Author: Kristen

Today’s feature is on Jojo. Jojo is full of energy, passion for the ocean, and is the leader of jetty time- she is always grabbing a group of people to head out to the jetty with some beers each night for the sunset.

Name: Jojo

Home Country: Switzerland

Favorite 3 Places in the World: Indonesia, Laos, Sri Lanka

Best Know at TRACC For: “Ooh La La” (her catchphrase)

Journey to TRACC: I discovered scuba three years ago and wanted to become a dive master, but not just to guide tourists, rather to preserve oceans. After my previous job working for profit at Swiss Airlines I got sick of it and wanted to do my part in the world. My brother Sebas told me about this place and it seemed like the perfect center to go to after my eco dive master internship just to have some conservation work on my resume.

Worst Job You’ve Done to Afford Travel: Working in Switzerland you really have a lot of opportunity and are paid well so I can’t complain, but working for the airline was tough just to see so much profit not going to the right people or causes.

What’s Next? I’m going to travel for a bit once I leave here in May after finishing the A-Level course, then I’m going to go back home to Switzerland to try and find a job where I feel useful to a cause and to the planet. I don’t see myself taking another job working for profit.

I think that these turtles here have a gravitational pull towards me because every turtle walk I’m on I strike gold. Last night was turtle mayhem from the hours of 11pm-2:30am. I took off on my turtle walk with Adam, a staff member here, and Giulia, a diver who just got here last week. Within 15 minutes we stumbled upon a set of turtles tracks leading up the beach, only to find a mama turtle digging for a safe spot to lay her eggs. Adam told us she looked like she would be a while, so we walked further down the beach to find another set of tracks. Adam said these must be from the same turtle, assuming the mom didn’t like the spot and retreated back into the water to find another spot. We took a few more steps only to find another turtle digging to lay. These two turtles were probably only 30 yards from each other in almost the exact stage of the birthing process.

Adam took the lead assigning us tasks to try to organize the situation so that we could collect the eggs from each turtle in a timely manner. Some turtle birthing facts I picked up in the process:

-Female turtles can spend hours on the beach laying their eggs. They often try out a few spots, create fake holes to make diversions for predators, or may spend a lot of time digging what they think is the perfect nest, and also digging to cover up that nest once they are finished

-Mother turtles typically lay 60-80 eggs at once, but can lay over 100. When laying, the turtle enters a trance-like state where she does not notice anything going on around her

-You can tell that a turtle is ready to lay when she stops digging with all four flippers and is just digging with her back flippers. She uses the back flippers to scoop the sand and create a deep funnel for the eggs to drop into

We ran back and forth in between the two turtles trying to figure out who would lay first. We returned to turtle #1 to find that she had already started laying, so we marked the spot with a stick to be sure we could find it after she buried it and returned to turtle #2. We got to her right as she started laying and sat there for almost 45 minutes as she laid 78 eggs. I now understand why people say child birth is amazing, because I couldn’t look away from this turtle even with whatever goop was falling out of her. Haven’t seen a human being born but I have to say a turtle birth is pretty awesome. After popping out all of those eggs this turtle suddenly started back finning us with sand right to the face as she started covering up her eggs. A science officer collected the eggs before they were buried, and we returned to turtle #1 for her eggs. She laid 88, leaving the night’s total at 166 eggs.

We brought the eggs to the hatchery on the island and had them buried for safe keeping until they are ready to hatch in 7-8 weeks. I didn’t get back to camp until after 2am and was completely covered in sand and sweating, but it was all worth it. I thought I had seen it all with the baby turtle releases, but I would have to say this night topped that. Pom Pom, if you want to find more turtles just put me on the walk, I think I’m a good luck charm.

The next feature in on one of TRACC’s camp managers, Robin. Robin and I got to know each other when he completely hustled me in ping pong. I had beat a few people and ended up challenging him because I had never seen him play. He allowed me to talk some smack and then bet me a drink of beer for each point loss. He played the first three points like he had absolutely no idea what he was doing and all of a sudden turned into a pro, hitting me with spin serves and actually beating me multiple times with his non-dominant hand. Aside from that he’s a good dude.

Name: Robin

Home Country: Netherlands

Favorite 3 Places in the World: Amsterdam, Una Una Togian Islands, Pom Pom Island

Best Known for at TRACC: Being a clown and spotting the tiniest creatures in the water, basically an island idiot

How Did You End Up Here: I worked at a resort on Pom Pom right next door to TRACC. I met Flik, who runs TRACC’s social media currently. I moved to Australia after leaving here with Flik. When Flik got a job offer here she asked them to give me a job here as well. I’m basically a long-term plus one that turned out alright.

