Japan Revisited

The end of my trip in Asia is drawing near and my time with Simon in Japan is almost over. It is definitely bittersweet, as goodbyes always are in my experience. I am looking forward to coming home, now that the snows have hopefully all melted away and the flowers are budding (maybe?), but I will be sad to be so far away from here and all these Asian experiences. I know that as soon as I arrive home, all this will start to seem just like a dream, getting further and further away as each day goes by back at home. Here in Japan, Thailand has already taken on the slight strangeness, the unrealistic quality, of a dream. And here in Asia, home often seems a strange and unreal place. Snow? English? French? Loonies? Tim Horten's? Toronto? The Globe and Mail? What are these things?

For the last two weeks, our trip through Japan has been a somewhat hectic time with both its highs and its lows. I think that many foreigners (especially those that live here - but also travelers) feel ambivalent about this country - this land of the rising sun. When asked by the Japanese if I like Japan, I say yes (of course) but I think, "Well... yeeeess. Sometimes. Somethings. Some days." My real opinion of Japan is that it is interesting.

As the author Bill Ferguson writes in his book about hitchhiking through Japan:

"They call it the Seidensticker Complex, after the American scholar and translator, and it describes the ambivalent feelings that tormet long-term foreign residents in Japan, a pendulum of emotion, alternating between attraction and replusion, affection and anger - back and forth. But the image is false. These feelings do not alternate. They are inseperable.... One does not love and then hate and then love Japan like a metronome. One lovehates it, one wants to draw nearfar to it, to gostay."

So, it has been a love-hate relationship for me and Japan. Somethings are fantastic. Like the amazing, amazing food. And the amazing scenery - craggy snowcapped mountains, quiet rural towns with blooming gardens, thousands of cherry blossoms falling into the rivers, the millions of bright lights of Tokyo. And the kindness of strangers who spot you fumbling with maps and go out of their way to lead you right to the doorstep that you were looking for and could never have found alone. And somethings are frustrating. Like the constant wide-eyed staring and giggling that the sight of a foreigner in Japan inevitably causes. Like the incredible expense of traveling in this country. Like all the social rules and regulations that one has to abide by in Japan. Like feeling so foreign.

One of the most interesting days I spent in Japan was a crazy, tiring 24 hours in Tokyo. I christened the day "Fish Day" and Simon was good enough to lead me around to various fishy sights in Tokyo. Our first stop was the Tsukiji Fish Market. We woke up before at 4:45 am to make it there while things were still interesting. We missed most of the fish auction but still got to browse through lots of crates of dead marine life, squids, octopus, little fishes, mollusks, hundreds of big bluefin tunas and also, sadly, whale. There was even a stall with banners showing cute whale cartoons to advertise that they were selling big bloody whale steaks for much less than the cost of beef. The number of big bluefin tuna was also incredible, considering that I have read that the world's oceans have lost over 90% of their large predatory fish since the start of large-scale industrial fishing. Where were all the big tunas coming from? Japan? The Arctic? Some secret corner of the ocean? I should have asked.

Frozen Bluefin Tuna on warehouse floor

Whale Meat Stall

As we were in Japan, the market was well-organized, clean and surprisingly un-chaotic. It didn't even smell that fishy, despite the massive quantity of sea produce on display. I kept sleepily wondering as we wandered around "What are they going to do... what are WE going to do... when all these fishes are gone from the planet."

I read a newspaper article over a cup of coffee in Thailand right before leaving and this was the title caption, "As the ocean's stocks dwindle, jellyfish chips, squid sausages and algae cakes are starting to look good." The article explained that with rampant overfishing occurring in most of the world's oceans, there is now much less competition over the ocean's resources and the populations of opportunistic jellyfish and squid are exploding. In fact, a telltale sign of a serious overfishing problem is the presence of loads of slimy jellyfish and squid. The fishermen that lived on my island in Thailand (Koh Phra Thong) fished almost exclusively for squid, likely because there was little else left - or also perhaps because the mafia-run trawlers were monopolizing (and rapidly exterminating) the more profitable catch.

