| NEWS from the team working in THAILAND |
| 4 April 2009 |
So the time has come for our last weekly report of the 2009 monitoring season , I unfortunately have no good news about nesting; no tracks have been recorded in this final week!
We have however had a variety of sighting from Hornbill hill, three indo pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis) and one striped dolphin (Stenella cocruleoalba) have been spotted, a black tip reef shark has been hanging around and on Wednesday (1st) a leatherback was spotted in the survey area!
Only Joking..........APRIL FOOL! It was a hawksbill!
The 1st of April (April fool’s day) was celebrated by the RA’s Tom (GB) covered Gwyneth’s (Canada) room in English flags and Gwyneth removed all Tom’s Tee shirts from his room leaving him with only one a ‘Canada’ tee shirt! I think Island fever may be setting in!
We are pleased to have Tatid our boat driver back, after two trips to the hospital in Kura Buri last week, we all hope he’s feeling better.
The 31st also saw a very special birthday party, yes it was Luna Birthday. Luna (Lory’s daughter) turned 3 and celebrated with a trip to the beach with her friends and a special birthday dinner, including an amazing cake!
This week a beauty salon opened in the village for a couple of days a lady from the mainland came over and was doing hair and beauty treatments, she got a lot of business and hope it becomes a regular event! We can recommend the pedicure!
Thursday (2nd) a group of vets visit Lions village to give all the dogs injection and to spay the adult dogs. In total 16 dogs had rabies jabs and de worming and 10 of these were also ‘fixed’ so hopefully the island will have a few less puppies in the near future!
We will continue with the project focusing on the community work and teaching programme.. so updates will be online soon again… An overview of the season is in the new Naucrates newsletter!
Don’t forget to send pictures for the photo contest..........
....because there is always room for one more beautiful picture of this island !
Photo by
M.Hulme |
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| 28 March 2009 |
The survey of the observation from the rocks study area was completed on Sunday, when sea conditions let us complete transect 4!
We would like to thank Alessandra for her help via email from Italy!
We had carapace of a green turtle brought to us in Lions village, it appeared. We think the animal was taken and eaten as the carapace was completely clean and cut marks were visible. Very sad news, we are currently looking into the event to see if it was a one off, we believe the carapace came from the mainland and not from Ko Phra thong.
Gerardo arrived becoming the first volunteer to get to the island without an arranged pick up, Gerardo managed to get a ride on a fishing boat out to Lions village!
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Gwyn ready for action
Photo by M.Hulme |
Three members of the team headed to Ko Surin to have a day’s diving/snorkelling, Tom and Lisa were lucky enough to spot a hawksbill while diving. But they didn’t need to travel so far as we have had 3 sightings from the rock this week, all of which were hawksbill!
Photo by M.Hulme |
campfire fun
Photo by M.Hulme
Even though school are closed, we are still working with the kids here in Lion’s village, on Monday we had a campfire in the village where the kids learnt the air of toasting marshmallows, and they taught us how to cook Purple Potatoes! I think everyone enjoyed it! |
Avicennia by Nina
Photo by M.Hulme
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Cerips by Nina
Photo by M.Hulme |
Nina completed the art work for the doors of mangrove house, we’d like to thanks her for all her hard work, I’m sure you’ll agree they look beautiful, we hope Claudio and Ning approve! |
| 21 March 2009 |
Transect week!
As part of the conservation work of the season, we have started the survey in the area where we daily conduct behavioural observations. Juvenile turtles use this small area probably for feeding and resting. Every year we check what source of foods are underwater.
We use “reef check” method to assess the substrate, invertebrates and fish in the area. This information will be compared to where turtles have been spotted from observation on the rock to see if we can see why turtles are in the area.
If we find food sources in the sectors turtle have been seen a lot we can suggest the turtles are feeding in the area. After a lot of preparation by the Naucrates team, we conducted the survey for three days.
The survey is hard work especially for those of us doing a lot a duck diving but we have all seen some beautiful fish and invertebrates. Sightings include, scorpion fish, Juvenile sweetlips, puffer fish and moorish idols.
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photo by Marjut
Storm clouds over lions village
photo by M.Hulme
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The weather has turned very wet! It has rained everyday this week, normally in the late afternoon so it hasn’t affected us too much! The forecast for this weekend isn’t good!