Worst Job Ever Done to Afford Travel: I worked as a night guard in a hostel in the center of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia from midnight to 8am for 500 ringgit. I also worked in Indonesia at a dive store from 6am-2am diving four dives a day, serving food, cleaning up and setting up gear for 500 ringgit a month

What’s Next?: There’s no life after TRACC haha. I want to be some sort of operational director and get TRACC into 3 different countries within 5 years.

Today a group of twelve of us here at TRACC headed to another island within Tun Sakaran Marine Park, about thirty five minutes by boat, to participate in a big ocean clean up day organized by 32 Marine, an ocean conservation group. I thought that this would be a small event, but we arrived to find 400 other volunteers from 30 different organizations. The goal was to clean up as much trash from the ocean and beach while scuba diving and snorkeling. At the end of our dives they weighed each group’s trash to see who had collected the most. With our dives, TRACC managed to collect over 500 pounds of trash in the span of about three hours. We thought we had it in the bag until groups started clocking in with 600-700 pounds. Can’t win em all.

After our trash had been weighed we were ushered to a big tent for an award ceremony, some speeches, raffle drawings and lunch. Upon entering we were told lunch wasn’t for another hour, which just wasn’t going to cut it for us. We found a small snack stand down the beach where they were selling chips, sodas, and curry puffs, which are kind of like empanadas. There were three catering trays of curry puffs on the table, and our group bought two of the three trays. The girl working there was definitely appalled by this and we fit the stereotype of being the fat Americans who couldn’t wait forty more minutes for lunch and cleaned the snack stand out.

Once the award ceremony got started it became clear that this MC loved having a microphone in his hand. I couldn’t tell you what country this man was from because he spoke four of five languages throughout the whole thing, but in the most irrational way. Rather than translating each thing he said into each language, he would just switch languages mid sentence and never fully translate anything. He started by saying he would do most of the ceremony in English, but the only time he actually spoke in English was during transition phrases. He would say things like “okay and next up we have *rambles on in Malay*” or “and now also I want to *rambles on in Malay” and the. Every 20 minutes or so he would point out our group, clearly the only group of foreigners in the crowd, and yell “YES YES ARE YOU HAPPY?” into the mic at us. He seemed very focused on how much we were enjoying ourselves despite not being able to understand 11/12 of what was going on.

In total, the group of 400 volunteers collected almost 9000 pounds of trash at the event, which was amazing to see. It was really cool to be apart of this event and work with people from all over Malaysia who share the same passion for protecting our oceans.

This one is a two-fer. Introducing our hottest island couple and the photographers responsible for the wonderful pictures on TRACC’s social media, David and Aneata.

Names: David and Aneata

Home Country:

David: Reunion Island

Aneata: Australia

Favorite 3 Places in the World:

David: Margaret River in Western Australia, Mafeat Reunion Island, Sumatra Indonesia

Aneata: Bolivia, Maldives, Reunion

Best Known at TRACC for:

David: Tying knots, when they need to set up a new mooring line somewhere they come and grab me

Aneata: Coordinating all of the beautiful photos we take here

Journey to TRACC:

David: My friend sent me a job link for here when they were looking for photographers

Aneata: David’s friend, who had worked with TRACC, tagged me in a photo on Instagram and I think they scoped me out on there. They probably just liked my ass.

Worst Job Ever Done to Afford Travel:

David: Dish washing in the cafeteria at university after graduating.

Aneata: Picking mangos. My hands were covered in sap and blisters, I still have scars from it.

What’s Next?

David: Philippines next but after who knows, you make plans but then change your mind so I like to keep it open.

Aneata: Going to swim with thresher sharks in the Philippines and then to New Zealand to see snow for the first time.

Follow them on Instagram at @davideriaud and @captured.a.f

Some of their work…

I’m a fruity candy over chocolate kind of person, both of which I’ve had limited to no access to here. Some common meal conversation here revolves around discussing what we wish we were actually eating, food we miss from home, and how nice it would be to eat something crunchy or sweet or cold or crispy rather than more white rice. We got on the topic of candy and agreed that the next person to make a trip to the mainland would take our pooled money and buy as much candy as he or she could fit in a backpack.

My Malaysian girl Syafa took one for the team and headed to Semporna by boat with a backpack and 60 ringgit in hand ($15). She returned with over a dozen bags of candy, chocolate bars, chips and back pain a few hours later. We laid everything out and decided to do a candy review. In retrospect I didn’t need to try 20 pieces of candy in one sitting and rationing it to last me throughout the rest of my stay would have been smarter, but hindsight is 20/20.

