An Island that's about to Change, A LOT

Recently, Koh Rong was an island that consisted mostly of dense jungle.  There were a few small fishing villages, the one that I lived in, for example, and there were some lovely beaches (although, like other uninhabited beaches that I've visited, quite a bit of trash washed up on their shores).

A recent satellite image of Koh Rong

Then the island was sold and HUGE roads that mostly go nowhere were put in.  Some of these roads are about as wide as a four-lane highway.  

Very soon the aerial view of the island will be very different. Here's a quote regarding phase one of the plan for the island.  The plan for the island can be viewed here.

Phase One will include "two spa resorts, 160 estate villas, a beach club, five restaurants and a lagoon". Each villa and room will have sea view and privacy. In the same time, infrastructure will be built; including an airport in the middle of the island, port, roads, power, water and telecommunications.

from http://www.kohrong-island.com/

In the map above, you can see the fishing village.  It's the tiny bit of orange.  As you can see the amount of development planned is significant.  There is a slick developer website set up about the investment opportunity on Koh Rong here.

Although the claim is that the island will be developed in an environmentally sound way, it is hard to imagine the airport, numerous roads, casinos, resorts, golf courses, and resulting run off and feces will do much good for the reefs or the mangrove or the seagrass or the small fishing community.  Currently, tourism mostly consists of small bungalows on a few of the beaches.  I do hope that the plan for a marine protected area goes through and that those that wish to maintain their way of life in the village are able to do so.  There will be many new economic opportunities for the villagers.  Perhaps, if they know enough English they will get jobs with the tourists.  Otherwise, there will not only be a flood of tourists, but also a flood of workers to the island.  I don't know where that would leave the wonderful people that we worked with in the fishing village.

Coral and Parasites

Often when I take pictures of critters on the reef, I am trying to show how beautiful the residents are.

Beautiful coral polyps off of Koh Rong

However, coral reefs around the world, including those around Koh Rong are up against a lot.  Polyps on the reef are being smothered by sediment, which prevents them from feeding through photosynthesis with their symbiotic zooxanthellae and prevents them from feeding with their tentacles. 

 I tried to dust the coral head above off, so that the polyps would be free of the clinging silt.  Underneath I found bleached coral that is likely to be dead soon.  The coral could recover, but conditions would have to improve.  Yesterday I did I dive at about 13 meters over vast expanses of silt.  Normally there would be many critters (e.g., urchins, sea cucumbers, and seahorses) crawling across the bottom, but we did not see anything like that.  We saw lines left by trawlers.  These boats are not supposed to trawl in areas that are less than 20meters deep, but clearly they had been doing so and fairly recently.  The sea floor had been cleared of much of its life and in the process silt had been stirred up.  The silt greatly reduces the visibility in the water and covers everything.  Even this scorpionfish.

Scorpionfish sitting on long-dead coral that is covered in algae.

Reefs already have plenty of other problems to deal with: rising sea temperatures, anchor damage, dynamite fishing, coral harvesting, harvesting of algae-eating fish and diseases.  I have seen a number of diseases in the Caribbean, but I was exposed to a new one here, a parasite.  The pink on the coral below is part of a trematode (flatworm) life cycle.  

I'm pretty fascinated by parasites and their complicated life cycles.  Most trematodes require a vertebrate and a mollusc to complete their life.  This one includes a snail, a coral polyp and a butterflyfish.  It's always hard to know where to begin in a cycle, but we could start with the fish.  The butterflyfish deficates out  eggs that hatch and infect a snail, grow in the snail and gives rise to a swimming stage, which burrows into the coral polyps.  The worm is then encysted in the polyp and, apparently, the polyps are easier for a butterfly fish to eat.  Butterflyfish prey on polyps and thus consume the encysted worms.  The worm matures and produces more eggs.  Then it all starts over. 

Trematode infection on hard coral

There are other parasites going around on the island.  Many volunteers, especially on the other island, walk around barefoot in the sand.  A fine mixture of feces is present in the sand and in the fecal/sand mixture are worms.  I'm not sure if they are threadworms or hookworms, I've only seen the feet of people that get them.  You see, the worm burrows into their foot (some evidence suggests that they are stimulated by certain chemicals present on feet) and travels in their blood to their lungs, where they are coughed up and swallowed.  Finally, the worms mature in the intestines and begin pumping out eggs that go with the feces into the soil.  Then volunteers or other people feel the sand between their toes and start the cycle all over.  Pretty cool, eh?

