Friday October 3rd 2008

Jamie and Jubilee:

We currently have 15 moorings in place
Also, in the next 2 weeks we plan on installing the following moorings
2 Rifles
2 Ebay
1 *******
1 additional at Bank Vaults

Tuesday September 23rd, 2008

Mentawai Mooring Movement recieves a letter of support from the Chief of SW Siberut

Friday August 15th, 2008

Jamie: MMM mooring installations to date:

2 Hideaways
2 Beng Bens
1 Pitstops
1 Spankers/4 Bobs
1 Tikis/Nipussi
1 East Side of Mainuk

It's been a busy and productive 8 weeks since my last update.  The Mentawai Mooring Movement has installed 8 fully functional moorings at 5 separate surf spots in the Northern Mentawai Islands.  I can't fully articulate how incredibly gratifying it is to witness one or two boats motor up to a surf spot and rather than immediately throwing their anchor overboard onto live reef, as they have done for years, they head over to our mooring with it's characteristic white float and tie their boat up. 

So simple and easy, yet so amazingly affective for coral reef conservation. 

So far, each of the moorings we've deployed have a similar set up; all are anchored to the sea floor using chain.  At nearly half the surf spots we've been fortunate enough to find large coral arches, making it extremely easy to shackle chain and a mooring line to the reef.  Others, such as Pitstops and Tikis, the underwater structure is less complex, forcing us to encircle chain around the base of a large coral bombie, which so far seems to suffice, even in large swell (we deployed the mooring at Tikis while the surf was solid 5 foot; not the most ideal diving conditions, but definitely a good test of strength for the mooring). 

We've also put some work into manufacturing mooring anchors.   The original idea was to make concrete blocks, chain a few of them together, and use that as the mooring anchor.  The problem is, concrete is much lighter (1/3 - 1/2 lighter) underwater than it is above water.  To make the block heavier and more effective as a mooring anchor, we've decided to cement a 30 kg iron boat anchor into the concrete block (see picture).  A bit strange, I know, but we do have some sound reasoning behind this idea:  Iron is far more dense than concrete, so the dry weight versus wet weight issue is no longer much of one -- the mooring block will be far heavier with the anchor than concrete alone.  The boat anchor shape, with the two spades on one end and the long horizontal bar at the other, will force the block to dig into the sand, or, wedge against a chunk of coral, which is far more effective for anchoring the mooring.  Lastly, securing the iron anchor in concrete renders it useless to potential thieves, which unfortunate is an issue we need to consider. 

Deploying the mooring anchor will likely be far more of an endeavor than I'm anticipating, but there's no doubt it's going be an entertaining story in the end, which is mostly what matters anyhow.

Jubilee: So, Jamie and I had to return our tanks to Aloita Resort for an indefinite period of time, as they try to catch up on their VIPping and Annual inspections and such. We aren't certain when we'll be able to get the tanks back, but hopefully we'll be back in business by the end of the month. Until then, we're continuing operations at the Cement Anchor Sweatshop just down the way, catching up on some line splicing, and getting a few things done via free diving. Jamie and I were able to free dive to reset a Wavepark mooring at Hideaways that had been there a few years and finally dislodged in our last big swell (Jamie found the mooring float and line washed up down on the point). The mooring was held in place by a traditional anchor, so we moved it (I got to hold Jamie's fins at 10m as he walked along the ocean bottom clutching the anchor) to a better location and attached new shackles, chain, and line to make for a total of 3 fully functional moorings at Hideaways. Our home break is serving as a great example of mooring success; it feels good to think how long it's been since I've seen a small boat drop anchor out there. The necessity of the moorings hits home even more viscerally when we free dive out front or when guests go snorkeling and tell us how beautiful the coral was. I have a few favorite live Acropora in prime anchor zone I'm keeping my sights on, but with three moorings in place, I worry less. Not many sleepless nights.

