langkawi magazine

Nature SECTION

Conservation News: News from the Scientific and Heritage Expedition Langkawi, 17 April 2003

On the 8th day, things just ran on it?s own.

I was off island hopping to Singa Besar and Dayang Bunting while the others were busily trying to finish their research and collecting samples elsewhere. Those who have finished simply made themselves useful at base camp or anywhere help was needed. Wonderful, isn't it? Take Herman from the National Zoo for example. He was helping the MNS Education department raise environmental awareness, attentively explaining the complex yet fascinating marine eco-system to a group of students from MRSM Langkawi (see pix). That?s what the expedition is about also. We?re not just here to study and collect. We?re also here to make people understand and with that, support our conservation efforts.

So, what happened? Well, we went to islands not only to play. Of course we had fun swimming in the mystical freshwater lake of Dayang Bunting (Pregnant Maiden) but we were actually searching for cicada and primates. (See pix of the researcher trying to get acquainted with ?the locals?). For the other teams, I had to wait for the night presentation. So, we went to a wedding (yes, we were cordially invited to grace the union of the hotel?s guests, who decided to get married Malay style. It was a colourful ceremony, which ended just before dark). So we dined (not at the wedding reception though) and went straight to the secretariat for the talk.

The room was quite full actually, because everyone was anxious to find out more about this little secret the moss team promised to disclose tonight. They kept their promise. Prof Haji Mohamad, dean of UM?s faculty of Science announced that they found, actually by pure chance (like most of the discoveries so far) a sample of a moss species that looks very much like the one they found quite recently in Genting. So what?s so unusual about that? Well, this particular tiny, tiny moss specimen might just be a new species after all! With that announcement, the presentation ended, a little after 10 p.m. That was unusual too! But discussions went on informally as we broke into smaller groups. Some of them ended up by the beach, collecting shells and enjoying the life band outside. True, none of this sound very much like a typical scientific expedition. But hey, what do you expect? We?re not a very typical bunch. We work and play hard.

Langkawi 17/04/2003