Here are some scary statistics that I jotted down in my notebook. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 3∕4 of the world's fish stocks are being exploited right now or are recovering from depletion. So, at the moment, only 1∕4 of the ocean's fish are safe from our fishing nets and we will likely soon have to start exploiting some of these less appetizing species. In Europe, it is estimated that 88% of fish stocks are overfished. And when you go to the grocery store and pick up some fish, you might like to know that only 8 out of a total of 47 exploited fish stocks are known to be in healthy state. A few years ago, I printed out a consumer's guide that I could carry around in my wallet which showed which fishes from the grocery store were sustainably fished (http://www.blueocean.org/seafood/seafood-guide). I gave up carrying the guide around because I found that I didn't need it - none of the available fish were sustainably exploited - and the guide made me really depressed when I stood in front of the grocery store fish counter reading it and thinking "nope, nope, nope".

In conclusion, Canadian scientists predict that if the rate of collapse of fish species continues at the current rate, none of the fish that we now eat will be around in 2050. Jellyfish burger anyone?

Live Tuna at the Aquarium

So, in order to cheer ourselves up after these sad musing at the fish market, Simon and I jumped on the subway to head across town to the Tokyo aquarium and see some living fish. Well, actually, we went back to our boxy hotel room and had a nap first. The fish in the aquarium were much more lively and less depressing than at the market, although some animals always make me winch when I see them in cages (sharks, bears, birds). Surprisingly, neither of us felt much like eating sushi for dinner after our "Fish Day" and we opted instead for a famous Tokyo tempura restaurant. Which leads me to remark that the thing that has been consistently and undeniably fantastic during my travels in Japan is the food. Whether I am in a fancy restaurant, or just a cafe in the train station, my taste buds have been constantly happy and satisfied. If you are now going to ask me, "Which is better, Thai or Japanese food?", I cannot answer you. It would be like comparing apples to oranges. 

Belated Dive Photos Posting

It is hard to know if anyone out there is still following along on my blog - despite my infrequent entries - but for those of you who weren't as lucky as I have been in the past few months, I give you some more beautiful diving photos from my last trip in the Similan Islands.

Adult Green Turtle who swam up right to the boat (alas, the staff were feeding her I believe).

Weird but quite cute little frog fish.

By far my FAVOURITE fish in the ocean - the amazing Clown Trigger Fish, what a BABE!

Surgeon Fish

My Great Dive Buddy Lisa and I before one of my last dives in the Similans

Diving Diving Diving

So, as I promised, here are some more beautiful diving photos from my last dive trip in the Similans. These ones were taken by my Swedish friend Erik. I will add more if he send me any nice ones in the next few days.

Anemone and Anemonefish

Lionfish - Yes he is beautiful but also toxic!

Beautiful Soft Corals

Hawksbill Turtle that came right up to the boat and swam with us.

Nice underwater landscape!

Thai Impressions

Isn't it strange that when you travel, it is often the similarities between your own culture and the foreign one that stand out more than the differences? I have found that the basics of life are surprisingly similar no matter where I find myself, Canada, New Zealand, South America, or Asia. People work, go to school, eat, drink, sleep, grow up, have kids, get old, fight with their parents, neglect their homework, go out with friends, fall in love with foolish people etc. etc. etc. all over the world. There are, of course, major cultural differences between some areas of the world. Yet somehow, during my travels, I have never found these differences to be that apparent. If you sit somewhere in some foreign town, a small cafe, a shady park, the steps of a famous monument, and you watch the people go about their daily business, I think you will find yourself saying, "These folk are just like us in so many ways!" You will watch people shopping, arguing, eating, scolding their children, rushing about, even begging, in the same manner that we do at home. Where I do think that you often notice differences between yourself and the local people when traveling far from home, is in the small, superficial, ordinary aspects of everyday life. The little things. So throughout my time in Thailand, I have collected a list of all these quirky little things that the Thais do differently than we do. And for your amusement, I will share them with you here.

