Science Bridge e.V.

Indonesia will be hosting the World Ocean Conference 2009 from 11-16 May 2009 in Manado, North-Sulawesi. The Event will have participants from 21 countries. Visit http://www.woc2009.org for more information

This post is from 13 May 2009

There are so many interesting presentation themes here in WOC
Too bad i couldnt visit them all, because they are held simultaneously, so we have to choose only few of them :(

There are also representants from SPICE here, presenting their papers, projects, etc.
Today the 12th may, we had the opening ceremony
I took part in the first part of SPICE seminars,  and also some very interesting topics in marine conservation, such as seagrass beds, and dugongs (yay!!) in relation to the climate change.

I still have no idea what part will we have tomorrow,
but i already cant wait for the 3rd days to listen to some presentations about coelacanth (Lungenfisch)

i will post some more later :

This post is on the 14th May 2009

Today i visited the session Wetlands and estuaries, and Marine Conservation once again (but with different topics)

The presentations of wetlands and estuaries contains topics such as river pollutants caused by any anthropogenic affected activities in relation to the ecological status of peatlands and estuaries.
However, in my opinion, we come back again to the lack of ecological standards in Indonesia to monitor the local riverine, estuaries, and any coastal regions.
Using european/us standard to determine the river/coast quality in Indonesia is quite a questionable thing. because we have a different setup here, how we define as “natural condition”, obviously quite different compared to those in europe/us
From what i can conclude, i.e. people found out the high concentration of Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) in some Riversediments,  but they never compare the recent condition to the local natural condition (without any anthropogenic influence). But they pick comparison to the PAH level, in other countries (such as some european countries, and vietnam, china, etc) instead. However, those countries have each different natural conditions. So basically the Criteria are still biased.
I will however contact again the related presenters in the near future for more reference.

Also we had some interesting reports about the conservation efforts of the green seaturtle (Chelonia mydas).  Sea turtles generally return back to their birthplace to lay eggs. However if the habitat is detoriating, they are actually willing to search a nearby place as along as in a decent environment condition to lay eggs.  So basically we could relocate their nesting habitat, as long as we could create a suitable environment for them.

So the second session i visited was all about Berau Islands in East Borneo. They have there over 500 coral specii, and 8 seagrasses, 26 true mangroves,  2 seaturtles , fishes, etc (sorry i cant name them instantly out of my head). They have uniquely such things socalled marine lakes, which is a saltwater lake, but isolated by an island, and they have several jellyfishes endemic specii. There are still some holes of data in benthic organism and marine algae (according to the local management and the nature conservation netherlands)
And possibly lots of specii havent been assesed by IUCN red list. So there are still tons of homeworks!

tomorrow there will be coelacanth session which ive been waiting for.
i will post some more tomorrow

Danke fuer Ihre Interesse

Last day 14 may 2009

So today topics i’ve visited are coelacanth (unfortunately uncompleted), and the origin of species at the coral triangle

We had topics about Latimeria menadoensis in many aspects, biology, ecology, distribution, origin, evolution biology, as well as their conservation status in the IUCN red list

The later session i had was about the origin of species at the coral triangle. In summary, the researchers had basically tried to figure out what have been happening in this area, during the pleistocene period until now, what could possibly result the high biodiversity in the coral triangle.
There are several models of species origin theory.
The researches are mainly conducted with one to some specii (clown fisher, corals, or the giant clams), and they collected data, analyze, using markers, such as microsattelites, or the mithocondrial DNA
The general summary was, there are generally 3 different clades, probably developed in the same age, but still unsure, mainly north of papua newguinea, north of sulawesi+ the phillipines, and lastly northwest or sumatra
I see there are a lot of research probabilities in this area. There are still lots of undiscovered things here. We could for example search for another marker, with a different organism, which could eventually lead to a different result, or just collecting more data regarding species distribution to provide a better map of distribution (this is crucial for the theory of species origin to have sufficient field data) 
The research of Gene flow among the places passed by the ocean current is also very interesting.  Several specii at 2 different places have low gene flow, while other specii have relatively higher gen flow.

There are other several topics about marine lakes again (btw the correct term is anchialine lake).
I think it is very interesting topic, considering how unique their environment is. Basically they have to adapt, from a quite dynamic habitat (the sea/ocean) to a “Stillgewaesser/Stehgewaesser” (sorry someone please translate this into english)
They must have undergone certain morphological-, physiological-changes, and possibly changes in behaviour, which are currently still remain in dark.
Interesting is also to research in aspect of molecularbiological clock. When did the separation from the ocean happen? That is still unclear.

So that’s all for now, if you have any questions, feel free to reply, or send me PM or whatever
i will try to help if i can. I am sorry because i only visited sessions i am interested in.

That’s great. Haven’t been to indonesia but i’ve only read great things about it.

Regards,
Kailey  
Ordinateur portable pas cher