Friday August 1st 2008

Jubilee: I managed to get very ill in the last bit of July-- an illness of the sort that makes me regret having made the Master Cleanse comment a month or so ago-- and was absent from operations for about a week, during which time Jamie was able to facilitate a mooring installation at Spankers (a.k.a. 4 Bob's), a fun right-hander out in front of Kandui Resort, our collaborator.

Kandui Resort is now stocked with MMM tees to sell to their guests, so keep your eyes peeled for Andy Irons and the entire Billabong surf team sporting their new favorite t-shirts-- which we all know they would have paid full price for. Strangely (I don't know, this one came from the higher-ups…) MMM has decided not to give free tees to people who receive approximately 4,257 free tees a year for standing up in barrels and other such shenanigans. This may come as a shock: we can't sponsor a surf team (yet!). But what's cool, actually, is that even though we're down here in Indonesia, where a 6USD tee is over-priced, people are fully supportive of MMM and thoroughly willing to fork over the 140,000 rupia (15USD) for a super-soft ( "Feel good about yourself AND the reef) Mentawai Mooring Movement t-shirt.

And of course, if you the reader aren't feeling the MMM spun-cotton and environmentally friendly ink-based screen print (big thanks to Print Proz in Kalihi!) on your back right now, all you've got to do is send a quick email to mooringmovement@gmail.com and Oliver can get you sorted.

July 15th, 2008

Jubilee: Jamie and I had a productive couple of weeks-- we finished off our SCUBA tanks with another mooring installation at Beng-Beng's and sent them off to Aloita Resort for a refill; soon after getting them back, we were able to put in a mooring at Pit Stops, at about 3 meters depth, and one more at Tiki's, at a depth of about 15 meters. (A lesson learned at Tiki's: try your best to refrain from taking your 10m-rated underwater camera to 15m, else you might find yourself on a near-deserted island in Indonesia with no way to take advantage of the awesome warranty your boyfriend bought you for your camera that you just broke because you weren't using your woman-sized (larger!) brain to full capacity. Not that I would know anything about that-- I just heard about it happening to my friend's cousin.)

We are stoked to be getting two dives out of each of our tanks, due to the relative shallowness of most of our mooring areas, but the next few we have our sights on (Kandui, Rifles, Corners) are around 17meters. We'll be using cement anchors for those moorings-- see Jamie's log for details on their manufacture-- which should require less handling by us and therefore less time on air.

Wednesday July 2nd 2008

Mooring Movement International applies for incorporation

Tuesday July 1st 2008

Jubilee: Recently a group of friends from Hawaii made the trek down here below the equator for a week and a half of good surf and a bit of good mooring action, too. Brian and Joe pulled off a brilliant volunteer mooring installation at Hideaways (see the photo page for visual confirmation), which has proven crucial in light of Hideaways becoming a more and more popular Mentawai left-hander. It is our home surf break, and although we've become quite territorial and protective of it, we can't help but want to make it conspicuous with a few mooring buoys in the hopes that the reef will continue to make the wave as good as ever, even with an increase in traffic. But, uh, really the wave is not worth checking out, and uh, I'd recommend going far south to Telescopes or something.

We managed to re-install our Beng-Beng's buoy, though we have yet to solve the Mystery of the Disappearing Coral Arch-- the coral arch I like to blame for the demise or our original installation. The visibility on the Beng-Beng's side of Nyang Nyang Island goes from about 3 meters on a good day to "I can barely see my hand in front of my face" on a bad one, so Jamie's and my attempt to solve the mystery by finding the coral arch were short lived. Now that all the rest of the moorings continue to hold strong, we feel pretty confident it was beginner's bad luck and we need not stress.

We plan to install another mooring at Beng-Beng's soon, as the spot gets a little busy when all else goes flat. There always seems to be at least a bit of a bump there when bumps are lacking elsewhere, so it will be put to good use.

