The logo for the 7th Mabul Marine Day as taken from the booklet we were all given. I thought that it was sweet that the resort held a little internal competition to see who could come up with the best logo. A boat man won the competition. Cute huh??

As previously mentioned, Sipadan Water Village conducts a yearly event known as the "Mabul Marine Day". This event has been running for the past 7 years and I was lucky enough to experience it. Basically, this event, held on the 20th of July of every year since 1998 is "an environmental aware program that aims to raise local society awareness about the importance of the fragile coral, host to marine organisms of the coral reef and relatively intensify the conservation and ecologically sustainable management for eco-tourism" *phew*... a mouth and a half full! Got that from the booklet we were given on that day... chock-a-block full of information this booklet has, printed on recycled paper too. This booklet is heaps better than the previous one but unfortunately, the writing was a little hard to understand, not to mention the grammatical and spelling errors. Still, it's all for a good cause. Me thinks I will volunteer my writing and editing services for next year's issue .

Anyways, this event was started by a Professor Dr. Hayashi and a Yoshi Hirata who decided to do something about the coral destruction they saw. They introduced a way to replant broken corals and at the same time, educating the public (divers and non divers alike) to the effects of "human encroachment"... basically what we, the destructive humans are doing, intentionally or otherwise. The good professor coined the phrase "my coral or my sango (coral in Japanese)" to help promote his message. Basically, every participant in the event is given a piece of coral to transplant, thereby generating interest in the well-being of each coral. The transplanted coral is then monitored by a "baby sitter" and participants are encouraged to contact their baby sitters on a semi regular basis to find out the condition / status of their piece of transplanted coral. A simple and effective idea right? It also involves a LOT of work by the "baby sitters" who are the dive masters at the resort. Kudos MUST be paid to the staff at the Sipadan Water Village as they are a dedicated bunch.

My little Porcelain Crab named "Puffy"

This process not only involves time but expense as well. Monitoring tens of replanted coral pieces cannot be easy... plus answering to the queries by the "parents" (i.e. people like me) who are anxious to know if our babies are doing well. Each transplanted piece of coral gets a little log sheet where the height and circumferance of each bit of coral is recorded on a montly basis. We had to fill out this form about the corals we each got. Data that was recorded included things like our name, the coral identification number, type of coral, condition of the coral and (if any) living creatures within the coral piece. I had a little porcelain crab resting in mine , named "Puffy" I took extra care to make sure that Puffy wasn't accidentally lost in the process... the poor thing almost fell out of the coral on our way down to her new home. Others found other creatures in their bits of coral... one guy actually had a crab AND a BABY clown fish in his. Some had shrimp etc. Almost every bit of coral had some sort of creature living in it. This opened my eyes to macro diving i.e. there are interesting things to see if one just took the trouble to look.

So where did the coral bits come from I hear you cry. Well, 3 days prior to the event, the dive masters / instructors go around looking for broken bits of coral that are scattered around the nearby reefs. Coral gets broken by natural and human causes e.g. strong current, careless divers etc. These broken bits of coral were then carefully collected and stored in chicken wire cages suspended underwater beneath the dive center so as to ensure their survivability. Naturally, corals (and the living creatures housed in them) need a constant flow of fresh sea water and the chicken cages protected them from predators such as fish and other marine invertebrates. The cage was weighted down by weights and sinks as the current around the area can be quite strong.

So, when the time came for us to replant the corals, we were all briefed as to what to expect, what do to and most importantly, what NOT to do. In a previous presentation, we were all shown pictures and videos of previous marine day. The in-house "joke" was that for every coral that was transplanted, 10 more were broken in the process due to careless divers e.g. fin kicking etc. We were warned time and time again to NOT harm the surround area. The dive staff carefully took the corals out of the chicken cages, labelled them with an identification numbered tag and then put them in a container, ready for us to load on the boat and to take it to our designated spot.

The BF's lil bit of coral	My bit of coral
Our dive master carefully handing out our designated bits of coral. We were told to wear gloves to protect us from the "stinging nematocyst cells and the chemicals in the mucus layer of the coral" which can be harmful to humans.
Our dive master carefully handing us our coral... in her right hand is mine with Puffy grabbing on for dear life, and in her left is the BF's.
Source: PufferGal Cam.

Mixing the compounds Source: PufferGal Cam

So, after all the coral bits were handed out and everyone was in the water, the dive master took us to our designated area for planting. I was relieved to discover that our area was fairly barren in terms of coral as I didn't trust my diving skills to successfully plant something without destroying the surrounding corals. We were given some underwater bond (epoxy and hardener) to stick our corals at our chosen spot. We had to kneed the two compounds underwater as they harden fairly quickly. As I understand it, this bond / cement is harmless to marine life. So we picked our desired spot, somewhere away from other corals as corals tend to fight each other for food and the weakest one inevitably dies... mixed our compounds together, moulded the compound into a base for our corals and then stuck our corals in, removing the identifying tag in the process. Then, we stuck on our personal identification card into the bond. This card had our name, coral ID number etc. I noticed that some coral transplanters actually attached this ID directly onto the coral. I hope that this doesn't stunt it's growth. We stuck ours into the bond. Call it romance or what you will but the BF and myself planted our corals semi close to each other... hopefully when we return, both corals would have survived.

