrochemical plants on Pulau Bukom, the shore is still very much alive!The meadows are vast and the team is spread out over more than a kilometre. The Labrador Angels are with us doing the last transect of Site 3 and they are already getting started. While the team doing Site 2 is settling into their site. Meanwhile, the team doing the furthest site is still walking out to their Site 1!Our 50m transect tapes look so puny in this vast meadow!At Site 3, Shufen points out the sediments have disappeared as we can't even peg down the tape. So we wind it around the stake instead. We also notice lots of sponges have started growing in the monitoring site. Is the seagrass moving? Has the sediment base changed? This is why we need to monitor our meadows!
Shufen shares with Joe and Ivan how the Serrated riboon seagrasses (Cymodocea serrulata) at Pulau Semakau are long and may be mistaken for Tape seagrasses! And the Needle seagrasses (Halodule sp.) here can be broad and tape-like. Ah, those sneaky seagrasses make monitoring at Semakau a challenge.
The Tape seagrasses (Enhalus acoroides) are blooming! The little white specks are the male flowers, while the female flowers are huge (relative to the male flowers) and have three ribbed petals that fall off after a day.This female flower seems to have just opened, and I noticed these structures in the middle of the flower that I didn't see before. Hmmm? What are these? So much more to learn about our seagrasses!Here's a closer look.

Here's the Team before we headed through the mossie-infested forest. We stay quite far from the forested area to put on our field gear.And sort out the equipment and get a quick briefing from Siti.
Some of us get a quick lie down :-)
Today Marcus is busy working on documenting TeamSeagrass for the Semakau Book project.We finally get a group photo of the Team IN seagrass! We take the time to head for the 'path of death' in the middle of the seagrass meadows used for the intertidal walks, and line up for a group photo. We usually take the group photo out of the seagrass as we don't like to trample our precious meadows.During the monitoring, Marcus gets some shots of the Team in action. Here is Joe our Seagrass Poster Boy!After the monitoring, we have a quick look at this gorgeous shore which also has kilometres of reefs! The tide wasn't very low and turned quickly. But we all managed to see lots of amazing marine life.A trip to Pulau Semakau is also an opportunity to get the seedlings (properly called propagules) of the rare Rhizophora stylosa for a replanting effort by NParks. Today, we got quite a lot of good seedlings! Soon, these will be new trees growing on our other shores!
We were so fortunate to be joined by Prof Leo Tan on our trip. Prof has played a lead and key role in many marine and environmental issues for decades. So it was a great opportunity for the young ones to meet him. As always, he so generously shared of his experiences and had many encouraging words for us. I hope he was also encouraged to meet the Labrador Angels, the young ladies who have been monitoring the seagrasses at Labrador and thus continue the legendary work he started there.

Thanks to every one who came for the trips, especially those who answered the last-minute call for extra hands: Andy, Gloria, Joe, Marcus, Charmaine, Sam, Hannah, Kevin, Adeline, Timothy, Nor Aishah, Jocelyne, Kenerf, Justin, Si Hui, Ivan, Jinwen, Alvin, Jerald. And from Nparks, Yangchen, Siti and Shufen. Thanks especially to the site team leads: Andy and Hannah, Jerald and Ivan, Kevin and Nor Aishah.

More blog posts about this trip

• Stars and hearts on Pulau Semakau on the wild shores of singapore blog.
• On Facebook, Sam has share his photos of the trip: Set 1 and Set 2
• Pulau Semakau on the Nature Spies blog.
• BIG fish on Semakau - photos finally! on the wild shores of singapore blog.
  

Seven dugongs dead in 6 months in Thailand

Seven dugongs had been found dead during the past six months in Thailand's Andaman coastal waters. The causes of death are varied. The latest case is a five-year-old dugong weighing 122 kilogrammes which was found dead at a beach in Trang. According an autopsy, the dugong died of shock when it was caught in the nets of a fishing trawler.
Marine mammal academic Kanchana Adulyanukosol said that there are now only about 200 dugongs left in Thai-Andaman waters and urged the Thai government to protect them.

Currently, Ms. Kanchana said, a master plan to conserve sea cows and seagrass, which was its main diet, was drafted, but has yet been submitted to the Cabinet.

It was believed that if the scheme is implemented, it will help, in a certain extent, to preserve the sea cow population, she said.

Public awareness activities to realise the importance and seriousness of the dugongs' problems is necessary were also recommended, she said.

Full media article on wildsingapore news.

Related links

• Dead dugong in Phuket: entangled in fishing net? on the wild shores of singapore blog.
  
• Dugong slaughtered in Andamans Neha Sinha Indian Express 2 Jan 09;
• Nets leave their mark Thomas Chamberlin, The Cairns Post 26 Jan 09;
• Stranded sea cow saved by Filipino fishermen Associated Press 6 Jan 08;