In school the term has finished and the teachers have been busy doing end of term exams.
The students are still receiving lessons from Naucrates team in the mangrove house. As a treat after their exam, the students were all give reusable drink ‘buckets’, this is to reduce the number of plastic bags/cups the kids use buying drinks from the shops in the village. |
Student with new drinks buckets
photo by
M.Hulme |
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The beginning of this week saw the conclusion of the massage training, the ladies from the village seemed to enjoy the session and at least two of them have already had paying customers!
Naucrates team has art fever with Nina working hard on the artwork for the doors of Mangrove house and Maxi working on a new notice board for Golden Buddha Resort.
The children from the school are practising for the T- shirt colouring contest 2009, this year’s theme being Mangroves! |
Maxi busy with artwork
photo by
M.Hulme |
The village ladies learning Thai massage
photo by
M.Hulme |
| 14 March 2009 |
Life at Lion’s village is always busy .
This week started with 4 new volunteers, well.. 3 new and one returning volunteer; welcome back Maxi!
We also had a visit from Monica, in Thailand to present a talk with title “THIRTEEN YEARS OF SEA TURTLES CONSERVATION IN SOUTH THAILAND: ARE WE AVOIDING THE EXTINCTION?” at the SEASTAR 2000 conference in Bangkok.
She visited the project and she presented the talk to Naucrates team on the island. |
Photo by M.Hulme |
Photo by M.Hulme
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This week we have had 3 days of sightings from observations from the rock, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday all saw sightings of a hawksbill, in fact on Friday it was seen both morning and afternoon and by a Golden Buddha guest while we were on lunch!
Other sightings this week include a striped dolphin passing very close to the rock.
Thursday (12th) saw our mission to Save Koh Pring reef!
After many weeks trying to get a good low tide and calm conditions we managed to get onto the reef of Koh Pring, while there we took in the beautiful array of fish here including a juvenile sweet lips, that we all misidentified as a anemone fish!
We also used the opportunity to try and clean the reef, so reported before there is a large amount of discarded fish nets covering the reef.
We successfully removed one large net from the reef; it took a lot of effort but was worth it!
The teaching team has been very busy this week, the students of Lions village school have been learning Who, Where, What, Why and When in English lessons and learning about mangroves in preparation for the island wide drawing contest, this year it will be on a mangrove theme with the winning design going on the 2009 Naucrates T-shirt!
Photo by M.Hulme |
It has also been prize time for the best students from February, Kwan once again was the top student for February and Jad came second, a great effort with Jad being a new student.
The teaching team have also been to Tapoyi School, where lessons looked at greetings and colours and conservation focused on mangroves again in preparation for the Drawing competition.
The lesson at Tapoyi took place in the Naucrates sala.
2nd place - Jad
Photo by M.Hulme
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1st place - Kwan
Photo by M.Hulme
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Photo by M.Hulme
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In the community work, this weekend saw the training of local ladies in Thai massage, a lady NAME came across from Kura Buri to run a 10 hour training course, we had many volunteers from the team to be used as a ‘test’ body!
It hoped that this skill will help the ladies of Lions village, it defiantly help those of us who walk beach one often!
For those of you who have visited in the last 2 seasons you may be interested in the Lamion cook book we want to compile, we want to know everyone’s favourite meal they had here so we can include it in the book!
For details please see the Naucrates Facebook group....Not a member?....why not? |
| 21 February 2009 |
We have had two sightings from the ‘rock’ including My (mik) first sighting of the year. In addition to turtles we have seen dolphins and a reef shark this week.
This week has also seen some changes to Naucrates team we are pleased to welcome Gwyneth, into the role of teaching/ research assistant.
We said good bye to Karina, after two months as Research Assistant on Ko Phra Thong, she headed off travelling before returning home to Portugal.
We all would like to thank her for all her hard work and dedication, she will be missed!
lessons at Thing Dap
The new teaching team, have been teaching in all three school on the island.
Lessons included English and conservation!
Conservation focused on global warming and climate change.
The students requested a lesson on the science of tsunamis’. The kids have also been crafting with recycling material, we hope these skills will be passed onto the older generations as a possible source of income.