1. Thai people are addicted, truly addicted, to sugar. It is remarkable how much sugar they eat each day. More than Americans, you may ask? Possibly so! (Although they don't eat desserts like we do.) When you go to a restaurant here, there is often a little tray of spices on the table to add to your meal, if so desired. You typically get chilies, fish sauce, vinegar, and also a little pot of sugar. The Thais will pour tablespoons of this sugar into their soups, salads, and even onto noodles. My friend Por put so much sugar into her noodle soup that we were convinced she was joking. She wasn't joking. The soup was so sugary that it burned my throat when I tasted it (although it also tasted pretty good). In Thailand, you can buy individual packets of instant coffee, called 3 in 1 Coffeemix, that are very popular. I was reading the packet while I sipped on one of these coffees the other day and I found this list of ingredients: Sugar 52.5%, Non-dairy Creamer 37%, Instant Coffee 10.5%.

2. The Thai people are very polite. They do not shake hands in greeting but instead do something called a "Wai", which is also used to thank people and to show respect to people like monks. The "Wai" is essentially placing your hands in the prayer position in front of your chin and perhaps slightly bowing your head. There are different levels of "Wai" which show different levels of respects. It is quite confusing for foreigners and I normally just mimic the "Wai" that people give to me. This "Wai" is so much a part of their culture that when my Thai friend Oppy bumped into me while Scuba diving, she "waied" me underwater! Even though she was carrying her underwater camera!


3. Most (or perhaps all) Thai woman want to be as white as possible. It is considered beautiful. This is an excellent example of how we always want what we don't have. Western woman spend tons of time and money on getting a nice tan, i.e. darker (and damage our skin in the process) and Asian woman do the exact opposite. The pharmacies have aisles filled with whitening creams and lotions. The suncream that I bought here says "Long-lasting protection against sun burn and skin darkening." One woman that I met here while diving pointed at my glaringly white belly and said, "I want be white like you!". All of the stars from the ridiculously popular Thai soup operas that play each night are as white as I am, which is definitely not typical of the woman here!



4. Woman are not supposed to touch men, even family members, in public. Although this is an old-fashioned practise and is changing with the younger generations, it is still rare to see couples, even married ones, touching each other. There is a famous story in Thailand that goes like this:

"Once the consort of a king was being rowed across the Chao Phraya River. The boat capsized. She was drowning. The royal oarsman were thunderstruck with horror. None dared to dive in to save her because no man should touch a woman in public, and this woman was a lady, and royalty at that. She drowned. The King was waiting upriver far away. He was King Chulahengkom and the Bang Paln Palace, a very popular tourist site now, was built for her, the Queen who never came. Such is the seriousness of Thai tradition and culture."
- From "Dos and Donts in Thailand, 3rd Edition"

On my ticket for visiting a famous temple in Chiang Mai, there are some guidelines for appropriate behaviour while inside the shrine. These include dressing conservatively, taking off your shoes, and not displaying affection for another person in public!

5. Thais are very superstitious. Most of them believe that the physical world is filled with spirits, who can cause a lot of trouble if not given enough care and attention. My Thai colleague was convinced that she saw a ghost in our house one night, apparently a woman with long hair was sitting in the corner and pulling on her mattress. The next morning, her fears were confirmed when she heard from the villagers that the family who had previously lived in our house moved out due to the bad spirits present there. Most people also believe that these spirits will wreck havoc on an area if they are made homeless and this can happen whenever a new building is constructed. Hence, owners of a new building have to also build a small home, called a spirit house, for the spirits who previously occupied the land. Everywhere in Thailand, in the best spot outside every home and building, you will see a small house on a stand which usually looks like a minature buddhist temple. The beauty of the spirit house reflects the status of the building and all construction stores sell various kinds of spirit homes, as well as cement and two-by-fours. The occupants of the building will leave daily offerings of flowers, incense, candles, and food for the spirits. It unnerves me when we pass a particularly sharp bend on the highway and there are plenty of spirit houses along the edge of the road. These are homes for all the spirits of those who have died at that spot.

