Pendas Part 2

It was a sunny Friday 730 in the morning. I was having hard time to wake up from my sweet dream as I slept around 3 o'clock in the morning. However I got to wake up as this is the day that I had longed for, the day to go sampling and set another start for my practical. It was exciting and yet nervous.

I arrived at the lab to get things ready around 745 am. We've got the things ready few weeks back but now its just for the final check. Additional things that we need to get ready are icebox, and some life jackets. By 815am, we were ready to leave for Fishermen Jetty Kampung Ladang (Fishermen Jetty Ladang Village).

Around a quarter passed 9 o'clock we've arrived at the Fishermen Jetty of Ladang Village. There were many ships, both big and small, parked around the jetty.




































Having no time to stop by to eat breakfast, I am thankful that I saw this.


















Doesn't ring a bell? Well....this is a seafood restaurant! Of course I am not going to have a big meal here, but at least I can find some food here. I ended up having a Nasi Lemak (this food is also served in Mission College Cafeteria every Wednesday or Thursday lunch but vegetarian, with red sweet mashroom, peanuts, boiled eggs and white rice. However the real Nasi Lemak taste better!!!!) Though not alot, but this Nasi Lemak managed to give energy to my body that is lacking of rest.



















The only two men that came for this sampling trip from UTM was respected Dr Shahir Shamsir that make this trip possible and right, Mr KTC that is going to be responsible for fish catching. (It is nothing easy!!!)



















Here are things that we will use for sampling, from the left is the fabric gloves, plastic gloves, autoclaved ice-cream stick and Bijou bottles for the mucus.



















More Bijou bottles, gloves and cloth.



















Parafilms (made in Chicago) to seal the gap between the Bijou bottle and its cover. This is to ensure that the mucus does not spill off from the bottle and to reduce the possibility of other elements from the air to get into the bottle.



















Some life jackets to ensure that we can still float if any of us fell into the sea.

We need to wait for the people that will take us to the sampling site. They are the people that owns the boat or the sampling site (or at least have connection with the owner of the sampling site?) if not we will not be able to make it. This makes me realized that there are many things that we cannot do alone. We need the help of other people.


The people finally arrived after around 10 minutes of waiting. No longer later the boat arrives too. After wearing our life jackets, all of us are ready to get on board.



















The picture above- getting on the board. We need to walk down to the riverside to go on board. The trail was a little bit slippery as it rained a night before.



















Picture above showing all of our stuff and begs on the boat. The boat that we used for me was a little bit shallow. A little bit imbalance for one side could cause the whole boat to be filled with water. Having not getting on a boat for a long time makes me a little nervous :) I'm just afraid that I will be the first one to fall into the water!



















The look of the jetty from far as we traveled away. Sometimes we just don't realize that we are living in such a beautiful world, that every corner around us does look beautiful in one way or another.



















Another side of the jetty. I wonder if we could still see this kind of view 10 years later...



















Doctor enjoying the view.

About 3-5 minutes later, we finally arrived at the sampling site. This sampling site located middle middle of the water. There were many water tunnels with different nets in which different fish were raised. We only want Ikan Siakap (Barramundi fish) and Ikan Kerapu
(Grouper fish).














Ikan Kerapu (Grouper fish) or scientific name Epinaphalus Tauvina is the kind of fish that has dots on the appearance. Today, 20 of the world's 162 known species of Grouper are threatened with extinction according to a survey by conservation groups. Grouper fish are popular food fish throughout the world, but due to their slow reproductive rates they are particularly vulnerable to overharvesting.















Ikan Siakap, or in English is known as Barramundi, also called Asian Seabass or Giant Perch with scientific name Lates Calcarifer.Unlike Ikan Kerapu, Ikan Siakap is not categorized as
endangered. Ikan Siakap can grow up to 1.8m and 60Kg (6`& 130 lb), common to 1.2 m.

The floating fish tunnel net or the sampling site, is taken care by a few male crews and they have their own place to sleep and to cook as well.



















If you look at it a good way it is like a village house that is good for spending holidays and looking at the natural surrounding.



















But from near, it is a place to grow fish.



















First we need to find out the tunnel net that contains the kind of fish that we want, and then move our things there.


















Then prepare a space in the tunnel net so that we can put the fish that we had scrapped the mucus from.



















Then we get our net, ice cream stick and Bijou bottle ready to scrape the mucus from the surface of the fish. To do that, we need three persons to completely do the job-- a person to catch the fish using the net, a person to hold the fish and another person to scrape the mucus from the surface of the fish. We started with Ikan Siakap (Barramundi fish).



















Then we are ready to begin the whole process of sampling. It is just easy--
catch a fish with the net






















put it on a flat surface that can lay the fish flat; then cover the eyes of the fish with cloth and make sure it does not move,



















and then the third person, scrape.



















Me doing the scrapping part.


















Trying to put all of the mucus into the Bijou bottle. I am telling you that it is not as easy as you see it!



















After Barramundi fish, we proceed with Grouper fish. Scrapping the Grouper fish is not as easy as scrapping the Barramundi fish, because Grouper fish is heavier, bigger, fierce and ugly. Well ugly may not be one of the factor but really, Grouper fish is really ugly for me!
























Lets start off with catching. It was unfortunate for us that there were two kinds of fish in the tunnel net of Grouper fish, which it makes the catching harder.



















Instead of trying to find Grouper fish, Mr KTC just catch the non-Grouper fish and put it in another tunnel net.



















To scrape from Grouper fish we need to make sure that the tail does not flip, because once it flip, it is hard to control as it is big and heavy. Some of the fish has injury on the skin so we cannot scrape from it. That has limits the numbers of our collection. We had targeted around 30 bottles (sample of mucus from 30 fish) but instead we only managed to collect 12 samples.



















We rise the net a little bit to make sure the fish does not flip and then get away. However, we had accidentally let go a fish. Each fish is estimated to weigh around 5-10 kg and each kg is around 10 -15 riggit....so imagine how much we need to pay if the owner demands us to pay for the fish that we had accidentally let go.

Due to time factor, we only could take sample of mucus from 15 Grouper fish as we need to reach UTM before noon.



The video above shows the process of collecting mucus sample from the fish.





The video above shows the journey back to the jetty.




















We gave our last beautiful post for this memorable place before leaving :) Most of us were feeling tired and dehydrated at that time. All that in our mind was going back to the hostel and have a nice long bath, delicious meal, and maybe...a nice long nap :)

This is just the beginning of a long hard work, because what needs to be done after this will involves many trial and error testings so stick around to read about it :) I will try my best to update it daily :) Happy Reading! Visit sunsezzt.blogspot.com for other posts (other than bacteria characterization research posts) of SunSeT.