Jah and Im, the coolest Mentawaians I know and essential MMM volunteers, spotted an abandoned anchor and chain at Hideaways (you can see the anchor in the foreground of a shot of Joe and Brian installing the Hideaways mooring) and with Gendut's help and Jamie's and my freediving efforts, the five of us were able to remove the 30kg anchor and 5 meters of thick chain (a charter boat-sized anchor) and turn it into a mooring on the East side of Mainuk Island, where our speedboats take safe harbor in a West storm. We are stoked to be able to salvage old anchors to propogate more moorings, but the incident is indicative of a common problem throughout the Mentawais: both smaller boats and charter boats who throw anchor when they show up at a surf spot are often are unable to pull up anchor when their session is over. Usually the Man vs. Anchor battle results in the deaths of at least a few civilian coral heads before the brilliantly-designed Anchor finally wins, and the boat cuts their anchor line and then cuts their losses, too. So, we're not stoked to see abandoned anchors at the end of dead coral swaths, but at least MMM gets a much-appreciated anchor donation out of it! We'll still keep our eyes open…

Thursday June 19th 2008

Jubilee: Mooring Movement Setback #1:

We got news, today, that our mooring at Beng-Bengs has managed to escape 15-feet of chain wrapped around what we thought was a sturdy dead-coral arch. Christie and Alice (Wavepark owners and managers) came back from a surf and told us they moored up, pulled back, and just kept on pulling. The mooring float followed them loyally, and they felt no resistance at all. So, no mooring at Beng-Bengs.

This is discouraging, but could yield some useful info after we freedive on the site and determine what, exactly, happened. The biggest upshot: a small boat didn't innocently moor up, cut their engines, and suddenly find themselves on the inside reef at Beng-Bengs because our mooring failed them. That would have been pretty crappy.

So, we'll rethink the system, and figure out what went wrong. It can only get better from here and we got all of the hardware back, so no loss! Only a significant amount of algae growth. A little over a week in the water and it all looks like the product of a Master Cleanse.

We're waiting on some dive tanks from Aloita Resort, and so have spent our MMM time preparing the line and moorings for the next several surf spots we've got our sights on: Beng-Bengs(again), Tiki's, and Kandui-- plus a small boat mooring around the North side of Mainuk in case of those rogue West storms that blow onshore here.

And by "preparing" I mean Jamie slaving away splicing sharp, finger-cutting, 4-strand polypropylene line and me doodling on the mooring floats so they look awesome. Aesthetics vs. Utility. Beauty vs. Brawn. Girls vs. Boys-- that lasted for about a week, after which I was recruited into sweatshop labor and have started trying to splice some line myself. Jamie is an excellent teacher, and self-taught, too.

But the float design is worth mentioning-- MMM and Wavepark Resort are now partnered up with Kandui Resort, as well, so the floats are boasting the names of all three partners. Wavepark and Kandui are the most established and well-known resorts in the area, but there are several new homestay/resort-type operations springing up pretty quickly. While these organizations run less boats, they are welcome to use the moorings and will hopefully be inspired to involve themselves in the effort if they are consistently mooring up to a float that screams the names of two other resorts and a non-profit.

But for now, we wait, which I have discovered is something to get good at here, where everything takes more time than one might expect. Not because of the doldrums, but because of the isolation. So we're patient.

Sunday June 15th 2008

Jamie: We installed the first mooring this week. Jubilee and I fastened 5 meters of chain around a solid chunk of dead reef, shackled it all together and then attached the mooring line with the float up top. It feels good, after all this time, to finally have a functional mooring in place at a surf spot in the Mentawai Islands.

Let the movement begin!

Jubilee: I hereby declare June 10th an official Indonesian-U.S. holiday: Mooring Day! It's like Memorial Day, but with less potato salad and better surf.

