Published on: Sunday, July 25, 2021
By: Kan Yaw Chong
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Preparing waste collected to get transported to mainland.
IT REMINDED me a shell-shock sight of bales of compressed plastic bottles in 2019! My first reaction was: “Waa, that looks familiar upon receipt last Monday of a press release entitled: ‘Reef Check Malaysia sends another 1,500kg of trash off Mantanani; calls for more government help’.”
This mountain of trash that had thrashed Mantanani is nothing new to me anymore.
On August 2019, I followed Swiss-based Race for Water crew to the island in in a maiden trip.
That was the shock cited earlier – just bales and bales of crushed plastic bottles packed under a village house near Reef Check’s Recycling Centre.
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Alex and Jonathan with the drones used for aerial surveys.
MANTANANI Besar is a small island off the town of Kota Belud on the west coast of Sabah. It is part of group of islands, the other even smaller ones being Mantanani Kecil and Lungisan.
As we have already seen in previous episodes of Borneo Ocean Diaries, serious turtle re-search has been going on around these small, unassuming islands for over 15 years as it is thought the area is an important feeding ground for juvenile turtles.
Most of the research so far has been very “hands-on”; but one scientist is combining the latest technology with the serious science of data collection, using Mantanani Besar as his base.