More fieldwork discoveries in corona times: Sangihe

July 29, 2020 / Maarten De Brauwer / 1 Comment

In the previous blog I described how my colleague Alessia and me explored Alor, on a mission to collect environmental DNA and study Indonesia’s remote reefs. I am still stuck at home in corona times, so what follows is the next leg of our trip. After we left Alor, we headed to an island that’s been a tempting dot on Indonesia’s map for a while: Sangihe. This particular trip was supported by a National Geographic grant to investigate Indonesia’s remote reefs.

The tiny speck on the map that is Sangihe Island

To get to Sangihe, you have to pass through Manado, from there you can either take a long ferry ride or a tiny plane very early in the morning. Flying to the island is a great way to admire the volcanic activity that has formed the islands. Multiple volcanoes surround the airport in Manado and you fly over a few more dotted in the Celebes sea before landing in Sangihe, which has its own large volcano (Gunung Awu).

Fisherman in Sangihe. Photo credit: Maarten De Brauwer

The island itself is gorgeous, covered in forest with deep blue water around it. Being so remote, the place gets few divers, so dive facilities are nearly non-existing. When we were there (March 2020), the only place to rent equipment was the tourist info centre in Tahuna. Jemmy, who runs the shop is a great guy who went out of his way to help out were possible. Logistics were not quite on point yet since he only started in the scuba business a few weeks before we got there, but fieldwork logistics rarely are on point, so we still got to explore and collect the data we needed.

Sangihe boat views. Photo credit: Maarten De Brauwer

What stuck with me most about the sites, is the incredible visibility, which was 30m at the worst of times and up to 50m at some of the best spots. Otherwise, the health of the reefs was not as good as I hoped it would be. Some sites had extensive dynamite damage, others looked like they had bleached, and the northern sites were strangely devoid of coral, but also lacked the evidence of any typical human impacts. Bare in mind that we were exploring, and neither our fixer Jemmy, nor the boat driver had taken divers or snorkelers to most of the places we sampled. So there was a lot of searching, looking for spots, and the times we got it right, diving was as good as some of the very best Indonesia’s got to offer.

Not a bad place to sample eDNA. Photo credit: Maarten De Brauwer

One of the cooler experiences during our time in Sangihe was exploring a small freshwater creek that entered the sea at the beach where we were having a surface interval. This small, fast-flowing river wasn’t only absolutely stunning to look at, it was also home to some very exciting fish life. Besides some very cute blue streamgoby (Sicyopterus lagocephalus), it also sheltered a healthy population of freshwater pipefish (Microphis retzii)!!! While I knew they existed, I had never seen them myself, so discovering a creek full of them definitely made my day!

Goby_Sicyopterus lagocephalus

Microphis retzii_ragged tail pipefish

Gorgeous little creek

Unfortunately, the next leg of the trip was cancelled due to the spread of COVID19. We were planning to head to an ever more remote island (Pulau Talaud), but the risk of getting stuck there grew a bit too serious. We managed to get a short sampling trip in at the more accessible Bangka island, but eventually had to cut our time short there as well. After only 2 nights on the island, we were told by both the university and friends in the government that the safest course of action would be to leave the country and head back to Europe. Where, at the time of writing, I still am…

A small word of warning for those of you reading this and feel like going for a diving adventure. Sangihe is proper frontier diving with lots of exploring to do. The island has few other sources of income than fishing and coconut farming, so tourism could boost livelihoods in the areas. Just be aware that safety protocols are not as well-established as they are in other, more touristy areas of Indonesia. You should be an experienced scuba diver who can deal with strong currents, basic conditions, and limited to no safety backup from operators.

Yellowfin tuna for sale at Tahuna market. Photo credit: Maarten De Brauwer

Tuna head was had. Photo credit: Maarten De Brauwer

A man and his skipjack tuna. Photo credit: Maarten De Brauwer

Fieldwork discoveries in corona times: Alor

July 3, 2020July 3, 2020 / Maarten De Brauwer / 2 Comments

It’s July 2020 and more than 3 months of COVID19 isolation is starting to grate on me. Time to relive fieldwork from earlier this year, when travel was still possible and exciting research was happening!

Survey site – Ternate selatan

Fisherman at a survey site

My fieldwork season for 2020 promised to be a very exciting one. Not only were we planning to survey coral reefs in Flores with a great team, I even got support from National Geographic to explore some of Indonesia’s most remote reefs.

In the start of March I picked up my genetically-inclined colleague Alessia Bani from the airport in Bali for what turned out to be quite the adventure. We had 2 months of eDNA sampling and exploring ahead of us, mostly in places I had never visited, let alone dived before! Our first destination was Alor, a spot where I had been dying to get to for years.

