Supervisor: Ms Sam Shu Qi
What is your team’s project about?
We are doing coral restoration in the northern coast of Bali, Les Village, with the partner organisation Sea Communities. We’re investigating an alternative substrate for coral restoration, using coconut fibres. We also are writing a storybook to promote ocean literacy targeted at school kids in both Bali and in Singapore! It was inspired by the fishermen we work with and will be about corals and alternative livelihoods of coastal communities. Beyond that, we’re also creating data visualisation codes to better understand the data that’s been collected from citizen science programmes at our partner organisation over the years. This is helpful to sieve out if / which restoration methods have been effective.
What does your team enjoy most about the IEx project?
Our team enjoys interactions with the local community, with the fishermen, salt farmers and other individuals who run the organisation Sea Communities. We also of course love that we get the opportunity to SCUBA dive for scientific testing both in Singapore and in Bali.
What are some challenges that you think are unique to the project?
For our team it was more of scoping the project that was surprising, there were just too many things we wanted to do! This resulted in us taking on many "side-quests" in addition to our main scientific project (which brought on both pros and cons).
Any specific tips about working with your team’s community?
Be game to try anything, open to new ideas and embrace the very many exciting adventures that will come with working here. Maybe for groups working at Les Village, plan your trip to a Thursday to visit the nearby vocational school (Amisewaka) for their minimart !!
Any fun stories to share with your juniors?
During the prototyping stage when we were extracting coconut fibres, we accidentally kept a coconut so long that it sprouted! So we decided to plant it in one of the west wing gardens hehe (tbc if it is still there or has grown).