Searching the Seafloor for Seagrass and Seahorses

Poor visibility on the reefs has been preventing us from making much progress on reef surveys.  I feel very bad for the coral that are being covered in silt. They are bleaching and then dying from the sediment.  In an attempt to be productive in other ways, I began searching for seagrass in the bay near the village with Ceri and Daniel.  We hoped to find patches of intact seagrass and in the seagrass we hoped to find seahorses, which are listed on the endangered fisheries list in Cambodia.  Our first search was unproductive (but I did see a cool cuttlefish, a large grouper and a saddle-backed anemone fish!).  On Friday, Ceri and I decided to go out again and search another part of the bay.  I spotted a tiny piece of intact mangrove and I though that we might have some luck there.  We got out of the boat in full SCUBA gear to find we were standing in 2 feet of water.  Nonetheless, we took a bearing and began our survey.  No luck.  The water was getting too shallow to swim in.  We turned 90 degrees and started again. Holding a rope between us so that we were traveling in the same direction even if we couldn't see one another, we didn't go far before Ceri began tugging wildly on the rope.  This is what she found.

The first seagrass bed that we found in the bay. (Ceri found it first)

The seagrass was very short and Ceri started pointing and talking into her regulator.  Somehow I managed to understand that she had seen a seahorse.  It survived her enthusiasm, I think, but was floating about the bottom as though it was a tiny piece of drift wood.  Soon after I spotted another one and it was exhibiting the same passive floating along the bottom.

One of the first seahorses that we spotted.

 As we searched the seagrass, we found many other interesting species.  

A blenny poking out from an old clam shell

  We spotted filefish floating around and looking remarkably like green leaves.  One looked like a very large green leaf, which was a bit more obvious in seagrass that was only a few inches high.

A large filefish acting like a big green leaf.

Then we spotted a tiny little filefish that was very well camouflaged in the short seagrass.

In the end, we spotted 3 or 4 seahorses and were very happy to have found both the seahorses and the seagrass.  We were finally feeling productive!

Although we were having a great time in the seagrass, we had plenty of time left on the dive, so we continued our search for another patch.  Since the water was only a foot deep at this point, I simply stood up and looked across the surface.  I saw a dark patch ahead and we began to swim.  It was another, smaller, patch of seagrass with much longer blades.  We couldn't swim over the top of it because it was so shallow, so we didn't spot any more seahorses, but finding the grass was great news.  Buoyed by our good fortune, we are excited to continue searching the bay with the hope of finding many more intact patches. 

