Snorkling, Sunscreen and Corals–A connection you need to be aware of.

I found this list of the Top 50 Best Dive Sites on CNNgo. While it is nice to know that there is still some pristine nature in the world it is up to us if they are to survive our current environmental crisis. I have always fancied scuba diving but haven't dived into it yet, settling instead for snorkling and amateur free diving. Living in the equatorial belt of Southeast Asia leaves one spoilt for choice as far as snorkling sites. Though I have not explored many of them yet, I enjoy the snorkling around Tioman Island off the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia.

Salang Beach, Northern Most Beach of Tioman Island

The house reefs around the main Island is not much to shout about except for the one off Salang Beach (northern most beach of Tioman). This is unfortunately due to over development on the main island with the culprit being an 18 holed golf course! Imagine putting a nitrate leacher next to pristine reefs–disaster. To view the nicest reefs, you have to get on outboards to small uninhabited islands just off Tioman Island's clear seas. Here soft-white-coral-sand islands with spectacular shallow corals abound. Schools of humphead parrot fish, colourful common parrotfish, neon flashes of damselfish and butterflyfish, florescent corals and tridicana clams, baby sharks, rays–a feast of vibrant colours and shapes in less than six feet of water. I have, even though a rare experience for snorkelers in Tioman, gotten close to a gang of sleek six-foot black tip reef sharks, followed a graceful eagle ray around and swam around a maze of boulder corals.

Tioman Island a natural paradise above and below sea level.

There is a lot to enjoy exploring a coral reef with all its life and variety in open display; not shy of us snorkelers and divers. What is not nice is to see dead or dying reefs. White natural coral sand are nice, but white corals in reefs is sad site of a struggling system and the sight of dead corals is a pity. Apart from climate change we snorkelers also put pressure of corals. This is mainly because of the lack of awareness of visitors to coral beaches on the do's and the don'ts. Here are some important common guidelines for visitors to Marine Parks than can help protect a reef.

Fun in the sun, use coral safe sunscreen.

Steps We Can Take To Maintain Healthy Coral Reefs

KEEP SHELLS AND CORALS WHERE THEY ARE

1. Do not collect shells and corals off the beach for your home deco or aquarium. They are are an integral part of the reefs chemistry. Corals need high concentration of limestone (calcium carbonate) to grow. Much of these are recycled from the decay of shells and naturally dying corals.

AVOID TOUCHING OR STEPPING ON CORALS

2. Avoid at all cost touching coral with uncovered hands or skin. Even a little sweat and bacteria from our skin can spark of a potentially life threatening disease on a coral. Be careful not to step on corals. If you are not very comfortable in the water wear a life vest so you do not have to worry about a foot hold in case you need it. Remember also that corals can sting, and some of them can be very painful. Best to wear a rubber glove.

USE CORAL SAFE SUNSCREEN OR A WETSUIT

3. Do you know that your choice of sunscreen is also important. A restaurant owner in Salang beach once lamented that a lot of the corals there are dying because of the bad effects of sunscreen chemicals leaching from snorkelers. You can read more about this in this article from on National Geographic's website–click here. You can choose to use coral safe sunscreen, it is available from Amazon.com if you can't find it in your local store or you can use a wetsuit instead of sunscreen to protect yourself from the sun when snorkelling.

So what. It's Just a small piece of plastic

Imagine you are on a pristine beach and you see a small plastic fragment–a blue bottle cap, how would you react to that. I used to think well that's just the price of modernisation. Not a big deal, the beach is still beautiful, the water clear and the corals outstanding.

I mean what's a tiny little piece of plastic for mother nature. The big ones–plastic drums, water bottles, wrapping sheets, tarps–forget it. No way! It would destroy our enjoyment of nature. The occasional encounter with the small stuff like the ones in the pix below, lets just not be too perfectionistic. Some practicality can prevail even among environmentalists.

I am being facetious, of course. Actually the picture of the plastics above is a snapshot of a much larger photo that tells a gruesome tale. You really have to see it to believe it, and it is sad–also to think that these photos were taken in 2009, the problem is most likely worse off now. Here is the link to see the original photo collection. CLICK HERE. They may be small and insignificant to us, but can be deadly in nature. It's time to be concerned and to take recycling seriously.

Still Green Light for a Black Earth

In Malaysia the breaking news yesterday was that fuel price is going up 25 cents per litre. Ouch! We had just gotten used to RM 1.70 per litre now we are back to almost RM 2. Neither the Malaysian public nor the government are used to volatile fuel price. In Thailand or the US, the pump price is a price war among different companies, this is most likely where it is going to head in Malaysia; pointless for the gov. to announce every time the price goes up or down, soon they will realise it is very detrimental to popularity, the real currency of political parties.

CNBC put out an article "What rout? Oil on track for the best month since 2009." Demand is rising from China and all the oil money backers are applauding again. 2009 was the climate conference that sounded the emergency bell–so much for that. The priority to green our earth still seems eluded by the priority to blacken our earth.

Crude oil, that black sludge that's the source of 'kind of' cheap energy and forever plastics.

Yes plastics made from crude oil is doing very well too. There is so much of it in our seemingly pristine oceans that sailors who used to enjoy the the peace of sailing are perturbed by the constant concern over a tangle with rubbish. If you are Malaysian like me, please take note that we are among the top 10 plastic polluters of the ocean in Asia, contributing a whooping 1 million tons! I recycle as much plastic as I can, I even feel guilty when I have to put plastic in a common trash can. I got this statistic from a CNN article about the problem posted a few weeks earlier. Unfortunately when I looked up the article the statistics provided in a map format that showed China as the biggest Asian polluter (close to 9 million tons) is not there anymore. Plastics polluting the oceans is killing sea life and polluting the fish people live on but it is a problem that can be drasticly reduced by caring and changing our trash habits. UN Report: Our oceans are trashed with plastic. A Black Earth is no future at all.