Muka Head - Day 2

19th November 2007, Monday

We woke up at 7am, after brushing teeth and washing face, we had our breakfast at the hall/room with many round tables (the place we had meetings, eatings etc..).

Today we would start to explore 4 ecosystems, one for each day...
A1 would be doing BEACH ecosystem,
A2's was RIVER ecosystem (my group's)
A3's was SOIL ecosystem,
A4's was FOREST ecosystem.

For the next day, my A2 group would be doing SOIL, then next would be FOREST, and the last would be BEACH.... (each group took turn to do different ecosystem, so at the same time, every ecosystem was being explored, but by different group)

At about 8.30am, my group was given briefing at the place we had our breakfast. Mr Omar was the teacher giving "lectures" regarding the river ecosystem...
Then, we took the tools and departed ... led by Mr. Omar and staffs...

The route taken was the way we came to this Research Centre... after walking for quite a far distance, we stopped at the estuary of Sungai Tukun. There, my A2 group splitted into two small groups.

My group would be learning about Biotic Components (we had to jot down the flora and fauna found);while another group would be doing Abiotic Components such as measuring the width of the river, the depth, the water velocity, air velocity, light intensity, gradient, salinity, Dissolved Oxygen, water temperature, relative humidity etc...

In brief, we could see the flora here have special adaptation to live in saline area (remember it's estuary?).... by having specialised root-like structure Pneumatophore covered with lenticels which allow higher oxygen uptake, so that these mangrove trees can survive in soil with low oxygen level. They also have waxy leaves to reduce the water loss through transpiration, this structure is needed as the freshwater avaibility in estuary is limited.

these are few examples of root-like structures Pneumatophores we found at the estuary

Mr Omar was so enthusiastically searching fauna there... and suddenly he shown us a Molting Crab! hehe... dont' misunderstand, it's not a new species of crab, but it's just a crab living in mangrove area which was in molting stage... it's shedding its old exoskeleton and new soft shell had already formed... we even tried to touch its brand new soft shell!

It was my first time to see a crab in molting! hehe...



Other than the molting crab, we were led by Mr Omar to observe a special small-sized crab = Uca vocans, if not mistaken, the males possess a big claw and another one is in normal size; we didn't able to take any photo as they quickly hid underground...
*for your reference, you may visit this site to see the photo:http://www.mangrove.or.jp/cgi-bin/mangrove/creature_detail.pl?cc_code=cab04
Most of us had got our legs and shoes wet as we tried to catch some animals in the river.. so that we could identify them....


the estuary (the water is quite still huh), and Chai Lee & I were searching animals..... aiyaya.. everyone of us must walk in water actually.. ya, hence our sport shoes were wet then...

At middle river, my group exchanged jobs with another group, meaning my group would be doing the measurements of abiotic components while another would study about biotic's. It was my very first time to learn the way of using those tools.. however, I was just in charged of recording down the readings..
There too, another teacher came and joined us, he was Mr Zulkaflee.
Flora found were lichen, ferns, yams, bryophytes...
The special fauna found there was the Soft Shell Terrapin... which look like turtle...




we were walking to the upperstream...

At Upperstream, again... my group dealt with biotic components... hehe.. because we loved to catch and learn about lives..
The dissolved oxygen level here is higher as the the water velocity here is higher too... *stream turbulent may increase Dissolved oxygen level, as more oxygen gas can dissolve in the faster flowing water...
Hence, the fauna here are the ones needed higher oxygen level such as Caddisfly Larvae (Trichoptera sp.) and Tadpole of Rana sp.; they have their special adaptation to prevent themselves from being carried away by strong water current..
We also found a mini freshwater crab ... it's kinda rare but again, we forgot to take photo...
The flora here mainly are fungi, mosses etc...


another group was busy measuring the depth and width of the upperstream..


this is the tadpole of Rana sp.

After exploring the approximately 1.5km Sungai Tukun, we walked back and had our lunch..
We began our discussion on the readings obtained and also the flora fauna found then...
We were late for the next activity... we should have gathered at 5pm but other groups had waited us for more than 15 minutes...
Our mission to hike up the hill was to check on the traps we put the day before..
I found that I started to pant hardly faster ... it's worse =.="

Out of 55 (or 56 ?) traps, there was only ONE animal we could get... it's a tree shrews -- Tupaia glis which look kinda similar to a squirrel....
Oh... the percentage to catch an animal was not even reached 0.1! @@


Tupaia glis!

At night, my group started to discuss about the presentation...
I would be talking about the Flora found in middle river...
This night, we didn't go to jetty for chit-chatting as it was raining heavily.... haiz... rain! It would cause the land of the forest to become wet and slippery...


some of the tools used:
1st row: D.O. meter, Refractometer, Lux meter
2nd row: Measuring tape, Anemometer, Whirling Hygrometer
3rd row: Conductivity meter, Plastic bottles, Pole and a pingpong ball