Rescue & Protect Sea Turtles in Thailand and Asia

Dear Supporters, 

Public awareness is vital to create a change on social and community behaviours, and that’s how with our presence on developing countries, our daily surveys and long-term projects we can influence peoples’ perspectives and ideas in order to lean our actions towards a healthy ecosystem for all.  

The last three months of the year bring the start of dry season here in Phang Nga and even the heat is now what adds additional challenges to our field work the dirt and sweat on our t-shirts make us feel even more accomplished after every survey is completed. Our partners have had our continuous unconditional support but our presence and hard work in Phang Nga have inspired others to claim for the needed change.

The Hospital of the nearby town of TakuaPa asked help to GVI on their initiative of replacing single-use plastic bags -used for dispensing prescriptions to their patients- for canvas bags! With no doubt we wanted to support this massive change and we organised a Friday project in which staff and volunteers became bag designers for a day. Meters of canvas fabric filled the common room, and everyone got scissors, sewing needles and tons of creativity to cut, sew and design all sizes of canvas bags to donate to the Hospital. GVI canvas bags are now being used as dispensers in replacement of plastic bags and that is an exciting change on Thai habits to work towards the UN SDG goal 11 of sustainable cities and communities. Every action, every initiative, every little change count and that’s why GVI is here for.

The new season brought calm oceans and clear blue waters, driving the perfect conditions to roll back into the sea and restart our snorkelling project in the Andaman sea. Once a week, conservation team throw on their fins, masks, and snorkels, and survey various local reefs in order to monitor their health and its fish population dynamics. Every snorkelling trip bring joy and happiness to volunteers although sometimes also sadness at the presence of bleaching and broken rubble speckled throughout the reef.While collecting data on the reefs’ state GVI contributes to the citizen science data base of our partners REEF and Green Fins project. The data collected helps to monitor any positive or negative trends developing on Thailand's reefs and provides valuable information to report changes to posed threats. All this, with the ultimate mission of increasing public awareness and improve management practices that will benefit the conservation of coral reefs and the enforcement of sustainable tourism practices. Our support and contribution with snorkelling surveys are helping to arm the cause with information and to work towards coral reefs conservation not just promoting the UN SDG goal of Life below water but also Sustainable tourism industry and Partnerships for the goals, those being SDG 17, 14, 11 and 9.

The highlight from this quarter has been the fundraiser for the Trust organized by one of our long-term interns who, with a background on community development and post natural disaster experience, has focused her leadership project on mangrove forest restoration efforts. She launched a call for help at the end of November so that the general public could make a difference for Christmas by buying young mangrove trees and help this way restore the mangrove habitats here in Phang Nga. Thailand is one of the most mangrove diverse regions of the world and its mangrove forest ecosystems are critical habitat for many species of fish, crustaceans and reptiles. But the importance of the mangrove ecosystems also rebound into sustainable communities helping stabilize coastlines, acting as buffer zones for strong waves or Tsunami events and reducing erosion with their intricate roots. Additionally, mangrove forests also contribute significantly to climate change mitigation as they store significant amounts of carbon underground. Thereafter, the Mangrove Planting Challenge: one $/€/£ one mangrove,aimed to raise the enough money to fill in the lent area by the Department of Marine Costal Resources of the Thai Government (DMCR) with the mangrove trees that are awaiting to be planted in a former shrimp farm pond. With GVI providing the manual labour, DMCR is improving their efficiency on promoting habitat restoration on areas that mangrove forest where previously exploited and depleted. With the idea of committing with DMCR long-term our work is contributing to several of the UN SDG’s, including partnerships for the goal, life on land, life below water, climate action and sustainable cities and communities, those being SDG 17, 15, 14, 13 and 11. The money raised through the fundraiser will be used to continue our work and presence in Phang Nga and keep supporting our partners in order to continue working towards wildlife and ecosystems conservation as well as developing our program and improving our projects at every opportunity.

Another potential long-term project that raised from the leadership project of our TEFL intern is the creation of an extracurricular conservation club to promote conservation efforts among the students. It has the main objective of reaching kids interest in conserving their environment through hands on experience on GVI conservation surveys. The students have a short theorical lesson on the topic of choice and get involved on the data collection as of a regular survey carried out by conservation volunteers. This way promotes a more hands on approach to education for the students and encourages continuing education which means working towards the SDG goal 4 of promoting quality education. The students genuinely enjoy learning different and the project has proved to be successful, which in turn contribute to them taking action to protect the world around them and expand their efforts to encourage their community to be more sustainable and indirectly help life on land and life below water.

