I’ve always wanted to participate on a scientific research project. I got my chance in December of 2008 by flying to a remote island in Thailand. Read more below or check out the photos from the trip.

Although I originally planned to head to Thailand in the end of November, I had a minor setback causing me to ultimately do a 5 week around the world trip (AMS -> SIN -> HKT -> BKK -> SEL -> LAX -> SFO -> CLT -> LGA -> AMS -> JNB -> AMS).

After a few days of zooming around on a moped and relaxing in a great cottage run by an Italian in Phuket, I took a five hour journey north via truck and on a typical Thai long-tail boat to the mostly uninhabited island of Koh Ra. On the way over to the island I got to meet the other people helping, as well as experienced our first boat breakdown.

We stayed at the Koh Ra ecolodge which was recently reopened after being shutdown by the tsunami in 2004. Koh Ra island is mostly uninhabited except for a few families of sea gypsies and the ecolodge. The primary jungle had done a good job taking back the grounds, as evidenced by the numerous critters inside and around our living quarters. There was running water, but no hot water, and electricity only at night. Sustainable living is certainly a trade-off in comfort, but it was nice to live so minimally again.

That night we got an introduction to Reefcheck, and the goals of the scientific research project we were to work on. In short, we’d be scuba diving each day in a systematic way to check the health of the coral reefs of Thailand. By counting certain specific fish and invertebrate species, it’s possible to monitor the health of the reefs over time. This data is ultimately used for trying to promote national parks, affect policy and enforcement of sustainable fishing practices, and global warming studies. Yes, I was counting fish!

The trip was organized by Earthwatch, which is a USA based company that promotes and connects people with scientific research projects worldwide. Earthwatch is rated quite high as a voluntourism organization in that it gives one of the highest percentages of funds straight to the science research projects.

For 10 days I was treated to fantastic Thai food - not the westernized stuff but every day typical thai food cooked on the island for hours each night by the eco-lodge team. The sounds of the primary jungle just meters away from our beds was incredibly loud, keeping me up the first few nights every time I heard a sound. The second day I was treated with a cold morning shower and a nice hike across the island to learn our way around and see the local flora and fauna.

We spent quite a few hours learning the Reefcheck methodology via PowerPoint, an odd experience to be doing on a remote island. We had to learn how to lay a transect line (a tape measure under water), how to identify very specific species of fish to count, what invertebrates to look for, and how to tell different types of coral and reef apart. Tons of scuba diving hand signals had to be memorized, but they were pretty obvious.

Over the next few days we took various boats to sites such as Koh Kai (egg island) and a trek more than 50km out to the Surin Islands National Park. We averaged 1-2 dives a day in some amazing locations.

One of our dive-masters, Tos, put together a video for our Earthwatch group:

Here’s a small video showing the setup of the transect line under water:

One of the islands had a bat cave we swam in to:

An amazing site to see, a mother cuttlefish laying eggs:

Another video from our dive-master Tos, showing some of his best footage from recent dives:

On the day before Christmas, I took two days to fly from Phuket to Bangkok to Seoul to Los Angeles to see my nieces on Christmas morning. What a great next part of my trip...

Thanks to Kim and Tos and Heather and Jarod and P-Bao and everyone else at Koh Ra ecolodge for a great trip, and a chance to have meaningful travel.