A three hour tour with drunk military leaders

 I had the strangest boat ride today.  It all began days ago.  Apparently there was a holiday in Cambodia on Thursday.  But, this story begins on Wednesday.  That evening two of the five members of MCC on Koh Rong were missing, our German intern, Daniel, and our local director/dive instructor, Kylie.  They were gone most of the evening and stumbled in that night.  The next morning they told their tale.  They were being held hostage....in a very polite sort of way.  One of the village leaders, we'll call him Sandcat, (one of the three people on the island that we greet in a different, more respectful way) was back and he wanted to drink.  Daniel and Kylie happened to be at the bar when Sandcat was around and they were asked to join him for a drink.  They couldn't turn down the offer, so each time he said to finish their drink they did.  Drink, after drink, after drink.  The next morning Daniel, not feeling all that well from the heavy drinking from the night before, walked through the village to buy some bread.  Sandcat was in the bar that morning and invited Daniel to join him for a drink.  Of course, he could not refuse.  I figure that Daniel went MIA in Cambodia at 0900.  A few hours later Kylie received a call from the captive Daniel and was instructed to go to the Karaoke bar.  Presumably if he wanted to see Daniel.  Kylie could not refuse.  Upon arriving at the bar, he was given beer and instructed to drink which would please Sandcat.  Around this time, the Karaoke began to ring loudly throughout the village (Khmer people seem to love Karaoke).  I heard the same song over and over and over.  It was torture and I was a hundred yards or more away!
  With two members missing, the rest of us were left with little to do and no boat to escape in.  We knew what our fellow members were going through, but we were hesitant to rush in only to be cut down in the same fashion.  I decided to sleep on it.  I took a nap.  When I awoke, I was all alone.  The other two members must have attempted a rescue.  Now my team was all in danger, but I was powerless to save them from the free drinks and requests to chug cheap Thai beer and eat dog.  I decided to sit and wait.  Perhaps a plan would come to mind or Sandcat would take pity on my team.  I sat outside our house and began to read.  It wasn't long before I was completely surrounded.  At least a dozen members of the village, ages 4 to 12, surrounded me.  I was backed into a corner.  I could hardly move.  Their hands grabbed at me and they looked carefully at what I was reading (the bibliography of the book, actually) and they said, "Hello! How are you?"  Not knowing what to do, I replied with what we had taught them, "I am fine, thank you." That seemed to work.  They followed by asking what my name was.  I thought that it could be a trick because they had asked me this at least a dozen times before.  Then, completely unexpected, they began pointing to their body parts and started naming them.  "Nose!", they cried.  "Head!" rang out.  Soon a chorus of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes."  I thought that everything was going to be OK.  Suddenly though, they switched to Khmer.  They wanted me to reply in Khmer, to mimic them.  I tried and they were soon exasperated.  I was obviously not pronouncing things as well as they had hoped.  Some of them began to drift away only to be replaced by others.  Soon I was surrounded by a half-dozen boys age 8-14.  They looked at me and then looked at the poster, written in Khmer, behind me.  The poster depicted many of the organisms of the coral reef.  They knew these organisms, but they didn't know their names in English.  They began pointing at pictures and asking names.  "Urchin," I said.  Followed by "Coral"and "fish" and "Coral"and "Coral" and "giant clam" and "anemone." They wanted more.  Each gave me their notebook so that I could write the names for each of the creatures.  Once supplied with the names, they put down the Khmer name and the Khmer letters that would create sounds like urchin and coral.  Then, it all switched on me again, they wanted me to learn the Khmer names.  Their eyes were rolling and they slowed the names to speeds that were clearly painful for them, hoping that I might at least get close.  By this time, it was 5:40pm.  My team was still in trouble.  Minutes seemed like hours and then, finally, I saw them.  They looked rough.  They stumbled down the boardwalk and I knew that they were safe.  Fortunately, they were just in time to help me teach the kids English for a half hour.
   That brings us to this morning.  We were planning on getting an early dive in to search for sea grass beds in the bay and then planned to leave for the mainland at 1200.  The morning dive went very well (it will be another post), but after the dive Kylie's phone rang.  It was Sandcat.  It was still morning.  It was time for more beer.  Our departure was delayed and then delayed and then we were informed that Sandcat and a number of members from the Cambodian Navy were to join us on our trip.  We loaded onto the boat.  Daniel came aboard and told us that there was a very high-ranking officer from the Navy that was going to join us on our trip.  This officer was to be greeted with the high form of greeting.  I was about to experience the same fate that my team had.  He boarded with a case of beer and three other men in uniform.  The cans of beer were immediately distributed and we were all asked to drink.  Thus began our very strange three-hour tour.
  Our boat headed out and we said (in Khmer) "Cheers"over and over.  About 15 minutes into the ride, the officer noticed that we were not heading toward the mainland.  This was true.  We were heading to the neighboring island to pick up a few other volunteers.  He told the boat-driver to stop and take us back.  We convinced him that it would only be for a minute, so the beer began to flow again. 

Embarrassing Photo #1

Daniel and the principle of Koh Rong (also in attendance)