Jamie and I installed the first mooring today, at a spot called Beng-Bengs. While the guests surfed some clean 3-4 foot lefts, we used our self-contained underwater breathing apparatus' (SCUBA, man!) in about 6 meters of 2-meter visibility water to attach our mooring to a dead coral cement arch. We got our tanks from Aloita Resort, a full-service dive resort on the island of Makakang (about 20nm away) operated by a friend of Christie's (the owner and manager of Wavepark). Big thanks.

The operation took longer than expected due to the surf surge (back and forth and back and forth), but we tried to get in as much work between sets as we could. I also took some time to studiously avoid a 2-foot long opaque jellyfish that was using the surge to try and attack my face over and over and over again.

But we were successful, and we learned a few things abut our shackle set up and line length that will be helpful in the future.

Sunday June 1st 2008

Jamie: One hundred-fifty meters of polypropylene line, 20 m of chain, a hand full of shackles, and the most important, Jubilee, have arrived to Mainuk this past week; we finally now have most everything we need to make and install a few moorings. The concrete and other supplies needed to manufacture anchors will probably not be delivered for some time, limiting our mooring deployments to the locations where wrapping chain around reef will suffice. Beng Bengs, a surf spot off Nyang Nyang Island that we visit often, will likely be the location of our first deployment as it has plenty of areas of dead reef to use as an anchor.

Jubilee: Work VISA efforts in Singapore took four long days-- lots of walking, lots of heat, lots of spitting on the sidewalk and chewing illicit Bubble-Yum procured from a shifty-eyed man in a dark alley.

I've finally flown to Sumatra, a large island in the northwestern region of the Indonesian island chain. Jamie let me in on a great excess-baggage fee-avoidance secret: take advantage of the flat-rate board bag charge on Tiger Airways and cram as much crap in there as you can, until your bag weighs about 90 kilos. And then watch the two guys you met in the airport struggle to lift your surfboard bag onto the conveyor belt for you.

The customs agents in Padang, Sumatra opened my board bag to discover the source of all that weight: 5 boards and 122 fresh-off-the-press Mentawai Mooring Movement t-shirts. And thus began my customs nightmare.

Let me first reflect on Jamie's beautiful customs experience: he shows up in Padang laden with 20 mooring floats, 150ft of line, 70lbs of shackles and thimbles and is warmly received by the customs official who could read the MMM flyer Jamie gave him and was thoroughly supportive of the project. Apparently, you can get away with a lot if you tell a customs guy you are a Scientist. With a capital S.

The Literature major's experience: 45 solid minutes of grilling in Englonesian, trying desperately to understand the meaning of anything, glancing nervously out the small window to across the way, where 10 men rifle through my bags while I'm trapped in a second-hand smoke-filled room with 5 uniformed, scowling customs officers-- where, I might add, the MMM flyer did absolutely nothing for me.

Things were leaning in the direction of complete confiscation of the t-shirts, mostly because I could not convince the men that I was not going to sell them for profit, and because I was avoiding disclosing how much they cost to make in Hawaii, which in Indonesia is an ungodly, highly taxable sum. And just then, straight from the non-profit back stock of good luck, came the greatest Indonesian woman ever-- Tia, the Wavepark manager in Padang. Within a half-minute, she had the whole of it all wrapped up and in a whirl of t-shirts and cigarette smoke I was through the gates, 122 t-shirts in tow.

The customs agents were, of course, just doing their jobs well, and we both understood that. The fault lies with me for giving so little time to my Bahasa Indonesia Rosetta-Stone, because once Tia was there, and there was suddenly an open line of communication, the guys were thoroughly understanding, and willing to do what they could within the confines of their jobs to both let us take the t-shirts and not feel like absolute chumps. So, an official MMM thanks to the men of Indonesian Customs in Padang Sumatra.

After three more days of VISA stuff in Padang, I'll fly out to the Mentawai island of Roti, where there is a landing strip and a speedboat waiting to take me and a few guests to Wavepark Resort on Mainuk Island, about 2 hours away by boat. It better come quickly, 'cause Jamie and I are itching to start mooring installation, and I know the guests at Wavepark just can't wait to donate to MMM, and get a sweet tee in return.

