Panaga Natural

News from the

Panaga Natural

History Society

Volume 2 May 1998
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Contents of this issue:

Notes from the committee...... 1

Off the Road...... 2

Haze effects on Wildlife...... 3

Back to Bakam...... 4

The puzzling B5 terrapin...... 6

Sinister fish caught near Miri...... 7

Pulau Tiga...... 7

Asian Water Fowl Census in Brunei 1998...... 9

Notes from the committee:

This is the second newsletter of the year, and we would like to use this momentum to remind you that our goal is to promote interest in nature among the community, and to help those who are interested in learning more about the natural environment. As such, we welcome all members of the community. If you or someone you know would like to receive this newsletter regularly, simply contact any of the Committee members and your name will be added to our mailing list. Our events are open to all, although if you do not hold a BSC identification, please notify us ahead of time, so we can inform the Security personnel at the gate. The PNHS now has a poster in the Brunei Shell Recreation Club (BSRC) and our events will be advertised there too. We are excited about one of our next big events,

the June trip to the Temburong National Park. Read about it on page 11.

Off the Roadby Annemarie

The sighting of BADAS

On a sunday afternoon in April, Hans, Novi and myself decided to make a trip to the pitcher plants area along Jalan Badas. We reached the by-pass near Seria without trouble. I then realized it was the first time since the beginning of February that I drove along this road again. The signs of the fires were clearly visible and men were at work clearing the sides of the road.

A strange and somewhat dramatic contrast was the flowering grass, bright and shiny against the skeletons of the burnt trees.

Jalan Badas was smoldering, especially the forest on the right hand side and sometimes we could see a tree falling over. We stopped at the path leading to the pitcher plants. Hans and I struggled for half an hour, climbing burned trees up to our ankles in the ashes. It was strange quiet, somewhat eerie, not a sound only the awful burning peat smell. Then the wind began to blow and we decided not to go any further, because we thought it to be dangerous and Novi was waiting quite anxiously for us to return. So we didn’t know how and if the pitcher plants area survived.

On our way back we stopped and set for half an hour looking at the fires. One tree caught fire and fell down with a big crack and a lot of noise and set afire the surrounding area. You could hear the flames eating their way into the forest. Especially when the sun went down you could clearly see the flames and the glow of the fires elsewhere inthe forest. It was a sad experience.

But to encourage us again, there was this sight of one or two orange flowers we saw in the remaining green.

Haze effects on Wildlife

Of all the air breathing animals birds will probably suffer the most because they have a high metabolic rate and start their activities early in the morning when the haze is at its thickest.

Reptiles and amphibians have lower metabolic rates and physiology that permits them to withstand extended periods of starvation. Because of the prolonged drought many reptiles and amphibians have been forced into inactivity which reduces their intake of pollutants. Birds, however, cannot survive long without food so they have to continue their routine of foraging for food despite the polluted air. Swifts and swallows catch insects on the wing and fly continuously during daylight. The swiftlet populations in and nearby the Niah cave may suffer high mortality and low reproductive success this year.

Mammals such as squirrels, gibbons and monkeys that are active in the canopy will also take in more pollutants than nocturnal mammals such as mice, deers, civets and slow loris that move slowly through the forest undergrowth.

The greatly reduced visibility affects animals that usually depend on their vision to search for food or to navigate. The current haze coincides with the spring migration of birds flying from their wintering grounds in the South back to their breeding grounds. Birds with migration routes that pass through a region effected by haze will either fail to reach their destination or will arrive in such a poor physical state that they may fail either to recover or to reproduce. The haze thus affects wildlife populations beyond the area that it actually covers.

Besides reducing visibility, the particulate matter in the air also cuts down the amount of light transmitted. Animals that schedule their activities on the basis of changing light intensity may become quite confused (for example organisms that live in coral reefs).

Some animals produce scents to mark a territory, others track scents to locate mates or food. The overpowering smell of the pollutants will interfere with these activities. Plants that produce fragrant flowers to attract animal pollinators may not get many visitors this year. Fruit sets will consequently be lower.

What can be done to help wildlife? The same thing that we need to do to help ourselves:

BE CAREFUL WITH FIRE

Fires destroy habitats. Individual wild animals may become quite ill or die because of the haze. However, populations of wildlife will survive as their habitats remain intact.

