Protect Coral Reefs in Malaysia

August has been a super busy month for our team on Tioman Island. We have been catching up with our conservation work post-lockdown due to the pandemic: removing ghost nets that had already killed two hawksbill turtles, training and educating on sustainable tourism practices with dive centres and hotels. 

We were at Genting Village to train and certify dive centres as Green Fins members. Green Fins is a comprehensive approach that encourages dive centres and snorkel operators, local communities and governments to work together to reduce their environmental impacts. This is primarily done through the private sector adopting a Code of Conduct that will help mitigate their impacts when carrying out marine tourism activities.The Code of Conduct consists of 15 points, which target environmental threats posed by the tourism industry, both under water and on land. Green Fins members receive the training and the tools to promote environmental education and awareness, tapping into the tourists and the diving community, which is shifting more and more towards eco-friendly initiatives as a result of the demand from the consumer. We have also started our recycling programmes in Genting Village.

In June and July, we conducted the following conservationa activities:

• We installed a new mooring buoy at one of the dive sites.
• We have been doing weekly maintenance at the 30 coral blocks we recently installed, as the nursery is new it needs a lot of extra monitoring and maintenance to maximise survival rates. 
• We started the annual reef check surveys, covering 6 sites along the east coast of the island.  
• We have also been monitoring coral bleaching weekly since the movement restrictions were removed in June.
• We also did multiple dives to cull COTS (Crown-of-Thorns Starfish) at a couple of sites – killing 716 individuals in total.
• Thrice we were called to respond to ghost nets stuck on reefs in the past two months.

Unfortunately, many locals have started to illegally catch fish within the marine protected area due to the Covid-19 situation and the lockdown, which caused a severe drop in tourism and many of the locals were affected economically. The island is now open to tourism again and we hope the poaching will end. We are working with the Marine Park authorities to stop poachers as well.