Heading to a survey site

Alor is fast becoming known as a place for great muck diving, but also for excellent reefs and even big stuff (hammerhead sharks!). It’s still not the easiest place to get to, but once you get there, oh boy does it deliver! I can honestly say that it has been one of the most enjoyable places I visited in the last 3 years of fieldwork.

We stayed at the very hospitable Air Dive, where our host Acionk and the rest of the team made us feel not just welcome, but part of the Air Dive family. They made our surveys into the easiest and most pleasant fieldwork we’ve done for this entire project.

A pair of robust ghost pipefish (Solenostomus cyanopterus). Photo credit: Maarten De Brauwer

Our reason for being in Alor was obviously more than just good company. We were in Alor to study coral reefs and collect eDNA. This method is great to get fantastic amounts of data on the diversity of life on coral reefs, but unfortunately it also means very short dives and lots of time spent filtering water at the surface. And trust me, when you’re in Alor, you want to spend as much time as you can under water. While we purposely visited healthy and damaged sites, the abundance of life was great. We had amazing coral reefs, plenty of fish, some very cool critters (frogfishes, ghost pipefishes, plenty of nudibranchs,…). If we could have spent an extra week just fun diving we definitely would have.

The place wasn’t just great under water, there is SO MUCH action on top as well. Alor Strait is home to two resident dolphin pods, one of which frequently hangs out just out front of the place we were staying. We were also lucky enough to see a strong upwelling event, where (very) cold water rises to the surface. As a result, many smaller fish get a cold shock and die or get temporarily paralysed. The sudden abundance of motionless tasty morsels meant a free feast for the dolphins, as well as the local people, who came out with every pot, pan, net, or other random scooping implement of choice.

Scooping up frozen fish

One scoop catch

Dolphins joining the feast

We finished our non-diving day with a visit to the local dugong, Mawar. Mawar’s name (=Rose) turned out to be a bit of an awkward choice, as this particular rose was a hefty male dugong with anything but delicate flowers on his mind. As we were told, he is the only dugong in the area and gets quite lonely. So any visitors are greeted with overly enthusiastic hugs, which is why nobody is allowed to swim with him anymore. In absence of humans in the water, dear Mawar seems to have taken a fancy for boats. If you want to know just how much of a fancy, let’s say that if I posted some of the pictures I took on this blog, it would probably get taken offline for inappropriate content…

Mawar cuddling the boat

Mawar REALLY loved that boat

In short, we had a fantastic time in Alor, seeing 9 dive sites was nowhere near enough and I hope to get back sooner rather than later. A big thank you to the Air Dive team, while I am normally not one to advertise dive centres on this blog, they helped us out far beyond what was needed and were just the friendliest bunch of people. Sampai jumpa lagi!

Ambon and Halmahera fieldwork: Mini-blog 3 – Surveying Ambon’s reefs

October 9, 2019October 9, 2019 / Maarten De Brauwer / 1 Comment

In the previous fieldwork blog I wrote that we were about to leave on the boat to survey coral reefs around Ambon. So let me walk you through how our first week went.

Leaving Ambon took a bit more effort than expected, getting the necessary pre-departure paperwork signed off took 6 hours instead of 10 minutes, but we finally managed to leave late afternoon. We left under a rather gloomy sky, with grey clouds and scattered rain showers seeing us out of the bay instead of the bright sunshine we hoped for. But with an overnight boat trip ahead of us to get to the first sites, we could maybe wake up to blue skies.

That, unfortunately, was not meant to be…

Gloomy Ambon skies

When I mention “dive expedition in Indonesia”, most people tend not to imagine grey skies and unrelenting rain, but the lush tropics wouldn’t be quite as lush without lots and lots of rain! Throughout the week we had plenty of rain, sometimes so much we had to postpone dives because of the limited visibility at the surface: the boat driver needs to be able to see the divers at the surface to pick them up when surveys are done.

Rainy days

Maria and Gino

But we had come to Ambon to study coral reefs, so (mostly) undeterred by the rain, we hopped in and started our work! The first thing we noticed was a conspicuous lack of…coral. We started surveys in an area with a lot of human fishing activity, and it showed, big time. We did not hear any blasts while diving, but there was a lot of evidence of dynamite fishing. Entire reefs were reduced to rubble, some places even had large bomb craters, something I had never seen before. I dread to think about the size of the bomb and the immediate impacts of its blast. A lot of explosive power is required to leave a 40cm deep, 1.5m wide crater underwater!