Spirit House for one of the Beach Resorts on the Island

6. It seems that due to the fact that one of the Prime Minister's sons was an alcoholic, Thailand now has very strange rules regarding the buying of alcohol. These rules are supposed to limit the consumption of alcohol and, of course, do not work in the slightest. You are only allowed to buy alcohol from 11 to 2 o'clock and from 5 o'clock to midnight. They made me wait 4 minutes to buy a bottle of Thai whiskey from the 7/11 because it was only 10:56am. However, they sold my friend Por alcohol at 4 o'clock because she asked nicely in Thai, and she gave them exact change so that they did not have to make change from the register. These rules also don't apply for those buying large quantities of alcohol, which you can buy at any time of day.


7. I think that this is a universally Asian thing, but the bathrooms here sure are strange. The toilet, sink and shower are in the same room. There is no seperate cubicle for the shower or seperate bath area with curtain. The showerhead is just attached to the wall and when you take a shower, the entire room gets wet. This is fine, because the entire room is tiled, but I just can't get used to it. I am really looking forward to coming home and having a bathroom that is not permanently dripping.

Typical Asian all-in-one Bathroom

8. Many people are constantly sniffing out of these funny inhaler tubes, which I shall call "Sniffy Tubes". I think that perhaps people are addicted to them. You can buy many different kinds for many different ailments. The one that I bought out of curiosity is pink and for vertigo. It contains eucalyptus oil, menthol, camphor and borneol (?). You see people walking and sniffing, taking the bus and sniffing, sitting and sniffing, talking and sniffing. I don't use mine because it is too strong and makes me feel dizzy, somewhat the opposite effect that it is supposed to have. I feel like these are the modern day Asian equivalents of smelling salts.

9. The Thai people keep their homes quite clean and tidy, but the outside of many homes is another story altogether. Garbage - mainly plastic bags - floats around everywhere in both the cities and the countryside. Even the surroundings of immaculately clean Buddhist temples are littered with trash. In one of the villages on the island where I worked, piles of trash constantly floated in and out under people's stilted houses with the tide.

10. On a related matter, Thailand has not yet embraced the idea of reducing the amount of packaging on store-bought products, or of reducing the use of plastic bags in everyday life. Each day that I spend in Thailand, I receive and discard at least 10 plastic bags and just as many straws. When you buy a bottle of water, the bottle is double-bagged with two straws and a handful of napkins before you can even begin to refuse them. At the corner store, you can buy small packets of snacks for only 2 baht (6 cents) which are 90% air and only contain about 3 or 4 chips or peanuts each. You need about 10 of these packets to constitue one snack. When you buy a box of cookies, each row is individually packaged and each cookie within each row is also individually packaged. If you are hungry, it is hard to even get at the cookies there is so much plastic in the way.

Snack Shop

And there are plenty more, but I think this gives you a good enough taste of some quirky things I have noticed during my travels!

In Search of the Elusive Dugong

This is what happens when you travel far away from home in the so-called "Third World". You fuss and fiddle and organize and arrange and book and cancel and finalize your travel plans. Then, at the last minute, all your plans go POOF, up in smoke, and you have to go back to the drawing board. A few days ago, I thought that I had everything perfectly organized: Dive Trip in the Similans, Bangkok Visit with Nadia, Yoga in Chiang Mai, Japan for Cherry Blossoms, then Home. However, the Thai government had to go and declare a state of emergency in Bangkok and the surrounding area on the very night that I have bought a bus ticket to go there. After watching some rioting on the T.V. featuring red-shirted protestors throwing heavy things, and tanks rolling through the streets, and after receiving an email from the Canadian Embassy advising me to avoid all unnescessary travel to Bangkok, and after thinking about my mother, I decided not to go. Although my friends in Bangkok say that it is not really that bad there, I decided to stay in the south for a few days, far away from any red-shirted trouble. On the bright side, the last minute change of plans meant that I could go on a hunt for the elusive Dugong in the southern Trang islands.

