Coral Cay Conservation Blog

Click here… to see what Coral Cay have been getting up to on our project in Koh Rong, Cambodia.

Coral Cay is delighted to announce that some of our scientific findings from Cambodia have been published in the latest edition of Cambodia’s Journal of Natural History! Click here.. for the paper. The complete journal is also freely available here...

If you are interested in reading some of the other scientific reports that Coral Cay has produced over the years click here…

Diving the Napantao reef as we do almost every day you would think that it would not harbour any secrets yet week in, week out it manages to surprise us with new and exciting creatures of the deep. The surprises are not even limited to small critters or even under the water. We have  recently been visited fairly regularly by pilot

whales and dolphins whilst relaxing on the sea wall watching the sunset. The Napantao MPA is a well protected and monitored MPA with several dive operators using it as a popular day excursion and the reef never disappoints its visitors.

Our newest arrival, which we hope is the first of many, was the first whale shark sighting of the season here in Napantao seen on the 9^th December. We have also concluded that it is home to three or four regular turtles (Joey the large hawksbill and also Howie the small green turtle) are two that we are particularly familiar with. Eels are a goodsign of reef health and we have several species inhabiting Napantao, Rupert the ribbon eel is a resident along with snowflake eels, moray eels and marbled snake eels.  Some of our larger residents that reside over the reef are Boris the Great Barracuda around 1.5m and several large Titan triggerfish. Very recently we have had sightings of a 4ft black tip reef shark perhaps one of our baby reef sharks grown up. The south wall is home to a lot of larger more pelagic fish with Narrow Banded King Mackerel and Giant Travelly cruising around amongst black and white snappers.

Coral Cay Education Officer, Heather, and Community Liaison Officer, Dag’s had another successful week teaching about the biology, importance of, and threats to, coral reefs in the Philippines at the elementary schools in the San Francisco district.  The children from Bangawisan elementary thoroughly enjoyed the Marine Protected Area (MPA) game with the ‘fisherman’ running around pretending to paddle their boats and the ‘fish’ hastily running in the opposite direction toward the bottle

marked MPA.  Heather and Dag’s were surprised at several students who could correctly identify many different fish families and the highlight was hearing the Bong Bong elementary students, who were asked ‘what is a coral?’, reply loudly and in unison ‘it’s an animal!’  A great achievement, as most are under the impression that coral is just a rock, and not a delicate, living, and reef providing animal.

A marine education movie night was organised for the local community of Napantao, by Coral Cay Conservation (CCC) Education Officer, Heather.  The aim was to introduce CCC volunteers to the local community, while also having an enjoyable evening learning about the beautiful underwater world of coral reefs.  Heather whipped round the village advertising the event and paid a visit to Napantao elementary school – the draw card being the promise of “daghang popcorn” (a lot of popcorn).

At 7.30pm CCC volunteers and staff arrived and Heather got each member to share their name, country of origin, and something unique about their country.  The volunteers passed around popcorn, to the delight of all the children, and the movie began.  David Attenborough’s classic commentary of the coral seas Blue Planet edition was barely heard over the excited squeals and chatter over the different sea animals from 150+ Napantao children and adults alike.

The evening finished with a large round of applause – a great end to a successful marine education movie night.