It wasn’t all bad news though, some places were showing slow signs of recovery, which could mean they hadn’t been bombed for a while. There were still some large fish left, nowhere near as many as there should be, but I did spot a few large groupers and emperors, and even a few adult blacktip reef sharks. We saw encrusting algae and small coral slowly starting to take hold in some places, although they were still a long way from becoming a real coral reef again. I would estimate it could easily take another 50-100 years for these sites to become a fully functional reef, even if they were left in peace and there were no other impacts.

Crater caused by dynamite fishing

Dynamited reef, now a rubble field

After a couple of days of rain and survey dives that made our hearts ache, the team’s morale (or at least mine) had seen better days. Luckily, two things happened: we moved on to sites that had less fishing pressure and the sun started shining!

This part of the trip brought home just how rich coral reefs can be if you just use them in a less destructive way. Sites with very high and diverse coral cover, big schools of fish, lots of invertebrates, funky critters, everything you could want in a dive. This time our only regret was that the tight schedule didn’t give us time to explore each site more thoroughly. Between trying to count and identify large schools of mixed fish species, processing eDNA samples and entering data, little time was left to do anything else than eat and prepare for the next dive. Not that I’m complaining though, being able to work on reefs like this is a privilege that never gets old.

We were also privileged to see some of Ambon’s funky critters. During quite a few dives we came across ghostpipefish (Solenostomus paradoxus and S. cyanopterus), a rare sight on standard coral reef surveys. Our invertebrate expert had his work cut out counting a variety of nudibranchs, shrimp, cowries, and anything in between. Even the algae crew got more fish than they bargained for when a giant frogfish (Antennarius commersoni) decided to swim by and say hello.

Counting and identifying the fish on a reef can be a challenge

Coral reef near Nusa Laut

Despite some adverse weather and a slow start, we finished surveys within the planned time and arrived back in Ambon Bay two days ago. Our two days on land were put to good use, catching up on data entry and admin, meetings, and even catching a movie last night (Joker, pretty good actually). Tomorrow we leave at first light for a longer trip. We are headed to Halmahera, an area where precious little information exists on the health of coral reefs. If all goes according to plan, I should be able to write an update from Ternate in about 6 days!

Ambon and Halmahera fieldwork: Mini-blog 2 – Logistics

September 30, 2019September 30, 2019 / Maarten De Brauwer / 1 Comment

I have made my way to Ambon since the last blog, where I have been preparing the last logistics with my local colleagues from Pattimura University before the actual fieldwork begins. In the last 3 days, the other team members have also started arriving, with the final team member (and master fish counter) landing tomorrow morning. The main things that had to happen before our boat leaves port (besides recovering from jetlag), was organising a detailed plan, training new team members, and preparing all the gear.

Cloudy Ambon days

One of the things we will be doing, is collecting environmental DNA (eDNA) to study biodiversity on coral reefs. If you want to know more about eDNA, I have written more about it here or here. In short: eDNA are tiny fragments of DNA in the water column that come from poop, mucus, etc. By filtering and analysing a scoop of water, we can tell what lives in the area we took water from. Because eDNA is such a new method, most people have not used it before. So in a great mutual benefit arrangement, our Pattimura University colleagues took us (my colleague Dom and me) out for a dive and in return we showed them how to collect water 😉

We obviously did more than just collecting seawater, we also went back to the lab to teach them the protocols on how to filter samples while avoiding contamination. Since eDNA analysis is so good at picking up the tiniest fragments of DNA, a careless brush of a fingertip can render the entire sample useless. We are collecting data from a boat instead of a high-tech lab, so being aware of how things can go wrong is absolutely crucial to get reliable data.

Getting ready to dive. Photo: Dominic Muenzel

Getting ready to filter. Photo: Dominic Muenzel

Tomorrow morning we set sail (start engine?) for 10 days of research around Ambon. So today we had make sure all the equipment got to the boat, for us to leave at first light in the morning. Between dive gear (including compressors, tanks, etc), survey tools, eDNA equipment, and other random practical bits and pieces, it took multiple returns trips with the pickup to get everything to the boat. Science is of course hungry work and feeding 16 people takes a lot of grocery shopping, which was luckily taken care of by our local team. Gino (our Ambon trip leader) has assured me we have an excellent chef on board, so be aware that there is a decent chance that the rest of these fieldwork blogs will mostly be about tasty Indonesian food!

As we will be on a boat for quite a while in the next weeks, I am not sure yet if I will be able to post blogs until we are back on the mainland. If I can snatch up some 4G signal along the way, you’ll be able to read an update on the fieldwork in a couple of days. Otherwise, the next blog will be online around the 11th of October.