I hear many of you asking, "What is this thing, a Dugong?". For those who do not read "Marine Mammals of the World" over breakfast each morning, let me explain: A dugong is a large marine mammal, in the same family as the Manatee (found in Florida) and a few other species, commonly called the sea cows. Sea Cow! Don't they sound cute? A dugong is a big, slow, brown, vegetarian who spends his time munching through beds of sea grass with his wide, vaccuum-like snout. He lives in Asia. Due to the usual threats that marine animals face (refer to early blog posting "Save our Oceans"), including habitat destruction, hunting for oil and meat, and fishing-related fatalities, the poor gentle Dugong is now very rare. He is extremely vulnerable to extinction and may not exist on this planet for much longer. And this is why I went out of my way to a small island in the south Andaman Sea, crossing my fingers the whole time, to search for a glimpse of this shy creature.

Wikipedia photo of a Dugong eating sea grass.

I went down to Koh Libong, one of the Trang islands, which is supposed to be one of the last places in Thailand where you can see a dugong. The national park around the island contains a sea grass "sanctuary" where a group of around 40 dugongs come to feed. To get there, I left Khao Lak at 8:00 in the morning on a songthaew (open-ended truck with two wooden benches facing each other in the back, covered by a little tarp roof) to get to the bus hub at Khokkloi. At Khokkloi, I was hustled onto a bus bound for Trang (five hours away) and when I climbed on, as the bus pulled away, I saw that there were no seats left and already quite a few people swaying back and forth in the aisles. Thankfully, the bus boy heckled a poor Thai man into giving up his seat to the only farang ("foreigner") on the bus, and although I felt a little bad, I snatched it up immediatly. Every few minutes from then on, to my constant disbelief ("There is no way we can fit more people in this cattle car!"), the bus stopped to squeeze in more people. For the rest of this long trip, I found myself squashed against the window, with a knob of something or other digging into my back, half on the lap of an old Thai grandmother who was sharing the seat beside me with her big, chubby grandson. Most of the benches on the bus had three people, sometimes four, and the aisle was crammed with tired people who fell on top of the lucky seated passengers whenever the bus turned a sharp corner. Of course, the air conditioning could not cope with so many hot, sweaty people, and totally crapped out on us.

Songthaew

When I finally burst with relief off of the bus in Trang, gasping "water, please", I was immediately bustled onto a small green Tuk-Tuk (three-wheeled, open-sided tractor with seats in the back) and brought to the minivan station. I was just in time to catch the minivan for Ban Chao Mai on the coast. An hour later, I hoped out onto the pier and into a long-tail boat. At this point, I could actually see the island of Koh Libong and was getting quite excited to arrive. However, the journey was not quite over yet. Once on the island, I had to take a bumpy half-hour motorbike ride to the resort, perched on the back with my huge knapsack on my lap, cutting off the circulation to my legs. I was in a suprisingly good mood when I arrived at my little bungalow on the beach and ready to hunt out some rare marine mammals. I was also quite proud of the fact that I had used pretty much all the possible means of transportation available in Thailand, all in one day.

Tuk Tuk

For the dugong mission, we left early on a sunny morning to boat around the island to the sea grass "sanctuary". I put this word in quotation marks because I have some small doubts as to how well protected the area actually is. While we were waiting for our friends the dugongs to appear, noisy fishing boats from the neighbouring village kept racing back and forth through the protected area. Dugongs are frequently injured from collisions with motor vehicles. We waited for 3 long hours in the hot sun, occasionally jumping into the warm soup-like water to cool down. I had long extinguished any hopes of seeing a dugong, although I was still enjoying being out on the water, when we noticed a man on another tourist boat pointing at something. We cruised over and cut the engine. Almost immediately, I heard the "WHOOOSH" of a marine mammal exhalation. But where was it? I couldn't see a thing on the sunny surface of the water. Then I heard it again, "WHOOSH", but still I saw nothing. I seriously peeled my eyes and scanned the area. Then, I saw it. A smooth brown back arcing into the water infront of us. Mr. Dugong! I was pretty happy. We stayed in the area for a while but we only saw the creature once more, a little closer to the boat. There seemed to be only one animal, slowly circling the area, and diving down for around 10 minutes. He was very shy and we really only caught a glimpse. But a glimpse was enough and I will have to be satisfied with that for now. Next mission: diving with the dugongs in the Red Sea!

No dugongs to be seen for three hours.

But wait, what is that in front of us in the water? Could it be?