 Fortunately, Ceri and I managed to make most of ours flow over the side of the boat.  As we cruised along the navy people seemed to not recognize that round-bottomed boats tilt A LOT if they are not balanced.  Each time they would stand up and switch sides the boat tilted severely to one side or another.  Fortunately, we did made it to Koh Rong Samloem and docked.  Almost everybody got off.  We all felt trapped.  We were going to have to get back on that boat, and in order to not offend the officer, we would have to continue to drink.  Not only was he a high-powered person in the military, he was carrying a gun.  We had to keep him happy.  Very happy.  We waited and waited for everybody to return.  Finally, after about a half an hour, they returned....with a case of beer.  We got underway and the Anchor beer case was opened.  It contained about 6 cans of Coke and several different kinds of beer.  The beers were distributed.  We said Cheers with the special hand positioning showing respect, although I doubt there was much of it left in the group.  Back underway, the drunks got more drunk and my beer continued to flow into the sea.  Then it really got strange.  The Officer started taking pictures of himself and others in mock embrace.  The Officer stood and fell from one side of the boat to the other to embrace Daniel, a 6 foot plus, 21 year old German.   That was odd.  Then he did it again.  And again.  And again.  He goosed the other men by grabbing between their legs.  He took out his camera phone and took pictures with his arms around the girls on board.  He pretended to be a coy school girl.  This behavior went on and on and on.  I stayed as far away as possible. 

Ceri super happy to be involved in this international incident

I avoided all eye-contact.  The Officer put away his gold camera phone and took out his white an purple smart phone.  I imagined that he was uploading photos to Facebook and playing Farmville.  Our boat lurched and swayed from side to side as the antics progressed and the swell came at us from an angle.  Our engine took on water and we had to stop for the bilge to clear the excess.  We wanted off of this cruise.  We wanted off badly.  Finally, we got close to the port.  Of course, the Officer saw that they party was about to end and he wanted to be sure to keep in touch.  He didn't friend us on Facebook, but he took down some phone numbers.  He added numbers to his phone and offered to take the ladies in his car all around Sihonoukville.  Finally, we made it to the pier.  We got off.  We got a ride in a tuktuk and got out of there before things got any more strange.

Pigs on stilts

I found out that directly across from our house (behind the girl carrying stuff on her head in the previous post) there are pig pens.  They're really quiet pigs.  There are nets just out front too, where, I believe, people put fish to fatten them up. 

Living on Stilts

I recently arrived in Cambodia to work with a group called Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC).  For the next month, I will be living in a small fishing village on the island of Koh Rong.  If you want to do a virtual flyby, then you can go to Google Maps or Google Earth and paste the following coordinates: 10.711382,103.309227.  Zoom in to see the village.  I'm in the second to last house on the boardwalk.  Today I'm on the mainland, so I thought that I'd take advantage of the internet access and make a quick post about my first week and why I am here. 


THE VILLAGE

Fishing Village on Koh Rong

The island of Koh Rong has a few small villages; I'm living in the largest village, which has about 200 people, most of whom live in houses on stilts.  Cambodia sold the island to a developer from China and it is destined for development.  The village lacks plumbing.  Water comes from rain and a few wells on the island and all waste, human and otherwise, goes directly into the sea.  Some people have generators and have power at night.  The power is probably most obvious in the 3 bars in the village and we use a generator at night to provide some light (it's absolutely deafening, however). There are probably 8 stores on the island (most people seem to be selling something from their home), but many of the people fish for a living. The island also has cell phone service and almost everybody has a cell phone. I guess with 4 billion cell phone contracts in the world, the chances are pretty high that folks on a remote fishing village in Cambodia would also be connected.  

View from MCC house

Toilets here are the squat type and showers are with a bucket of rainwater. (On the mainland the toilets are mostly the same, but they have a sprayer similar to your kitchen sink instead of toilet paper).  I didn't expect bars, stores, and cell phones on the island or that the island would be anything but peaceful.  Despite its small size, it is the noisiest  place that I have ever lived.  Dozens of fishing boats start up at 4am (many of these boats are fishermen that come to the village to dock, but do not live on the island), roosters crow all of the time and dogs fight throughout the day (yes, there are dogs and cats all over this village on stilts -- no, they are not exactly house broken...).

Regional fishing boats tied together waiting out an oncoming storm

 Needless to say, I wake up very early.  I wake up early because it's nearly impossible to sleep through the noise and in part because our local cook begins lighting a charcoal stove in the kitchen right next to my bed.

Our Kitchen

Around this time, my room fills up with smoke and I have to climb out from my mosquito net and escape to the outside for some air.   In case you didn't know, according to the World Health Organization cooking with charcoal and similar materials is thought to be the fourth worst health risk in developing countries and the cause of millions of deaths from resulting respiratory disease.

