Coral Reefs Should Be Alive and Kicking

I stumbled upon this website called Reef Check Malaysia while surfing the net for Crocs shoes today. The Reef Check Foundation is actually an organisation that surveys reefs and collects data to assess reefs health. In fact, it is the world’s largest international coral reef monitoring organisation. Besides monitoring reefs, Reef Check also wants to create public awareness that although we humans are damaging reefs through some of our activities such as fishing and tourism, we are also the ones who are capable of nursing them back to health. It is really up to us.

According to the website, 34% of the world’s coral reefs are in Southeast Asia and we should also be proud that 350 coral species inhabit Malaysian waters. Coral reefs are actually tiny spineless animals and generally made up of “hard corals” and “soft corals”. (I didn’t know that, hehe.) Hard corals look like hard rocks as they secrete limestone that act as their skeleton. On the other hand, soft corals resemble trees or plants. These descriptions remind me of my own experience with coral reefs when I visited Lang Tengah and Redang. It’s another huge huge world down there with oh-so-beautiful coral reefs and fishes. The trip to Lang Tengah was really really memorable as we snorkelled all three days to our hearts’ content. We explored the waters like the ocean was ours. Haha. My cousin had an underwater camera then and he took beautiful pictures of the underwater world. I thought I’d share some of them here. =)

This should be the hard coral they are talking about. The yellow and blue little corals perched on top of the big coral are called “christmas trees”. They come in many colours; red, green, yellow, blue, purple. =)

 I’m guessing these are soft corals because they look like trees. See the anemones and clown fishes between the corals?

A bigger picture of sea anemones and clown fishes. I was really lucky to get to touch one of the clown fishes when I tried scuba diving. It was just for a very short moment when that clown fish actually thought my fingers were sea anemones. I felt the clown fish; it was rubbery, not slippery as we would have thought. It’s definitely unforgettable. 

Coral reefs are very important in the marine ecosystem. Besides that, coral reefs bring income to us too, through eco-tourism. As for me, I have always been fascinated with these underwater beauties, whether they are still (as in coral reefs or lazy fishes) or moving (as in swimming, as in fishes, turtles, etc). I have always loved snorkelling and hope that I will have a diving license one day. I would definitely want to see coral reefs very much alive and kicking whenever I visit the islands. What about you? So let’s just all play our small little roles in preserving the underwater world. =)

p/s: Fai Kor, jom. Haha.