Thursday May 15th 2008

Jubilee leaves Hawai'i for Manuik Island

Jamie: No moorings have been installed yet as we are awaiting an order of concrete, chain, and shackles to be delivered to Mainuk from Padang. However, I have been able to perform some important ground work since my arrival to the Mentawais. Over the past few weeks, I’ve done several site-surveys at numerous surf spots to get a good idea of the bottom habitat. The bottom type (sand; algae; coral pavement; live coral) and the bottom structure (amount of vertical relief) are important as they determine what method of anchoring is best suited for each deployed mooring. Although I have not been to all 20+ breaks in the area, a number of spots that I have surveyed appear to have extensive amounts of live coral punctuated by large chunks of dead coral that are robust enough to use as a mooring anchor. The method of wrapping chain around a strong piece of dead reef is by far the preferred anchoring method for a small-boat mooring as it’s simple, relatively easy to deploy, and has minimal impact on the surrounding environment. Some of the other surf breaks we’ll be installing moorings at are dominated by coral pavement; large areas of flat, hard bottom that lack any vertical relief or structure. These spots will require the deployment of a manufactured anchor such as concrete blocks, or something else heavy enough to hold a small-boat in large swell and heavy current.

Hopefully supplies will come soon so Mentawai Mooring Movement can start installing some moorings and help ease the impact of all the anchoring happening in the area.

Thursday May 1st 2008

Jamie: Everything came together at the last minute. A few days before I was set to leave Honolulu, I had little more than a fid (a tool for splicing line), a knife, and a few rolls of electrical tape in my possession. I was anxious, to say the least, that I was about to embark on a 6 month stint working in the Mentawai Islands with plans to install 20 small-boat moorings with no actual mooring supplies in my possession. Once in Indonesia, we had planned on finding local vendors for most of the mooring supplies, but with no examples of any hardware and 120 kilometers separating the Mentawai Islands from the closest major city, Padang (and the closest hardware store); the possibility of getting the supplies needed seemed unlikely.

Fortunately, the mooring hardware was delivered and the floats finally arrived via mail from Portland Maine less than 3 days before my departure (not to be confused with Portland Oregon, where I originally thought they were coming from when the order was placed – no wonder it took so long). With everything packed, taped, and strapped together, I was set and ready to be on my way to the Mentawai Islands. The past five months of anticipation and excitement where finally being realized; I couldn’t believe I was really going to Indonesia where I would be spending six full months working at Wavepark Surf Resort and helping start a coral reef conservation project in an area with some of the best waves in the world.

Arriving at the airport, my feelings of excitement slowly dissolved as I began the awkward and frustrating process of lugging 100 kilos of shackles, thimbles, and surface floats, five surfboards and my personal effects across the airport floor to the check in counter. It was far more of an endeavor than I could have possibly imagined and one I was going repeat numerous times traveling from Hawaii to Indonesia. En route, I found those little 3-wheeled carts that I had previously overlooked a hundred times before to be invaluable as well as the incredible generosity of half a dozen strangers who took pity on me and helped me drag duffle bags and boxes across long airport floors and into taxis.

By the time I finally arrived to Mainuk, the island-home of Wavepark Surf Resort, I had been traveling for nearly a week and was ready to jump in the ocean. The waves out front of Wavepark were pumping, so I quickly dropped my bags off, put some fresh wax on my board and paddled out for my first surf.

Thursday April 23rd 2008

Jamie leaves with enough gear and hardware to deploy 20 small boat moorings in and around Mainuk Island, Indonesia.

Thursday April 17th 2008

First annual fundraiser for Mentawai Mooring Movement, and going away party for Jamie and Jubilee. T-shirt sales were a huge success and Mentawai Mooring Movement raised over $1400 for mooring supplies. Thank you to all our supporters and friends who made the night a huge success.