As a catch up to other work that is supported by GVI Trust, the camera traps purchased last October are now in the field and the possibility of extending the area monitored had proved great success. We had Sunda pangolin sightings every month! The captures are beautiful, clear and numerous which provide us with very important and detailed information on their foraging behaviour. On top of it, we can positively say that we got at least two different individuals, easily determined by their size.  We are extremely happy about the encounters and look forward to receiving the Thai research permit to formalise our partnership with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) working in Thailand and being able this way to share our data and contribute towards the conservation efforts of this cryptic species.

All our best, 

Thailand Marine 

Dear Supporters, 

Our projects consist of many different aspects, all of which are aiming to conserve and study wildlife in Southern Thailand. With our actions and support to our partnerships every hour in the field becomes a chain effect that creates global awareness on the importance of conserving our environment and its wildlife. Our conservation projects not just open our volunteer’s eyes but the visitors’ at the turtle centre and potentially those of the community members we live with who are getting inspired to want change.  

The rest of the monsoon season only showed us how powerful nature could be and how persistent humans are when we want to reach our goals. No rain stopped us during this last three months to show full commitment on involving community members to progress towards SDG goals 11, 14 & 15 and to keep the fight for a clean village.

It has been through leadership projects and reiteration of former intern proposals that we carried out multiple village activities to discourage the dumping of trash and waste in areas other than dedicated bins. In addition to our regular beach and village clean ups, the efforts to maintain a trash zero village have been supported by a leadership project organised by one of our short-term interns; who identifed trash hotspots around the village and placed No Littering signs made by the community kids. After a series of conservation lessons about plastic pollution and its effects on wildlife, the CDC kids attending to conservation lessons were proposed to create anti-littering signs and participate in their own creative way for the betterment of their community. Allowing the kids to create the signs themselves gave them a much stronger sense of contribution towards maintaining their village clean and broadened awareness to their families about the huge problematic of littering.

As a Friday project, we organized another big lake clean in Ban Nam Khem to demonstrate the community members our persistence on claiming for a responsible trash deposition. The amount of rubbish collected was still breath-taking but already could be distinguished a better scenario than the first time this was done. The mayor contributed providing the boats to proceed on the clean and we used different tools and resources that make the collection easier and more efficient. Despite the clean-up poster announcement around the village no community members joined us this time. But we will not give up on our fight!

The camera traps settled for our island’s biodiversity research project are still providing evidence of the huge wildlife diversity inhabiting these unique habitats however, the number of Sunda pangolin sightings have decreased for the last month. This fact does not disappoint us but just provide us with more information on the behaviour of this critically endangered mammal species. Since it is scientifically believed that their habitat range should extend for no more than one squared kilometre, the recent camera traps purchased with GVI Trust funds will allow us to extend our surveying area and with hope of getting captures on the new areas then start mapping their distribution and eventually establishing population estimates for the island. This data will add an extra range site to the conservation efforts by the IUCN and international conservation organisations and increase understanding of this cryptic species.

The highlight from this quarter has been the fundraiser organized at the Royal Thai Navy Sea Turtle Conservation Centre. With the objective to help support the work being done at the head-start centre and to help implement some improvements, the staff and volunteers of GVI Phang Nga took part in an action packed obstacle course and challenge day. The event took place on Friday 17th August and split into teams we completed the course that the Royal Thai Navy use for training purposes, which features a series of challenging obstacles, many of which involve going over water using ropes. A team of navy soldiers demonstrated every obstacle and accompanied us during the whole course to ensure safety of participants, however some of us could not help ending up getting wet! After the obstacle course was completed, we undertook a scavenger hunt at the beach that consisted on collecting a list of random marine litter items while accomplishing this way a fun beach clean. The teams then had to act as a nesting sea turtle, make a turtle out of sand and a portrait of our PM with the marine litter! It was a fun, challenging and team building day, all in the spirit of raising money for our gorgeous turtles. With the funds raised through the fundraiser our partner at the Royal Thai Navy Sea Turtle Conservation Centre is now able to get the monetary support for a monthly visit from a vet from the Phuket Marine Biological Centre. They will provide treatment to the turtles detected to have severe infections and monitor their welfare on regular basis. We have also encouraged the Navy Base to implement a cleaning schedule that adjusts to the number of hands helping and tank needs which has shown a great success on the cleanliness conditions of all tanks at the centre.

Thank you for your continued support, none of this would be possible without your contribution, however big or small! 

All our best, 

GVI Phang Nga

The Conservation Team