My coral in its new home Source: PufferGal Cam	The BF's coral settled in Source: PufferGal Cam

Unfortunately, the success rate of this coral transplanting process isn't very high. They are hoping for an 80% success rate this year. In previous years, it was as low as 40% but as the process improves and scientists determine the "dos" and "don'ts", the process is getting refined e.g. in previous years, the coral transplanters would measure the height and width of each individual piece of coral... they determined that this caused more harm than good as the transplanters weren't very careful about the entire process. Now, only the divemasters are allowed to measure the corals.

Now, aside from transplanting the corals, there were a series of presentations / lectures that were on "offer". Basically, attendance wasn't compulsory but since everyone paid good money to attend the entire event, we felt compiled to sit down and try not to sleep. Let me tell you, attending a lecture on scientific-stuff when surrounded by the sea and the sound of waves and (since it was the rainy season) rain is NOT conducive. Many a time I had to pinch myself and nudge the guy sitting next to me as we were just nodding off!! Suffice to say, through the power of osmosis, we came away knowing more than we did.

Another of the activities of this Marine Day is a "beach clean up" dive. You see, Mabul is located fairly near a village and relatively close to the mainland. Hence, there is a fair bit of rubbish stuck amongst the corals and surrounding area. As part of the effort to preserve the marine life, we were all invited participate in the "beach clean up". Despite what the name suggested, it wasn't cleaning up the beach but cleaning up the coral reefs. We basically went around trying to pick up as much rubbish as possible and putting them into the appropriate bags. This beach clean up dive was an experience and a half.

My boat was assigned a section of reef off one of the jettys on the island. In the beginning, we did pick up a fair bit of rubbish e.g. tin cans, plastic wrappers etc. There was also a fair bit of fishing line in the water and having a knife underwater does have its benefits I can tell you. We were told to leave glass bottles in the water as they provide homes to those in need of shelter e.g. fish and crustaceans. However, this dive was a joke and a half. You see, at the start of the dive, everything was fine... everyone was "gung-ho" about the whole process and then the current started building up and my lord it was STRONG!

The divers in my boat Source: PufferGal Cam

Instead of divers trying to pick up garbage, we had divers trying not to be swept away to Indonesia and in some cases the Philippines. We had divers sticking their dive knifes into the sand trying not to get blown away!! My boat personally "lost" two divers... one was a dive master on holiday. Whilst in the process of trying to retrieve a lost anchor, he somehow managed to loose his fin. Luckily, there was another diver close by... he passed on the anchor and got swept away... he managed to retrieve his lost fin but had to be picked up by the boat. Another diver who wasn't as strong a swimmer managed to get himself mixed up with the divers from another boat doing the same dive in another location. Suffice to say, our beach clean up dive got cut short as our dive masters were frantically looking for the missing divers. Luckily, no one was lost... and we picked up a fair bit of garbage. Amongst the things that were retrived (by our boat and the other teams) were heaps of tin cans, fishing lines, a tyre, anchors, plastic wrappers of all shapes and sizes, batteries and the most interesting of it all, a Maxis mobile phone SIM card!!

The group photo Source: PufferGal Cam

At the end of our environmental measures, we were all given a t-shirt and many, MANY group photos were taken. I have to say that the advant of digital photography does have it's draw backs... every Tom, Dick and Puffer people have their own cameras and it isn't enough for one person to take one photo with one camera... EVERYONE with a camera had to have a copy... so there we were, posing in the hot sun for no less than 20 cameras (mine included ). A truly fun day was had by all.

Me signing the banner Source: PufferGal Cam

However, the festivites didn't end there. Aside from our "free t-shirt", we were all given certificates after dinner that night, in recognition of us participating in the event. How cool is that??!! Our names were called up and one by one, we all went up to pick up our certificate and then sign the banner for the event. What they are going to do with the banner, I have no idea but the whole idea behind it was kind of sweet.

I have give kudos to the staff of SWV who organised this Mabul Marine Day. Everything (in the eyes of the participants) went off without a hitch. Also, credit must be given to the directors / owners of the resort... not only did they incur some expense for this day, they are also main sponsors for the Semporna Clean Up day, held a few days before the Mabul Marine Day. This resort actively tries to help our precious environment, unlike the resort of Sea Ventures, about 800m infront of SWV.

Sea Ventures -- a picture taken from the speed boat enroute to SWV. Source: PufferGal Cam

Sea Ventures used to be an oil rig and is now set up as a "dive resort". Well, compared to SWV, I personally think it looks like a deserted dump. Whilst SWV was booked out solid, I hardly saw a living soul in Sea Ventures. One of the dives we did was under Sea Ventures... a fairly interesting dive. However, I was shocked and dismayed at the garbage that was under the rig! A few of us did try picking up the garbage but gave up after 2 minutes as there was just too much to pick up. Upon the dive descent, I saw 3 bright blue objects in the water... I thought that they were some sort of fish but when I got closer, they turned out to be brand new tin cans... the 1kg variety!! Oh, you simply can NOT imagine the amount of garbage there... used toothpaste tubes, empty bottles of shampoo and conditioner, plastic instant noodle wrappers etc. I would have thought that the staff of Sea Ventures would encourage their guests NOT to litter but then, perhaps they are the ones littering the water... a responsible dive operator would make sure that corals surrounding their resort was clean no? The area under the oil rig isn't THAT big... easily managable if one tried.

The Experience

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