Operation Wallacea

How to spend six weeks on a desert island in the Indo-Pacific and get away with calling it work!

Marine biology is a subject many people associate with tropical seas, coral reefs, diving in far flung places and seeing unusual bits of the world. In my case this fantasy has come true. Twice. Worth Old Boys’ Society helped out with some sponsorship towards the cost of my second trip, when I travelled to Indonesia to research my dissertation with a scientific organisation called Operation Wallacea. The first trip, briefly and for those who were wondering, was to the mainland forests and Cayos Cochinos minor, one of the bay islands of the coast of Honduras. The trip was a second year module in tropical biology, but that’s another story.

Operation Wallacea is a scientific research organisation with bases in Honduras and Indonesia, these sites have been running for 1 and 7 years, respectively. The Indonesian marine site is based on an island called Hoga to the south east of Sulawesi in the Wakatobi Marine National Park (the forest site is on a larger island in the north of the park). The island is about two and a half miles wide and three miles long, it is a coral island so there is no land more than about three meters above sea level. The island is edged with mangroves on the south and east coasts and golden sand beaches on the north and west, with the vegetation turning to scrub and pines closer to the centre.

The island has one main year-round residential fishing community and the Operation Wallacea base, which is staffed from February to November. At the Hoga base practical courses for Indonesians are run from February to June. These courses include: boat and dive shop maintenance, resort management, hospitality and diving. The base then caters for scientists until the end of the season.

Francis visiting the dive shed, Operation Wallacea

Projects cover a variety of subjects, these include studies on mangroves, coral health and growth, fish assemblages, sea grass beds, lobsters, fiddler crabs, marine mammal research, blue streak cleaner wrasse (the subject of my dissertation) and many other projects including studies on fisheries of nearby islands and the social aspects and economics of the local sea gypsy village, Sampella.

Hoga is one of the few places I have been to that takes more than a day and a half to reach and still involves a little bit of an adventure in getting there. Firstly you fly to Jakarta or Bali via Singapore, then fly on to Makassar or Ujung Pandang airport on Sulawesi, this in itself takes at least two days. Then you travel to the port and board the Pelni ferry carrying thousands of locals from all over Indonesia that takes you to the Island of Buton off the south east of Sulawesi here you spend the day buying extra sweet supplies, batteries and camera film, which you inevitably forgot to bring enough of and cant get on the island. That evening you board the much smaller and noisier boat Waduri where you sleep on deck and arrive shortly after dawn at Hoga and land on a pure white sand, coconut strewn, palm tree fringed beach.

Operation Wallacea employs many locals from the surrounding islands to: cook, run the diving facilities and boats, provide medical care and provide expertise on coral and fish identification. It pays all local staff an above average wage so that they earn close to double what they would working as fishermen or agar farmers (their normal jobs). Operation Wallacea has worked with local villages and communities to lessen the impact of their activities on the coral reefs by providing alternatives to bomb and cyanide fishing, coral mining and the general over use of the fish stocks, all of which have major detrimental affects on the reef system

These alternatives include agar farming, pelagic (open water) fishing and employment on Hoga, to name but three. Sustainable ecological, social and economical development along with a large amount of scientific research are Operation Wallacea’s main aims. The site, therefore, is a minimum impact site, minimising pollution and only using pelagic fish stocks to feed the volunteers. Tuna and rice were our staple diet for our stay out there but the highly skilled cooks managed to cook it in so many different ways you hardly noticed! Volunteers lived in huts built and serviced by locals of Hoga and the nearest island Kaladupa. The locals were paid rent and for services they provided such as hut maintenance, doing our laundry and keeping your shower (well, bucket and scoop) full.

While on Hoga students take their PADI open water scuba diving course if they are not yet qualified. All students then take a one-week long tropical identification course to familiarise them with the local fish, coral and invertebrate species. The course includes lectures on tropical marine ecosystems and the threats to them as well as information on marine sampling techniques. Having passed an identification exam students can then start their projects, non dissertation volunteers can assist on projects, take language courses, take further diving qualifications or join the crew of the ship, Sama Bahari. This ship travelled around the park checking reef quality in different areas, using the internationally recognised Reef Check System and recording sightings of marine mammals, most commonly Dugongs (sea cows), Spinner, Common and Bottlenose dolphins, and Pilot whales.

Copies of all scientific data gathered by students are also given to LIPI an Indonesian marine research body to increase their knowledge of the area. A copy of each student’s completed dissertation is sent back to the island for future students to refer to. Many volunteers, often gap-year students, return to research their dissertation or sometimes as staff on the scientific or diving sides of the island, some have been spending their summers out there helping out and enjoying life for the last six years, such as Olga the islands resident artist.

The research I carried out was a study on the Blue Streak Cleaner Wrasse, specifically its abundance relative to the ‘health’ of the reef. The study involved three different reefs, Sampella is below the sea gypsy village and is heavily sedimented, Pak Kassims is a reef of Hoga Island and is fished but not sedimented or heavily damaged and Kaladupa is a reef on the very edge of the fishing limits of the locals and is a relatively undamaged. Research was carried out by counting cleaner wrasse numbers on transects at each site then counting fish species present at each site and examining the habits of cleaner wrasse, specifically what they cleaned and how long for. This although condensed into a few lines actually took me a full five weeks, my last project dive was at 7am on the morning of my last day on Hoga where I rushed around the coral reef and collected my transect markers, and bumped into a devil ray and a hawks bill turtle. Not a bad way to finish I thought.

Hoga has a fantastic feeling to it for many reasons, not only is it in the southern hemisphere, its nearly half way around the globe. It’s a small friendly island where many different people (biologists, sociologists, geographers, economists, anthropologists and divers) from around the UK, Europe and America get to meet, live, work and study with each other and of course the locals. And all of this happens in a very remote part of Indonesia, far from the main tourist track

One of the great things is that you get thrown in at the deep end, you meet and make friends with so many people so much faster than when travelling. On the few trips I have made, the furthest into another community I have ever ended up was when working with an organisation such as Operation Wallacea or Raleigh International, I would recommend it to anyone, scientist, artist, economist, gap-year student, anyone. After all you’re not going to find the most diverse coral reefs in the world, two communities of amazingly friendly and generous people on your doorstep, full PADI dive training and scientific research facilities all on your own desert island in all that many other places!

If you want to ask me anything else about marine biology or Operation Wallacea, my e-mail address is fbinne@essex.ac.uk until July 2004. Operation Wallacea’s web site is www.opwall.com.

Francis Binney (G 2000)