A dugong! This is the only good picture that I got of one, who is found permanently outside the resort.

Stay tuned for my dive photos in the next couple days...

Farewell to Koh Phra Thong Island

Farewells are often bittersweet and my last day on turtle island was definately so. Leaving day had been creeping up on me so slowly that I was constantly surprised to find myself eating my last Thai meal prepared by our amazing cook (Lamion), or walking the beautiful white beach in the glow of the sunrise for the last time, or bicycling through the hot, heavy savannah to finally arrive at the beach and throw myself into the ocean for the last time, or having the kids yell out "Pi Gwyn, pai nai?" ("Gwyn (Pi = with respect), where are you going?") as I went past them playing their games. All these last times! But, of course, there were many things to look forward to after Koh Phra Thong.

Beers and sunset on the beach after a successful reef clean-up on Koh Pling.

Another beautiful sunrise on the island.

As the boat left the island with us for the last time, I felt free. Free from those damn mangy, barking, biting, infected stray dogs; Free from being deafened by those noisy long-tail boats at 5:30 every morning (when the engine is running, you feel like you are living through the Vietnam war); Free from waiting impatiently for the power to come on in the evening so that you can get some work done - but then you get nothing done because the power cuts out, or the internet doesn't work or you got one of the strong Chang beers with dinner (the alcohol percentage varies from around 4 to 8); Free from the evil power of the schedule (the Rota) which dicates life on the island; Free from doing my washing by hand and my clothes never being clean. Free!

Me, Making my Clothes even Dirtier than Before I Started

My first taste of life after the turtle project was one week before the project ended when I had to leave the island to go to Burma (I think I am supposed to say Myanmar) to renew my visa for Thailand. I was only given a two month visa and therefore had to leave the country to be given another two weeks to stay here. Many poor long-term travellers (and residents) are forced to constantly leave Thailand to renew their visas and in doing so, have helped create a visa-run industry in both Burma and Thailand.

First thing in the morning, far too many people were squeezed into a mini-van with me and driven wildly down the highway. When we arrived at the port of the boarder crossing (you have to go by boat, there is no overland route), everything was in complete chaos, with Thais, Burmese, and foreigners ("farangs") all mixed together, racing about, crying out, and sweating buckets all over each other. We were herded into a line to get various stamps on our passports and then our passports rapidly disappeared into the hands of our seedy guides, along with a crisp $10 US. We were then herded onto a large fishing boat for the trip to Burma. The nice woman at the hostel had ironed my $10 bill before I left (it had been in my shoe), as she thought the Burmese government might find it too wrinkly. I must admit that giving up my passport and being told that it would show up on the other side in Burma made me a little nervous. However, it did show up intact, with a few more stamps. I was also a little uneasy about paying the Burmese military dictatorship a cool $10 US to continue to exploit their own people and create hundreds more refugees. But I put my morals aside for a half-day and gratefully renewed my visa. When I arrived back on the island in the evening, the peace and quiet, and the slow pace of life, seemed even more wonderful than when I left the day before.

The Thai side of the immigration "port" is hot, sweaty chaos.

Burma. The sign says "Let us all cooperate for the eradication of narcotic drugs".

To treat myself after six weeks of the project, despite low funds in the bank account, I went diving again in the Similan Islands. It is just too beautiful there to resist the temptation. I had two beautiful days of diving, with each dive more beautiful and special than the dive before. I saw more turtles than on the project (five!) and some came swimming very close beside me. I found some beautiful new nudibranchs (marine slugs) that I had never seen before, taking my total up to five new species! I saw the deadly stonefish and the amazing, totally gorgeous clown triggarfish. I spent two days in constant delight. I also realized that my favourite part of the dive is the last 10 minutes, when you pull back and swim away from the reef into the blue. It is only at the end that you get real perspective on the whole living, breathing, bustling coral reef system. During the dive, I spend most of my time staring, with my nose brushing against the rocks and coral, trying to spy all the interesting animals. At the end of the dive, I move from macro-mode to landscape-mode. I float above the reef, looking down on the patchwork quilt of colourful life, and I feel so calm and peaceful. The fish are schooling around you, the reef is moving below you, and the blue is holding and supporting you. It is fantastic. I think that you all should try it, as soon as possible.