The teacher of Thung Dap requested lessons on computer. |
observation from the rock activity
volunteers at sunset |
| 14 February 2009 |
One turtle was spotted ever so briefly from observation from the rocks, on Thursday afternoon and a Hawksbill was seen 8 times on valentine’s day!
Update on the hard bike-trip to reach observation form the rock place”: “We have a “new” path for the bike ride, as the cement road is a little more built, so its not so much on the sand anymore.
I do think we should keep with the bikes, it is a little bit hard, but it is just for 20 minutes, and now with the new path is not that bad anymore… “
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morning walk |
turtle observed from the rock
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one morning a dead leatherback turtle was found on the beach |
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We now have a Dutch majority, with 4 new volunteers arriving from Holland this week.
On Tuesday Mik’s birthday was celebrated with a nice dinner at Lamions and Ning and Por tried to teach us Farang (foreigners) some Traditional Thai dancing.
The volunteers have been busy with maintenance around the centre, planting, making a new path, and constructing more shading for plants. The new path came from tiles found while cleaning tidal creek.
Por and the volunteers have been busy in the school as always with lessons on adjectives and colours in English lessons. |
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We also had a visit from Ning and Kathleen from MAP here for a few days, working with the school on their own mangrove conservation-study area (set up in January by Claudio). Signs for the compost and recycling centres were created in the village.
A talk on mangroves and a guided visited in the mangrove forest nearby the village was conducted with volunteers.
Next week we will start to teach at Tapayoi and ThungDap schools! |
| 13 February 2009 |
Education and Community work
In collaboration with MAP we are improving and preparing a recycling demonstration site. Signs were made.
Schoolchildren were taken to the mangrove study area near the village, where an fenced area was set up in January. Seedlings of different species were planted in order to control their growth rate.
Children will control and monitor the area.
During the first visit children and Naucrates and MAP staff planted 3 propugules of Rhizophora in plot A and 5 in plot B.
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children at the mangrove study area |
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conservation game with children |
7 February 2009 |
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On Tuesday we had a talk from Baz one of our volunteers and keen sea shell enthusiast on the sea shells of the island.
He is building a collection for us to be housed in the environmental education centre, everyone enjoyed the talk and has been collecting shells for the collection especially since Baz offered a beer Chang a day to the best shell found.
We are grateful for all his hard work creating Naucrates shell collection for us.
Thursday we had planned to head to Koh Pring to ‘Save Koh Pring Reef’, after our last reef trip it was noted how dirty and how much discarded fishing net there was, so we decided to do something about it, unfortunately the weather stepped in and the wind prevented us from going. |
The end of the month saw the prizes for the top students in Por’s classes at Lions village school.
They get points every day for both their work and their behaviour.
In January Kwan came first and Fern scooped 2nd place. They both received Naucrates gadgets as prizes!
Lessons this week covered animals in English and food in conservation.
On Friday an adult turtle (species unknown) was seen from observations from the rocks, and due to a low tide and a late boat Dani saw her first turtle on her last day after being with us for a month, we were all very pleased for her! We also hope it was a female and she’ll nest this week!
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| 31 January 2009 |
Still No nests! Koh Ra was checked twice this week and beaches 1-3 were checked daily and still no turtle activity. We have however had two signing from observations from the Rocks, Making four signings in total. With at least two individual turtles seen although no species identified.
We received news via one of Por’s students that a trawler caught an adult green turtle and it was offered for sale to local people for meat; fortunately the locals turned it down and it was put back in the sea. This occurred somewhere off shore of Thung Dap. We have no news on whether the turtle was alive or dead when thrown back. |
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The lesson plan is finished and Lesley and John have returned to the UK we are very thankful for their support while starting the 2009 season especially Por who now has a full lesson plan for the season. This week English lessons have been focused on emotions and conservation has looked at water resources and the different ecosystems of Koh Phra Thong. Lesley and John famous for their songs got their own leaving song from KTP.
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We also received a talk from Barry, who is a sea grass expert who explained the differences between sea grass and sea weed, its importance and got us all excited that he found dugong feeding tracks on PT! We have also had a talk on Reef ecology and arranged a snorkel trip to Koh Pring reef, which was enjoyed by all! |