There are currently 5 people on the island working with Marine Conservation Cambodia, but there are many more living on a nearby island working on a project that has been running for a few years.  On Koh Rong, there is a German intern, a Canadian dive instructor, a British math teacher, an Italian student, and myself.   Our house has a bathroom, a kitchen a room for our local helpers, and three bedrooms, two with bunk beds. 

The MCC House (we climb down the ladder to get into our boat)

It is the rainy season and I was expecting a lot of rain and very hot and humid conditions.  It's definitely hot and humid, but I thought it would be much worse.  It has not been raining too much.  Most of the rain has come at night, but there have been a few storms that lasted all day. 

Village in a rainstorm as seen from my bedroom window

Outside of the village, most of the island is dense jungle full of snakes (cobra, king cobra, vipers, etc), so there has been very little development until recently.  The owner of the island has started building roads and there is a plan to put in an airstrip.  The oncoming development, if not done properly, will lead to considerable environmental degradation and severe disruption of the village and the villagers' culture. The goal of MCC is to encourage this development to be environmentally friendly, culturally sensitive, and beneficial to the villagers.



THE PROJECT

Marine Conservation Cambodia has been working to preserve the villages, the culture of the villages, the reefs and the jungles on and around the islands.  They have been working on an island nearby for a few years, but the project on Koh Rong is only a few months old.  A number of goals have already been met by MCC.  For example, the villages on the islands were registered with the government, so that the people could not be evicted by the developers.  In addition, a number of rare and threatened species (e.g. sea horses) have been documented on the island, which has helped build a case for conservation. Data have been collected by volunteers regarding the reefs and seagrass beds around the island and areas have been designated for preservation.  Ultimately, the goal is to set aside some portions around the islands as marine protected areas.  Furthermore, on Koh Rong Samloem, the inhabited island nearby, the villages have evicted fishermen that were using destructive fishing habits and who were unwilling to stop.  In addition, the villagers now patrol their own waters and fine or kick-out unauthorized fishermen (e.g., Vietnamese fishermen) or boats using destructive fishing methods.  The island that I am on has not been investigated nearly as well.  The locations of the reefs and seagrass beds are not well known and the diversity has not been well-documented.  My role on the island will be to help collect data on the reefs and help identify areas that may need the most preservation.  I may also try to help document birds that are on the islands.  Plus, I will train other volunteers to collect data (in fact, although I don't know the local reefs, I had to start training other volunteers as soon as I arrived because there was no training in place).  Both islands are also involved in teaching local children some English.  Teaching English to the kids is something that I was initially uncomfortable with because it seems to be disrupting the Khmer culture and a classic form of Westernizing the population; however, the reality is that these islands are soon to be developed and overrun with tourists.  There doesn't seem to be any way around that.  For the locals to have a chance at getting jobs as their island changes, they will have to be able to speak English.  It is an unfortunate reality and the change is coming fast. Fortunately, the kids really love learning English!  They show up early and they stay late.  It's pretty amazing how fast they learn.  By contrast, I'm picking up Khmer at a pitifully slow pace. But, it is a real challenge to teach a language to someone when you can't talk to them in their own language first. It would be like walking into a Spanish class where the instructor could not speak any English. 

DIVING
I have made a few dives since I have arrived to get familiar with the reef and to train other volunteers how to recognize sponges, hard corals and soft corals, etc. The visibility has been pretty bad (4-5 meters), so pointing out fish to identify has been challenging.  Most of the divers here blame the trawlers in the area, but there is a lot of waste entering the water too, so I think that may be contributing to algal blooms.  We hope to begin forming a plan this coming week to collect preliminary data on the health of the reefs near the villages.  From what I can tell, some of the reefs are very nice, but others are in rough shape. I haven't seen a seahorse yet, but I hope to see at least one before I go.  I'll end this long-winded post with a few pics of what I've seen on my dives so far. 

A nudibranch next to a long-spined urchin.  Is this the front or the back?

Another tiny nudibranch

A couple of curled up Crinoids

Coral Clams (very common on the reefs here, but new to me)

An Anemone Fish in an anemone (this was a first for me to see!)

A large anemone.  If you know me, then you know I like taking pictures of anemones. There were fields of these on one reef.

A sea cucumber on a barrel sponge.  They are often found on these sponges here.