Finally, because I have had many special request for them, I will include some photos from my last dives over the next few days. Enjoy!

Save Our Oceans!

So for all of those who thought that my last blog entry on the tsunami was perhaps a little depressing and negative, read on to learn more about what I have learned about the state of our oceans! Not for sensitive readers. Warning to readers: long rant on environmental issues below.

Tomorrow morning, I will wake up at 5am to walk the beautiful (and long) beaches of the island of Koh Phra Thong. But I am pretty sure that we won’t find any nests. It seems that this year, unluckily, it will be a no-nesting year for the sea turtles who return to dig their nests in this area. How frustrating! Why aren’t they coming to nest here? I came all the way to Thailand to meet them! Well, although sea turtles face some natural threats throughout their long lives, they are now rapidly disappearing from the planet thanks to our destructive species. When will we learn?

No turtles to be seen from our observation rock on this day.

Sea turtles and their eggs have been a source of food for many coastal people for a long time. But, it was only around 50 years ago that harvesting sea turtles really began a lucrative industry. As the years went by, more and more turtles and eggs were harvested and shipped around the world to satisfy increasing demand for these exotic products. On many beaches, including this one, almost 100 percent of the eggs laid were harvested every year – some even stolen as they fell out of the turtle! And coupled with fishing for adult turtles, this now leaves us with populations made up only juveniles. Imagine a human population made up of immature teens - disaster!

Green turtles are also called Soup Turtles because they taste so delicious in a broth. In fact, our boatman just handed a turtle carapace (shell) over to us that he “found” in the neighbouring village, and that had clearly been eaten by the locals. Despite all our efforts at education over the past years, and the fact that it is illegal in Thailand, rumour has it that the older generations are still catching and eating around 40 to 50 turtles a year. We hear that they no longer harvest the eggs, probably because there are so few nests left to harvest!

Tom is measuring the carapace of the green turtle who became soup.

Unfortunately, like our friends the whales, the ability of a sea turtle population to replenish itself is very low. Which means that even if we stopped exploiting them right now, at this exact moment, it might already be too late for some species. It takes a long time for a little hatching to reach sexual maturity, anywhere from 15 to 50 years. And despite the large number of eggs laid in each nest, sometimes more than 100, there is an extremely high rate of hatching mortality. As they scurry down to the beach, they get picked off by crabs, dogs, birds, and predatory fish like sharks. They get lost on the beach and end up desiccated in the dunes, far from the ocean. When they leave the nest at night, hatchlings normally use the dim light over the ocean horizon to orient themselves safely towards the water. Artificial lights shining onto the beach, from hotels or houses, or even flashlights, can confuse the little turtles and lead them away from their watery home.

And this is not all: when calm or sleeping, turtles can stay under water for hours at a time. But when turtles get caught on long lines or in nets, they often drown in panic after only a few minutes. Huge developments on nesting beaches squeeze turtles into smaller and smaller areas, leading to over-crowding and the trampling and destruction of nests by other turtles. Even cute beach umbrellas and sun loungers scattered over the beach by the hotels can become evil baby turtle killers. And, prepare yourselves, even sand castles can be anti-turtle! (Aside: a gecko just fell off the ceiling and almost landed on me).

I don’t want to sound like a total party pooper, but the moral of the story is that we need to leave sea turtle nesting beaches undisturbed. Why are we still building huge hotels on top of the beach? Don’t we want to go to the beach and not to a concrete terrace that was once the beach? Even on vacation, is it really too difficult to walk a mere 200m from the hotel to the beach to get sunburnt? Is it really to difficult to stack up our sun loungers at night so that the nesting turtles can find a patch of sand to dig their nest? Do we really need to poke hundreds of beach umbrellas into the sand, breaking the eggs and contaminating the nest? Can’t we just turn off all the lights that shine onto the beach at night in the areas where turtles are nesting? The solutions are very simple. I now avoid all hotels that are built where the beach used to be and stay in places that are set back from the water.