Fruit Plus Chewy Candy: Comes in green apple, mango, strawberry, and lychee. They have the consistency of Laffy Taffy but are about half the size. The green apple was my favorite, followed by the strawberry. Mango was alright but not very sweet and the lychee had a bitter aftertaste. 6.7/10

Dynamite: These had a hard minty exterior like a regular stripe mint, but as they melt there is a hard chocolate in the center. I would compare it to the small chocolate mints found at fancy steak houses. 7.2/10 for a mint, 3.3/10 for a candy

Sour Plus Mango Gummy: I was extremely disappointed in this one. I love mango flavoring usually, but the exterior was bitter and almost salty and the gummy was way too soft and not sweet enough. 2.4/10

Lot 100 Variety Gummies: Probably my favorite sampling of the group, this variety pack of gummies was similar to Welch’s fruit snacks. With unique flavors like black currant, pineapple, green apple and mango, each were pretty good. 8.1/10

Rinna Strawberry: Tastes similar to a cream saver, it was not tart like I expected to be but rather had a strawberry milkshake taste. Kind of resembled a cough drop. 7.9 as a cough drop, 4.2 as a candy

Iced Tea Hard Candy: I thought this would be my favorite, and while it tastes exactly like iced tea, I’ve realized that I don’t want to enjoy iced tea in a solid form. 6.6/10

Mentos: Old faithful. I used to eat the tropical rolls all the time when I was little and the mint ones are alright. These get a bump in score just due to reliability and familiarity. Tropical 8.5/10, mint 6.8/10

Cadbury Bars: Having giant Cadbury chocolate bars here is like being a kid in elementary school having Dunk-a-Roos- everyone wants some and you ain’t sharing. They’re so valuable that they aren’t even sold in the regular candy aisle, but rather from a glass case behind the tobacco kiosk. It’s hard to beat any of these here, 9.6/10

So overall I’ll probably still be a Starburst and Skittles kind of girl, but these were not bad. Can’t hate on paying $5 for a month supply of candy either.

It’s common to hear people these days talk about “willing things into existence” or “putting it out into the universe”. I have never been a big believe in that concept, but I am 98% positive I willed a turtle hatching into existence last night.

I wrote my turtle blog yesterday, spent most of my dives photographing them and editing photos and videos of them, and was then assigned to the 11pm turtle walk last night. I’ve done plenty of these since being here, all of which were just a 45 minute lap around the island with no sign of turtles or tracks. Sitting around waiting for 11pm last night, I just had a feeling I was finally going to see something. I took off with Jeeth, our science officer, and Laura, a new girl from Australia around 10:55pm. As we started the walk Laura asked if I had ever seen anything on the turtle walk, to which I replied “no, but maybe we’ll be lucky”.

Only 15 minutes into our walk, we stopped by the neighboring resort’s turtle hatchery. This hatchery is home to all the turtle eggs found on the island and provides a safe and protected environment for the turtles until they are ready to hatch. As we approached Jeeth shined a flashlight on the area and we saw a cat quickly climb the fence and run away. Jeeth took off immediately into the hatchery with Laura and I close behind only to find a plot of freshly hatched baby turtles.

I couldn’t believe it! The odds of finding a turtle on a walk are very small, but the odds of finding a freshly hatched nest are even smaller. They were all about 3 inches long and tiny, squirming around and climbing on top of each other. The sign on their nest said that they were found in January and were expected to hatch on March 14th, with 61 eggs in total. We waited with the baby turtles for about half an hour until our camp director arrived with some buckets to transport them to the dark side of the island. We counted 31 total, meaning that the other half had not hatched yet. We walked to the other side of the island and two people pointed flash lights out into the sea while another released the turtles into the sand. We watched carefully as some wandered in the wrong direction and used the flashlights to guide them into the sea.

Some interesting things I learned:

-Turtles need to touch sand and walk into the sea themselves after being hatched because that is how they imprint on their home beach. If you take a sea turtle and put it in another ocean, it will always know where home is

-One hatching of eggs contains offspring from multiple males

-Ideally the turtles will all hatch at once, though the nest we came across did not. The eggs are buried in the sand, so by hatching all at once they have more buddies to work together with and dig themselves out

-Baby turtles really are so disoriented by light. About 15 out of the 31 turtles walked up or across the beach in the wrong direction due to mistaking resort lighting for moonlight. Because of this, the ideal time for a release is dawn, as there is limited to no artificial light

Overall this was such a cool experience and one I feel lucky to have been apart of. It’s sad to think how many obstacles and predators these little turtles have ahead, and in reality most of these guys won’t make it. It really makes you appreciate how special a turtle is and how important the work being done here is for their survival.

