Activities this weekend

Hi all,

I'll be giving a talk at NUS LT31 at 12pm. It's in conjunction with the
ICCS. See Raffles Museum NewsI'm preparing that now! Dewi and Dongrong will setup an exhibition at LT31 for the session.

On Saturday, Gwynne and Wei Song will be facilitating at the National Youth Environment Seminar at SMU, where I'll give a10 minute presentation on behalf of NSS andd ACRES as well. This is the follow up to the amazingly informative and motivational pre-forum seminar last week.

Yueat Tin, Chen Kee and Kai Scene will setup and man an exhibition at SMU where they'll meet youth from various organisations. Airani just finished preparing the new set of name cards for all our exhibitions.

The International Coastal Cleanup Singapore Kranji team - Wei Song, Yueat Tin, Cheng Puay and Hua Qin - will be conducting a briefing and walk through of the site at Kranji in the afternoon, at the Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve. The Kranji team includes several other Toddycats who are handling data, site supervision and leaders of the NUS team.

November will be setting up and manning the ICCS exhibition (marine life and pollution issues) at an NEA exhibition at the National Library. We always partner some organisation for exhibitions so that their publicity will umbrella us and a wider picture of the issues is achieved.

Wai has been helping with the BBC crew filming snakes and crabs in the mangroves. That's been a dawn to dusk effort which was finally completely successful last night. I'll release the crabs at Sungei Buloh tomorrow.

The ICCS Otters led by Deputy Coordinators Angeline and Yueat Tin are communicating with groups to allocate sites for the cleanup and briefing new organisers, partnering up organisations at sites.

Zone Captains, Ng Kai Scene, Hwang Wei Song & Vu Tinh-ky, Ng Hua Qin, Dinesh N., Lim Chen Kee and Kok Oi Yee have recce-d their sites and are handling the management of groups coming on the 9th and 16th of September.

Talks have been given/allocated to about 20 schools and organisations so far, which Chien Fang has been coordinating.

I have to go prepare for my talk - this was meant to be a two liner note! But a lot is happening all the time. We just don't write that much about it.

More things lie ahead in the next three months: ICCS post-even debrief and analysis, Southern Ridges trail (briskwalk and cycling), Sungei Buloh Anniversary Walk, Public Gallery Guiding, the Annual Recruitment, recce of Mandai mangroves, etc.

Cheerio!

Siva

Labrador Cleanup

Met Otterman and a bunch of helpful people yesterday afternoon for a quick cleanup of Labrador beach. Even bumped into some unexpected help in the form of a member of the public (a JC biology teacher), originally there to recce the place and take photographs, who kindly offered to chip in. Our main objective was to clear the beach of the glass fragments which littered the shore, but it was pretty amazing what kind of stuff (and the amount) we ended up hauling out. Otterman was a 1-man big-ass hauling machine. He claims that he was just about to enter into long haul mode when suddenly there was nothing left to haul though, and in retrospection I think it was somewhat easier than I was first fearing. In terms of pieces retrieved, glass takes the cake. Which is unusual because normally in clean-ups the main type of trash is plastic. NParks kindly offered logistical support with gloves (albeit the wrong kind) and canvas bags that was able to withstand glass, and even had some staff members meet me at the gate before the cleanup to pass me the equipment.

We cleared an estimated (didn't actually count) 200kg of trash from the beach in 1.5h, of which Otterman estimates about 75% (in terms of total pieces) was glass - with 20% plastic and 5% metal. Had to leave behind some really heavy tires which we'll feedback to the park staff about and have them get their clean-up team to retrieve. Most of the glass was concentrated at the part of the beach where the sand starts, and there was a lot of it especially at the bit after the fence demarcating the end of the beach. Many of the fragments had worn down sides and seemed to have been around for quite awhile.