Source: Marina Wong in the Borneo Bulletin

Back to Bakamby Martin

In September last year, I was fortunate to attend an event organized by the Miri branch of the Malaysian Nature Society - a visit to nearby Bakam Beach, led by its "discoverer", Charlie Lee. The purpose of the visit was to look for fossil crabs, and the group found quite a few of them, although most were not very spectacular. Furthermore, the beach turned out to be unusually good for sea shells, and after confirming that they were empty, I collected many of these too.

Pretty shells and intriguing fossils - the formula seemed ideal for a family visit, so in mid-April this year, we returned to Bakam beach to see what we would find this time. To my surprise, we arrived at relatively high tide, when it was low tide in Miri (probably a miscalculation from my part). Also, there had been a rocky stream mouth littered with sea shells on the beach in September, and it was now completely sandy and void of shells, disappointingly for the family. In any instance, we browsed the beach for over an hour, and I eventually found a complete crab body, and a partial

one both about 2 cm in width

Charlie Lee, a geologist working for Shell Sarawak Berhad, was collect ing shells on Bakam Beach two years ago when he discovered the first fossil crabs and associated fossils. He has since returned there regularly, and identified at least nine different species of fossil crabs. He has become a crab expert of sorts in the process, although he vigorously denies it. At the end of the MNS visit to the beach, he showed us the best specimens which he had collected over time, and some were absolutely spectacular. Most memorable: a complete fossil crab, including body, claws, and eyes, fossilized in a life-like dark-blue-colored mudstone; also, several crab bodies with the top of the shell preserved in such details that hair could be clearly seen, and on the bottom, fossil maggots petrified in the act of scavenging.The crabs are believed to be from Pleistocene sediments which originated in mangrove muds. This makes them about 1.6 million years old. The fossil bed is now located somewhere offshore, perhaps only meters from the beach, perhaps much further. After remaining buried for over one-and-a-half million years, the fossil strata have become exposed. The sea detaches the fossils one by one, and high tides depose some on the beach. If the fossils are not picked up, the sea is likely to take back at the next high tide what it gave earlier, and rework the delicate fossils into innocuous pebbles. Fossil fragments are almost all of a dark red-brown iron-oxide color, and frankly, if you start looking, every little dark stone on the white sand soon looks like one piece of fossil crab.

Why not check it out for yourself, on your next visit to Miri? To go to Bakam Beach: take the coastal road beyond Miri - the one that goes in front of the Holiday Inn, then through Luak Bay,

over several small rivers, and eventually becomes an unsurfaced road. About 25 km from Miri, after rattling for several kilometers on the rocky road, the beach is on your right when you see a sign indicating "Kampong Beraya" on the left. Park your car at the end of the sand track, and search the beach on the tide line right there.

If you find something spectacular, please let us know and we'll inform Charlie too.

An interesting footnote is that Charlie mentioned finding similar fossil crabs and fauna in the cliffs of Penanjong Beach, in Brunei. It's a few kilometers North-East of Pantai Tutong. Has any of you been there?

The puzzling B5 terrapinby Hans

One evening in march we received a phonecall from Mrs Jennifer Horn who had found a large inactive, but live, terrapin on the Kuala Belait beach. Fearing for the health of the animal and in view of the local turtle egg hunters habits she had taken it home. Amazingly enough the carapace was marked with 5 columns of 4 digit numbers and "B5" written near the tail. The shell was lightly damaged at the rear left.

It was identified from "Guide to the amphibians and reptiles of Singapore" as a "Malay Flat Shelled Terrapin" (nochelys platynota). 6-7 vertebral patches on the carapace identify the omnivorous, oviparous and mostly aquatic animal. It is found in clean rivers in the interior where it is hunted for food by the indigenous tribes.

They are very careful in avoiding the powerful jaws which will easily amputate a nearby finger.

During the next few weeks several more (dead) turtles were sighted on the KB to Panaga beaches. Did the near seawater salinity of the Belait river drive the animals to sea?? Did they die of thirst?? Who can answer the question? Where did the Terrapin with its strange ornaments come from? Some sort of sacrifice? Chinese ritual? Breeding stock?

Or a pet released in the wrong place. Suggestions please!

After an evening photo session Our "B5" was released sufficiently up the Belait River, let's hope it has found a good home and wasn't too confused by the drought effects.