Out of all of the stories and pictures I share from here, the thing that people seem most interested in are the sea turtles. The two turtles found most commonly here on Pom Pom are the Green Turtle and the Hawksbill Turtle, both of which are endangered. I sat in on a turtle lecture and learned more about how many threats they face due to environmental conditions and humans, and after hearing about these it’s no wonder they are endangered.

Climate Change: Temperature plays a large part in how turtle eggs hatch, with prime conditions being between 27 and 31 degrees Celsius. The gender of the eggs is also determined by temperature, as warmer temperatures result in female hatchlings, while cooler temperatures produce more males. Because of global warming, these warmer temperatures are either producing higher amounts of female hatchlings, or creating conditions in which the eggs are not hatched at all. With male hatchlings dropping, this also makes mating conditions more difficult.

Plastic: In a 2018 survey taken across the world, scientists surveyed hundreds of turtles and did not find a single turtle that did not have traces of plastic in it. Turtles often mistake plastic for food. The plastic makes them feel full as if they had eaten food, and because of this they are actually not receiving the proper nutrition while feeling like they’ve eaten enough. In addition, consuming large amounts of plastic actually makes the turtles more buoyant, causing them to float up to the surface and not be able to sink back down. This increases the chance that a turtle will be injured by a boat or not be able to sink down in search of food.

Poaching for Cultural Delicacies or Profit: In certain areas, turtle eggs or meat are consumed as a delicacy. Because of this, poachers are able to take the eggs and sell them for a much higher profit than some of the other fish they catch. In a lot of areas, things like turtle soup or turtle eggs are illegal and turtles are supposed to be protected, but this only makes the delicacy even more rare and desirable to some.

Artificial Light: When hatching, baby turtles instinctually follow the moon’s light as a guide to return to the sea. Because of the artificial light generated by humans in the form of lamp posts, flash lights, and much of the lighting used at resorts and hotels where these turtle eggs hatch, the baby turtles become disoriented and can’t distinguish between light produced by humans and the moon. Because of this, they may walk up the beach rather than down it and end up dying on land without ever reaching the sea.

These are just some of the threats to turtles and it makes you realize how difficult it is for a turtle to survive from egg to adulthood. If you want to make a small difference, you can start by eliminating single use plastic like straws and water bottles. It may not seem like much, but a small change from a lot of people can start to move things in the right direction. If we didn’t have turtles, then we wouldn’t have turtles 🐢

…. in the form of a gecko on my bed and a tiny island kitten.

Started the day off by returning to my tent after brushing my teeth and finding a gecko sitting on my bed staring at me. No idea how, or when or why he got in here but I decided to give up immediately after one attempt at getting him out. It’s his tent now, I’ll reside in the wild.

After grabbing my clothes by reaching through the barely cracked zipper, I went for a run on the neighboring resort’s track. There is a small tennis court there that provides the only slab of concrete I have access to on the island, so I often end there to stretch. Today I sat there and noticed a kitten creeping up on me each time I looked up. There are tons of island cats here but most run away when you approach them. I’m not at all a cat person and don’t particularly enjoy touching them, but this cat didn’t care what I wanted. It refused to leave no matter how much I ignored it or moved away.

My post run stretching/chill time was cut short by this kitty who refused to accept any seat besides my lap. He actually grew on me in the 15 minutes that I tried to get him to go away, maybe crazy cat lady is in my future.

I submit nature, you win.

Meet Mel!

Mel is a paramedic from Canada, which came in handy when we met. I met Mel on her second day here when she was asked to check my pulse and monitor me for dehydration by standing outside of the bathroom while I showered to make sure I didn’t pass out. What an introduction, thanks for babysitting.

Name: Mel

Home Country: Canada

Favorite 3 Places in the World: Mexico, Seychelles, Dubrovnik

Best Known at TRACC For: constantly taking pictures and videos on every dive and project

Journey to TRACC: I met Nicole, an A-Level here last year while volunteering with GVI in the Seychelles. I’m passionate about conservation work and volunteering, so when I heard about TRACC and how you get to dive every day I wanted to check it out.

Worst Job Ever Done to Afford Travel: I’ve been a paramedic for nine years, and I wouldn’t say it’s been the worst job but it definitely has its moments.

What’s Next? I leave at the end of this week to head to Thailand to volunteer with GVI again for two weeks, then it’s back to Canada and work for me.

Follow along with her at @melle.elle on Instagram