Faced with all this dangerous beach paraphernalia, sea turtles also have to contend with the masses of garbage in our oceans. As I have myself witnessed, floating plastic bags can look remarkably like jellyfish. Floating pieces of non-biodegradable plastic and styrofoam also look delicious to turtles. One autopsy on a dead sea turtle revealed that there was enough plastic in its stomach to cover an area of 2.7 by 3.6m.

Have you heard about something called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Or others call it the Pacific Trash Vortex or the Plastic Soup? This is an area in the Pacific (located 1000 miles west of California and 1000 miles north of Hawaii, i.e. somewhere between North America and Japan) where four major ocean currents meet and create a giant ocean whirlpool. Most of the trash that gets thrown or washed into the ocean ends up in this whirlpool and all this trash has collected into a mass approximately the size of Texas. The vast majority of this garbage comes from land and it is mainly non-biodegradable plastics. In 2001, scientists who study the Garbage Patch found that the mass of plastic particles in this area exceeded the mass of zooplankton (i.e. animal life) by a ratio of 6:1. You can find some shocking videos on YouTube of the Garbage Patch.

I would like to end my blog here with the obvious conclusion that sea turtles are in trouble. But I haven’t mentioned the whales or the sharks yet! Have I already told you that 1 out of 4 dead beluga whales retrieved from along the banks of the St. Lawrence River (Canada) is found to have some form of cancer? Most of these cancers are caused by the chemical pollution in the river. This is the highest rate of cancer found in any wild animal population and is comparable to the rate of cancer in humans. We can sympathize.

And our poor sharks? Who are still suffering from the bad reputation given to them by a certain completely unrealistic and wildly fake film that everyone (except I) has seen, entitled Jaws? My co-research assistant Tom is a big fan of sharks and this is what he told me: There are over 1000 species of sharks (and skates and rays) and 65 percent are threatened with extinction. They estimate that 73 million sharks are killed each year to satisfy the demand for shark products, which amounts to 270,000 sharks every single day. This is probably an underestimate because shark fishing is illegal. The aim of most shark fishermen is only the shark fins, as they can sell them to producers of shark fin soup. These fishermen catch the shark, bring it on board their boats, and then slice the fins off while the shark is struggling around on the deck. The mutilated sharks are then thrown back into the water, where they can no longer swim and will sink to the bottom to lie there completely helpless until they bleed to death. You can also find horrible videos of shark fining on YouTube, but I couldn’t watch them. One huge trophy fin from a Basking or Whale Sharks can fetch up to 10,000 dollars.

To prepare shark fin soup, the fin is ground up into a powder and added to the broth to thicken it. So why do people, mainly the Chinese, enjoy shark fin soup so much? It is popular simply because it is expensive and exotic. Some people think that shark cartilage prevents cancer, as sharks have low rates of cancer compared to other animals, but this is a completely unproven (and to me, false) belief.

A stall selling Hong Kong shark fin soup in a Bangkok food court.

Now you many be thinking, why should I feel sorry for such a nasty, violent, man-eating animal? Our typical fear of sharks is greatly exaggerated. Sharks are not even nearly as dangerous as most people think. You are more likely to die from an elephant, hippo, or ostrich attack! More people are killed every year by lightening or by bee stings than by sharks. Do not believe Hollywood. How many marine biologist work there? Sharks do not eat humans. We are not delicious to them. I have now swum with quite a few sharks while scuba diving and have come to no harm.

So now I send out all my faithful blog readers (all 5 of you!) on a mission: Save Our Oceans! We can stop polluting the seas with our plastic bags and cigarette butts. (Cigarette butts are the most prevalent form of litter on the earth). We can use biodegradable soaps, detergents and cleaners. We can boycott products that come from endangered marine species, fish, turtles, whales (ahem, Simon), and sharks. We can support organizations that work for marine conservation. We can participate in beach clean-ups. We can act responsibly when we go on vacations to beautiful tropical beaches that are being destroyed by development. We can help fund Gwyn’s master’s degree in Marine Biology…. just joking. We can spread the word.

I will end on a positive note with a beautiful picture of a sunrise that I witnessed a few days ago on the beach.