Sinister fish caught near Miri by Martin

While we were scouting Bakam Beach for fossil crabs (see previous feature), a local fisherman from Kampong Beraya caught an odd fish in his net: about a meter in length, with the back half of the body like a shark, the front half like a ray, and a nose like a proboscis monkey. Looking at its underside, the head looks like a grotesque and sinister white hooded man. The fisherman told us that it was a "mirror-shark", named such because its silhouette resembles a hand-held mirror. In Africa, this fish is pragmatically called a "shark-ray". In fact, it belongs to a family poetically named guitarfish, and strictly speaking, it is a type of ray, but rays, sharks, and skates all belong to a class of cartilaginous fishes called chondrichthyans.

There are 45 species of guitarfishes. Their extended pectoral fins look like ray wings, and they are also bottom feeders, eating mainlycrustaceans. They are considered harmless to humans, but could scare a few, as their normal adult length is between 1.5 and 1.8 meters; there is even a local species that can reach 3 meters in length and a quarter of a ton in weight.

Pulau Tigaby Martin

The Miri branch of the Malaysian Nature Society organized in early December a week-end trip to Pulau Tiga, and some of us were fortunate to join it. Pulau Tiga is an island located roughly half-way between Labuan and Kota Kinabalu, and it can be reached from either after a couple of hours of speedboat. There is a basic resort on the island, managed by the Sabah Parks, but it is not clear whether this resort is still operating.

At any rate, we stayed in some of the cabins, which were perfectly adequate.

There was no food available on the island, but Terry Mogindol, the MNS Miri branch president and the trip organizer, had planned the necessary catering.

Pulau Tiga is a three-humped island, thus the name (the “Isle of Three”), and each hump is a very old and lazy mud volcano. We went on several trail walks on the island, where the tracks are good across beautiful forest. We saw macaque monkeys, monitor lizards, many types of orchids and rattans. The longest walk lead us to one of the mud volcanoes area. These are not true volcanoes, but rather surface artesian wells, whose water brings along with it bubbles of gas of organic or hydrocarbon origin (methane) and particles of fine mud. The mud coming out of the volcano is wet but not warm. Occasionally, the mud volcano may actually erupt violently, but the last time that occurred in Pulau Tiga was in the 60’s.

Somehow, my most memorable moment on the island occurred during a night walk, while looking for stick insects in the undergrowth. I spotted a strange spider dangling at the end of a thread. As we watched it perform some contorted ballet, we realized that something was coming out of the spider, and it was... a bigger spider! Watching it extricate one leg after the other, in the faint glow of our torch lights, in the heart of the forest, in the deafening chorus of the crickets, was quite an experience.

The beaches in front of the cabins are of fine white sand. The water is very clear and warm, and there is some coral, which makes for pleasant snorkeling, but overall, sadly, the entire reef has been devastated by bomb fishing. I am told by a reliable friend that the inhabitants of Pulau Tiga, who are the caretakers of the area, are the ones who use the bombs - but of course they do not do it in front of tourists.

Nonetheless I saw myself one of the “rangers” take a giant clam from the sea bottom, before our group leader asked him to release it.

In spite of this dismal incident, the entire group had a memorable weekend, thanks to the Malaysian Nature Society and Terry Mogindol. Pulau Tiga is a lesser known island which is well worth an overnight visit, and should delight you and your entire family.

Asian Water Fowl
CENSUS in BRUNEI 1998by Victor

The census was carried out on 16, 17 & 25 January.

The H14 Dump Site is again being used by BSP for dumping of mud etc. There was some exposed mud for waders. The number of birds counted has increased compared with last year both in total and number of species. The survey was carried out at the same time as the previous year. Two previously unrecorded species were encountered.

One of the bird hides in the Sungai Seria area has been vandalised and the surrounding vegetation has grown substantially obscuring the view. The lagoon area is now more than 70% covered by floating weed. A good variety of birds were seen and overall numbers were up from last year, mainly due to a significant number of plover at the high tide roost at the river mouth. There was also a significant increase in the moorhen numbers and a slight increase in egrets recorded, both of these on the water hyacyths on the lagoon which seems very attractive. They seemed to be hunting insects on the dry top layer of the plants. A pair of snipe were new species for this area.

At Sungai Bera work to clean up the dump site on the opposite side of the river continues, the birds recorded in this area previously were therefore absent but this may be the cause of the increase at Sungai Seria.