Some thoughts about the cleanup. When people offer to provide gloves, must ask for the thick construction gloves, otherwise will have to arrange to bring our own. Arrange for some big burly guys to come later to exclusively provide muscle for hauling out the trash. Everything turned out rather well, all things considering. We weren't even sure if the 0.4m tide was going to be low enough, and it was relatively simple (too simple?) to send out a few emails to coordinate everything. Otterman thinks we didn't do enough publicity, which I disagreed since I didn't really plan for having clueless members of the public along, who need to be briefed and reminded and babysat. Perhaps next time we will advertise on Habitatnews as well.

As we were about to leave at sunset, Chee mentioned that there were 2 octopuses hanging out under the jetty. And sure enough, they were there just lounging around in the open. Amazing. Don't think I've ever seen 1 much less 2 octopuses at Labrador. They must be getting ready to hunt for some poor unsuspecting crabs coming out to feed at dusk. We also saw the Little Heron coming out to hunt as we were leaving while the sun set. There were also loads of fireworms. We spotted one that had just stunned itself a snapping shrimp and was about to polish it off when it was disturbed by us lifting the piece of fibreglass that was lying on top of it. Poor thing. I hope it managed to get back to its dinner after we left.

To follow-up: Will email volunteers to thank them again for coming. And email the NParks staff to let them know about the outcome and let them know about the bulky items which they can help transport out.

ICCS 2005 - SBWR

I came down today with a reassuring sense that things will turn out fine, from all the recce trips and correspondence we have had thus far, . The site buddies and the man and woman of the hour, Yueat Tin and Wei Siong, were really efficient in dispatching the various schools (SAS, United World College, Beatty Sec, Anderson Sec, Victoria JC, NUS). The site buddies (Marcus, Boon Ann, Kai Scene and Grace) were really good in briefing the participants and organizing the cleanup at respective sites.

The advance party set up the HQ at the center of the Kranji extension, a simple setup of only ground sheets, extra gloves and trashbags. By the time I did a quick check of all the sites, and proceeded back to the carpark, a steady stream of participants, dressed in the blue sleeved ICCS T shirt (nice design!), had already begun moving along the path towards our HQ. This is where NUS will branch off to try and link up with SAS further down. The site buddies quickly sprung into action and set the participants going. Soon the beach is covered with people trying to move around the mud properly, picking up litter, collecting data. No major crisis occurred, except that since this time round we did not do wet ops, we had to lug all the trash out using wheel barrows and big hand pushed carts. This was the most tiring part, fortunately Marcus had a team of strong men who rose to the occasion and did lots of trips carting the rubbish out. Hey Marcus, we need these men next year!

We wrapped up everything around 1pm. Which was much earlier than last year. On the whole things went smoothly. Thank you all for your unreserved help!


Some points which occurred to me during the exercise.

Siting of ‘Field HQ’ is good. We could move logistics faster this way. And we can monitor things better from there as well.

Logistics - More is better than ‘just enough’. The only situation which occurred was that we ran out of trashbags towards the end of the cleanup.

Oi Yee is fantastic as safety officer, though you were not involved in action, we could proceed with things assured with the knowledge that you are there in case anything happens. Luckily your services were not needed. Thank you so much and have a nice trip in Silk Road.

Ria was great as a photographer. Thanks Ria! Looking forward to see your fantastic photos.

Airani was really professional, she did not come out of her office throughout the entire operation and went back straight to key in data without lunch!

Water - Hmm... I’m probably going to get skinned alive by Siva for asking this, but we had water last year and I did not check if there is this year. Providing water is a double edged sword for we will generate more wastes using disposable cups!

Reforestation sites - SBWR has done extensive planting along KR 3 and 4. Since the beach is really clean there, the participants had to search really hard to find trash and in their movement, they may accidentally damage the seedlings planted. We could push most participants to help support NUS and SAS next year. This will ease the impact on the reforested areas.

Trash movement - thanks to Chen Kee, Angeline and the rest of the team coming from various sites, the tired wheel barrow team got a much needed reinforcement towards the end of the cleanup, which was the hardest as we are getting trash from SAS. For next year, we may need more manpower to move trash out.

Overall, I had a good time! Hope to join in the fun again next year.