Bidong island, revisited
The saltwater tank is a temporary home for the corals before they are returned to the sea in two days’ time; Little turtles waiting for their time to see the world. to Alec, at one time, the camp housed more than 20,000 refugees. I couldn’t imagine their living conditions then, and I still can’t now.
Thirty minutes after leaving Merang Jetty located a 20-minute drive from Kuala Terengganu, our speedboat slowly glides on the calm waters of Pantai Teluk Tenggara and finally comes to a halt at the edge of the water. The white sandy beach is lined with casuarina and ketapang trees. There are two wall tents next to each other and a basic-looking building.
One by one, the passengers on the boat get down to the beach. None of them has their feet covered, not even the gentleman standing at the water’s edge. I guess this beach is safe to walk barefooted.
“Welcome to our coral farm,” says Malaysia Coral Foundation President Jamhariah Jaafar. “Those tents are where you will sleep tonight, one for women, one for men. And next to them is the centre where we will discuss the day’s work, eat and play,” she adds.
Also under the same roof are the kitchen, storage, rooms for the workers and a workshop for the coral farm.
As we walk towards the centre, Jamhariah explains what the education programme entails. Volunteers perform the same tasks as the workers, from glueing propagated coral on its base at the table to put it back underwater later.
The underwater coral farm has 120 tables. Some three-quarters of them are breeding tables while the rest are host tables where coral are bred to be parents for propagation.
“We want volunteers to have a hand in everything so that they know that coral can actually be bred,” says Jamhariah. “Okay, let’s settle down first. After lunch, we will talk more on the process and then later, when the sun is tamer, we’ll get into the water.” 10 people at one time.
The late morning sun doesn’t make the tent a conducive place for a quick R&R. But why stay in the stuffy tent when there are four hammocks hanging from the branches of the heavily shaded ketapang tree?
Since everyone is busy at the centre, either preparing food for lunch or prepping for the work in the afternoon, the hammocks are all ours until the call for lunch.
Midway into our lunch, two workers come back from checking the tables with two buckets of coral fragments which are