Heart-Breaking Scene at Chek Jawa

It was around mid-night when I received the sms from Adelle. She has posted a new entry in the Ubin Volunteer's blog.

This is kind of unusual actually, since Adelle doesn't usually sms us when she puts up anything. I suddenly had this bad feeling...

Immediately, I went into the blog at http://uvp.blogspot.com/2007/01/18th-january.html

And it was heart breaking...

Thousands of ball sea cucumbers stranded on the mud flats... carpet anemones uprooted ... sea stars breaking up...

Suddenly, I was glad that I was so busy with work these days, that I couldn't take leave to guide at Chek Jawa this week. I don't think I'll be able to carry on guiding if I were to witness this myself. I can hardly imagine how the other guides must have felt yesterday, and today there will be another walk... another round of heart breaking...

During the walks last month, it was bad enough... uprooted carpet anemones here and there, dead fishes floating around or stranded on the shore...

No one is sure why this is happening, though we suspect it's due to the dramatic increase in rainfall this monsoon season...

The fresh water from the rain and Johor River probably dilluted the saltwater so much that it killed many of these marine creatures...

We the humans have been causing global warming and other environmental hazards, causing the global weather system to be drastically affect... and now, the innocent wildlifes are paying the price for our crime...

Eventually, before we know it, we the humans may be hit by the effects of the damages we have done to our environment... In fact, high summer temperatures and extremely cold winters have already claimed lives...

Do we need a polar melt down, causing massive flooding, or powerful cyclones sprouting everywhere to drive the message into our heads that we need to take better care of our environment? Or do our brains have a teflon coating, and that's why nothing sticks???

Who needs a nuclear war? What we have done to our environment may jolly well cause another mass extinction, and for all you know, a mass extinction that includes homo sapiens...