C.purpurea South East Johor-Part 2 Episode 1

Well that was a long first episode. And now, the sequel…

One thing was for sure, as we traveled deeper upriver, we could really see the beauty of the swamp forest and why we need to conserve areas like these. According to Wetlands Int,  this area is one of the last remaining freshwater swamps in the country and according to the writings of early explores, this area is far more beautiful than the Amazon. Of course during those times (at least 100 years ago), the forest was much larger than at present. Boy! sometimes I wish I could go back in time just to experience what these early explores encountered and how they saw our country back then……yes, back then when there was no such thing as oil palm plantations or land conversions etc and there were still large tracks of VIRGIN forests…oooo!

Here’s a few pictures of the beautiful landscapes along the river banks

Mayaca covers the muddy banks and fallen logs, like a green velvet carpet!

and another….looks like a well kept japanese garden

A beautiful view of mayaca and cabomba along the banks of the river

Another view of beautifully draped logs and branches

Mayaca drapes logs and fallen branches all along the river. By the way, the river is still pretty deep, at least 20 feet in!

After several minutes of snapping away, Li spots an incoming blackwater stream cascading over fallen logs into the main river. We immediately dock the boat and make our way into the forest. Again, our dear friend C.purpurea awaits us. Not a big population, but nonetheless a real welcome. As we excitedly photographed the crypts, we didn’t realize a nest just above us!

Large bee hive just above fifth crypt site. It was also the second entrance to another B. tomi location. Can you see the crypts and the hive?

The crypts under the hive

Noticing the buzzing bees around us we quickly move away from this entrance and try another direction into the incoming stream. As we enter the forest, it is really obvious that we were not alone. In fact others have been here just hours or even minutes before. Who am I talking about..well if it isn’t our friendly (not to mention delicious!) neighborhood…WILD BOAR! The whole forest seems that it had just gone through some massive gardening exercise, with ploughing as the main order of the day. All around us, especially further inland, the ground was thoroughly dug. Must have had lots of grub to gather.

The poor guys must have been really tired after a hard days work that they decided to take a bath in a home-made jacuzzi!

Next to this bath tub, we found a small stream. Ricky and I took turns netting. Six banded barbs, R. einthovenii, B. maculata, Nandus and yes…..Betta tomi. From this site alone in just less than 10 minutes and over a distance of less than 15m, we caught easily 8 adults not including the handful of juvenile, which we let go.

Ricky sampling a small swampy stream for fish. Plenty of B.tomi here!

After an exciting find at several other locations, we head on upriver to survey further upstream. Hopefully we would be able to get more fish and plant species for the checklist. However as we approached upriver, we were shocked to find massive land clearance for another oil palm estate. Apparently the existing estate had decided to enlarge their territory. Here the river forked into two. The left seemed less polluted. The water was still very clear black, just like kopi ‘O’, but the stream to our right had a higher load of sedimentation making the water rather kopi susu like. This explained why the main river was a combination of these two water conditions.

The view of the junction upstream. To the left leads to more swamp, while to the right it goes up the oil palm estate

As we traveled to the left, all we could see is this. So depressing….

Even shows on Ricky and Li’s faces…..sigh…or maybe because they were hungry, hmmm

Gone..all gone….

As time was not on our side, we quickly turned back and headed down stream. It was already 4pm and we had to get back before 6pm for buka puasa. By now we were all very hungry and thirsty. But as usual, I still had to visit my first crypt location (of which I lost the photos!) before heading back. So after traveling an 2 hours downstream, we reached the first site, but to my disappointment the water level had already risen, so we couldn’t actually photograph the entire area which was easily the size of one badminton court. In fact further up about 10 minutes away from this first location was another site almost the size of a badminton court as well, just by the banks of the river. This too was already under water, so we couldn’t take any shots. Well hopefully the next day we would find other interesting stuff as we head further upstream. This time we would have to drive all the way through oil palm plantations to get there…….

Since the water level has already risen, I couldn’t take many shots of the first site. These are just two of them.

Another view of the crypts clinging onto the tree

To be continue in episode 3.