Malapascua and thresher sharks
You know you are slowly but surely reconnecting with a love from a decade back when you smile even behind a breathing regulator and mask almost ALL the time you are underwater for a dive. A recent getaway saw me Malapascua island bound with old CCF friends, Honwai and Yenn as well as Yenn’s sister, […]
Thank you Straits Times and The Online Citizen, test trip Sept 1-5
June has been quite the eventful month with lots of online and print press coverage. I am heartened indeed but the tons of emails, Facebook messages and text messages from friends, family and (once) strangers who wrote me to get me to fight on for The Dorsal Effect. It is really encouraging to see for […]
Gratitude
The past few days after coming back from Lombok saw me swathed in bouts of interviews from various sources. I don’t know how they came to know about The Dorsal Effect but I am thankful for the interest and shout out by them nonetheless. I can only hope all this is not too premature and […]
Tanjung Luar day 2 on 23rd May 2013
We made our way back to Tanjung Luar fish market again the following morning with Peter this time and we were in for some shocking finds this time. We got to the market at about 5.45am and saw the trucks unloading styrofoam ice boxes of catches from the day before, for sale. We stood at […]
Trip 3 to Lombok, back to Tanjung Luar Day 1, May 22nd 2013
Things fall into place when you meet the face behind Aquatic Alliance, the Rays research and educational outreach guys from Lembongan Island whom I had been following on Facebook very closely for their awesome rays underwater shots, for a while now! So before we got to meeting Aquatic Alliance’s Peter with Gili Ecotrust’s Delphine Robbe […]
I miss, I live on :)
The week before spelt meself another bout of doubt, frustration and sucky energy again. Shark conservation is not an easy sell; the more money some people have, the less they are willing to spend on; the lack of comfortable monthly income like before is definitely not a happy thing in all honesty, I miss having […]
SIF Young Social Entrepreneurs Programme 2013
I went for a 3 day workshop as part of Singapore International Foundation’s Social Entrepreneurship Programme (4th year running now) I had scrambled to get The Dorsal effect registered in, just before leaving for Kenya last year. It was an intensive 3 days indeed which much learning and immediate application and more inspiring moments along […]
Return to Tanjung Luar
So I went back to Tanjung Luar today and thought about the reasons why people eventually get off eating shark fin soup, hoping, more than ever, that the demand would come to an end as it seems more consequential now. These fishermen, butchers and traders in the shark finning industry in Lombok have never even […]
Day one first trip back to Lombok
It was great to catch Agus again at the Lombok Mataram airport waving a sign “Welcome back…Kathy!!” wildly as we ran out of customs clearance. That wave of familiarity and comfort of being back. Lombok immediately felt like a home away from home. As soon as that thought conceived itself as the car rolled into […]
Lombok recce – shark fishing and trading
My first trip to Lombok to check up on the shark fishing / finning there proved eventful indeed. We woke up bright and early for 2 out of the 4 days I had in Lombok, to have Agus take us down to the fish market at Tanjung Luar where a couple of environmental groups had […]
