| April to July Updates 2007 
 Pic (left): Nicola, paddling hard in search of seahorses in Sungai Pulai. (right): Triumphed with the champion group for spotting 34 seahorses in one low tide (from left: Low, Toh, Syahar, Nicola and Ariati)
We thank Nicola Bisset, who came all the way from Scotland to volunteer for SOS between April and May 2007. Over the five-week period, Nicola has made significant contributions to the local environment and community. She picked up the culture and language at an unbelievable pace. Among the many contributions that she has made were helping the local village school kids to establish river water quality monitoring programme, gave talks in school, facilitate the indigenous Seletar marine education programme and also being an indispensable assistant in the seahorse tagging and other research work.   Pic (right): Sharifah marking seahorse with elastomer tag and taking pipefish eggs for DNA analyses
Sharifah Norlida, who graduated from the Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, has decided to further her Msc to study the mating system of seahorse and pipefish with grant supported by the Ministry of Higher Education. Her focal area is on the Merambong seagrass bed. Sharifah took samples of young offspring from pregnant males to test the DNA. She wanted to find out whether males are being faithful! 
Pic (left): Wet, wet, wet! Rainy day makes everything harder, from tagging to data recording and seahorses were more difficult to find. The Malaysian Nature Society Marine Group has organized a trip to volunteer for the SOS. However, the trip was almost aborted due to the rain and cold wind in the early morning. The group has persevered though, and their determination has been rewarded with sightings of both seahorses and pipefishes. We thanked them again for their efforts and donations, of particular mention is Ms. Khor Hui Min who organized the trip.  Pic (left): Jin teaches the indigenous Seletar kids drawing and colouring.
We are privileged to have Wong Loke Jin, a 19-year old, cheerful chap who was putting his time from his semester break at the Mahendra College, India, to volunteer for the SOS in July 2007. Apart from helping to compile the Pulau Merambong species checklist which will later be used for publications of species guide, Jin gave free tutorials for the local school kids and helped maintained the research station facility. His diligence, independence and generosity serve as model to the young and old.   Pic (Right): Port of Tanjung Pelepas seagrass monitoring group.
After completing the seagrass mapping early this year, the Port of Tanjung Pelepas has started a new effort in seagrass monitoring. This will be long term collaboration with the SOS. For now, we can say that the recolonizing seagrass bed seemed rather dynamic in terms of species succession. Despite being 10 times smaller than the Merambong seagrass bed, the recolonized seagrass bed has immense species richness. Dugong feeding trails were invariably seen at low tide and every now and then a couple of seahorses were spotted and tagged. On 18 June 2007 we also had a dialogue with the Port of Tanjung Pelepas. Thanks to Captain Chong for the taking the initiative and interest in raising the environmental awareness among the port community. MORE MONTHLY HIGHLIGHTS | 
