Sunday vibeS
THE trees are screaming. A piercing, eerie sound like a banshee in pain or scissors being pressed against a grinding wheel slices through the tranquillity of Datai bay. In the distance, the sky is slowly turning a dreamy shade of mauve as the sun prepares to sink into the horizon.
“Zingggggggggggggggg” “Zingggggggggggggg”. “What IS that?” I turn to my bespectacled companion in alarm. Unperturbed, marine biologist Jonathan Chandrasakaran chuckles heartily before assuaging me that it’s only the call of the cicada. “Don’t worry, that’s just the male cicada and his love song. He’s looking for a girlfriend! Just wait... exactly at sunset he’ll stop.”
Seated across from each other in one corner of the spacious lounge at The Datai Langkawi’s Nature Centre, surrounded by a littoral rainforest (a closed forest, the structure and composition of which is strongly influenced by its proximity to the ocean), we pause to soak in the longing ode to love from the insect world.
Not wanting to break the spell, the cheerful 28-year-old, who’s also the Nature Centre’s manager, whispers: “We have more than 150 species of cicada here in Malaysia. In Langkawi, we’ve recorded 22 (species) so far.”
But then. the song ends. My eyes dart immediately to my watch before travelling to the darkening vista outside, where threads of light continue to linger in the sky. The buggers are right on cue, I mutter in awe. And again, Jonathan chuckles. “They’re good right!”
But it’s not cicada or the insect world that I’ve come to see the resort’s resident marine biologist about. That’s not his forte. Rather, Jonathan’s inclinations are slightly more watery. Like the ocean, for example.
Before the love-lorn cicada had consumed all our attention, we’d been discussing plans for the following day’s activity, namely, a wade into the warm waters of the Andaman Sea in search of... wait for it, planktons!
“You know, when you think of the sea, you think of fish or sting rays etc. But have you ever thought about the other creatures that are floating around in the water, which you can’t see with your naked eye? Like planktons?” poses Jonathan, his eyes dancing under his dark-rimmed glasses.
Plank-who? I shoot back, bewildered. And again that chuckle. “In the sea, the plankton begins the marine food chain,” elaborates Jonathan, adding: “Microscopic phytoplankton (tiny plant-like cells) uses the sun’s energy to combine carbon dioxide and water to create sugar and oxygen. This process is known as photosynthesis.”
Continuing, he explains patiently: “Although they’re really tiny (each phytoplankton cell is smaller in diameter than a strand of human hair), there’s a lot of them; so much so that they account for about 50 per cent of all photosynthesis on Earth. Did you know approximately 50 per cent of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere is being produced by phytoplankton. We need to say thanks to these microscopic marine algae!”
Woah... that’s just too much science for me to brain, I tell Jonathan, sheepishly. And he grins.
As the informal nature educator here, Jonathan is no doubt familiar with this kind of response.
Good naturedly, he replies: “Don’t worry, tomorrow we’ll go into the water and collect some samples.
Then we’ll take the samples back to the lab here and you can see the amazing
‘life-forms’ under the microscope. I’ll explain to you what they are, what their functions are in the ecology of things and we’ll identify the different types of planktons. You’ll realise soon enough that the waters of the Andaman is a veritable seafood soup!”