Lawas, the Heaven of Dugong

I have been working in Lawas for almost 5 months and only knew that Lawas is a heaven of dugong, is a hotspot of this marine mammal.

I wonder, does my face spells "Guru Pengiring" cause whenever they need a teacher to accompany the students to whatever kind of event, the one kena target sure will be me. Hmm...so last few days, I was with 11 selected students to participate in Nature 'n U camp organized by Sarawak Forestry at Sri Tanjung Resort, Kuala Lawas from 11 - 13 May. 4 seconday schools from Lawas area were selected.

Teachers and students slept in the tent that looks like this.

I was appointed to be the 'mother' aka facilitator for Dark Blue's group. My 'children' are not so active. They are quite timid and quite. But they are lucky to have the best director on earth, me, and we won the talentime competition. ;)..Hahaha..The theme for the talentime is Alam Sekitar. The other groups focus on what they have learned throughout the camp so I chose not to. Instead of doing anything to do with mangroves, or seagrass or dugong, our group choose to do Orang Utan. With our creative brains, we manage to gain points for our creative prop. We use leaves and fan for the storm scene, water (sprayed using mineral water bottle) as rain, and torchlight as the sun. ;)..It was a fun performance. ;)

The camp focus on mangroves, seagrass and dugong. I really learned a lot from things which I never even bother to know before this. It's not like it is my 1st time seeing a mangrove tree but I never bother to learn or know about it.

It was really a fun and interesting educational program.

We went down to the sea, I was stuck in the mud, once on the way to the sea, another once coming back from the sea. We went to the sea twice, so I was stuck in the mud 4 times. Huhuhu..we were given a pair of 'pua chu kang' boots to walk through the muddy beach.

Let me share with u a little information I get from this camp:

• Dugong's diet consist of seagrass which are available around Kuala Lawas. Dugong only give birth to a single calf once in 3-7 years, that is why the population of dugong is small.


• Dugong are totally protected species in Malaysia.
  
• Dugong feed on seagrass alone, so it is important to keep the seagrass grow in order to keep the Dugong fed. The seagrass are very2 vunerable, it dies easily.
  
• The type of seagrass dugong fed on is Halophila ovalis, its leaves is round in shape. We didn't see much of this type. It grows quite further away from the seashore.
  

What I've found throughout the visit to the sea.

Ikan Buntal..;)

All kind of snails. I'm very fascinated by this tiny green snails which stick on the seagrass leaves. They have a very unique printed-like shell.

[zoom in image] can u see the pattern? nice right?

Starfish. Can u see the 'jelly' things? It's function as their legs.

Activities throughout the camp:

Group's presentation. *above is my group*

Food web activities. *me as the daun bakau aka mangrove's leaf*

Seagrass survey

Fooling around

one type of seagrass

the red thingy is not any kind of seeds, but they are..

red snail