How do you import corals?

[Achilles Tang]

BH, you said:

My school's Life Sciences facility will be working closely with me to develop better strains of corals that not only can withstand harsh conditions but also we will be looking at stimulating the promoter that activates the production of coloured proteins.

Like you to go into more details about this.

1. Who are the people in your secondary school's Life Sciences facility? Particularly the qualified experts & their area of expertise eg. PHD in advanced genetics, Masters in Marine Bio-technology etc.

2. What kind of equipment does this facility have?

3. How are better & hardier strains of corals being developed?

4. Which particular species are you working on?

5. How long do you think your LS facility will need to develop this new bio-engineered strain of coral?

6. What happens after the stimulation of the coloured protein promoter?

And lastly, I can say that we do not need to be under some University or what to achieve research goals. My school's Life sciences have already made 5 MAJOR BREAKTHROUGHS since its establishment in 2002.

1. Why does your LS facility not need University-level researchers to achieve research goals.

2. Please explain what do u mean by research goals. What level of goals?

3. What are these 5 major breakthroughs and have they been highlighted in scientific journals before?

Unless there is a military agenda behind this, frankly, there is no reason to hide any info. This is a public project, funded by our tax dollars. Even if you are afraid that other schools may have jumped into the bandwagon upon hearing of your plans, why should you fear? Joint-collaborations would mean this noble quest be achieved faster!!

If you guys can surely achieve this goal of genetically engineering all coral species to be hardy (and multi-neon coloured as a side-benefit), a Nobel prize would surely be in order!!!

Regarding your plan - how long did u propose the funding for? 1 year, 2 years, 3? 5? 10? How much of our tax money will be dedicated to buying exotic coloured corals?

Also, can you consider spreading these exotic specimens amongst 3500 local tanks across the country in case of a tank crash at your school or your home tank? (touch wood!) Kidding!!

BH... anything is possible but not everything is that viable.

[Gripshoppe]

Here's my experience when i asked my school for funding for a project during my college school days...

Anyway its not corals but more of artificial reef rocks production.

Similar to Garf's but using more of oyster shells and other substrate...

Then again it was back in the 1990's, still don't know much about reefing nor heard of Garf... heh so my project was rather... Original

After drafting all the blueprints...all the presentations about its advantages etc etc etc, my school's science head of department granted me $100...

And he said..

Every level of educational institutes are allocated a yearly budget.

And we are very uptight about allocating funds for projects such as these and even so if they do,there's a limit how much we can give.

And even though your project is deemed Rather productive, we will ask you for your project draft and hand it over to someone else up there, with you involved of coz after your mid term.

Right now.. concentrate on your studies..ok?

The school? Well,they focus on whats their pirority...Which is all about the same...

Improvement in overall acdemic results...

In my case, it was the A'levels, and in yours, O's i suppose

My school was so tight that we have to dig into our own pocket money to rent dragonboat for our own training session

Sad to say its so pathetic even for college level funding that my school gave my team two options when we were caught skipping school to shoot an advertisment for KFC.

One - Surrender 50% of our total earnings as "Donations" to college fund

or

Two - All get blacklisted + call parents + detention

So envious of your school/principal ... middle finger to mine!

[corrado]

BH,

Good on you for weathering the comments. (seems like your ears are nicely plugged though). I don't think you are aware of the number of u-turns, 3-pt turns and donuts St Jons have done. Plenty of money has gone down the drain. What everyone here wants is accountability.

If you want to break the mold of a typical MOE product,

go google on Micropolis and Suzhou IP for starters.

why not look into easier route of plastic molding to create more realistic fake SPS. It is on equal footing as your school project.

[XPeriment 626]

No offence to your school but I see it as nothing more than a disinterested rich parent blindly giving his kid money to buy a supercomputer, a T1 line, 48" LCD screen to 'learn' computer skills with his friend 'supervising' at home without asking for a course curriculum or report card. For all he knows, his kid would be 'hard at work' mugging to be the best Counterstrike player in Singapore. (No offence to rich parents or Counterstrike players).

oi! I play Counterstrike hor!

BH, you don't seem to get what people are trying to say. You gotta learn to walk before you can learn to run. Ignoring AT's advice to start with softies and going straight to exotic SPS when your little research project hasn't even started up yet is not only unwise and potentially wasteful because of how expensive mistakes will be, but it reeks of self-serving commercial and recreational intent. Pardon my saying, but IMHO this is a way of using taxpayer money to fund a personal hobby. I suppose every frag of every exotic coral in the project will stay in your school tanks and no little fragment will mysteriously find its way into the homes of the students involved. Unless of course, the home tanks are part of the research project in which case I guess everything's hunky dory.

And whatever you may think of people who say "impossible", putting them down in that way is just as immature. You can stand on your box and proclaim that you will flap your arms and reach the moon, and when people say "impossible" you can call them narrow minded. That's really your prerogative. But when people give you well meaning advice and you respond with more than a little cockiness about your mysterious underground scientists and great system you are going to set up, it gets rather less than amusing. Perhaps you're actually working on a nuclear weapon or a death ray, so the cloak of secrecy is necessary. Other than that, when we ask for some accountability for how our tax dollars are being spent and we get evasive answers, it sounds more like there isn't a good reason other than "a really fun thing to do with other people's money".

Maybe when you start working and have to pay some bills you will understand why people are so concerned with these issues. Until then you can continue to dig your heels in and carry on despite all the advice that everyone is giving. At least you won't be the first to pour Singaporeans' hard earned money down the drain.

[ryz]

in total agreement with XPeriment 626..

I'm very skeptical about what your aides can help u do with regards to manipulating the genes of the corals.. don't think any scientist have reached that level yet. in coral aspect at least..

What vector are you going to use to transfer the genes? do the scientist helping u know which gene(s) at which loculi control which phenotype? I highly doubt their ability in manipulating the gene of the corals and create new hardier strains of corals.. For that, extensive research and experimentation would need to be carried out.. that level of experimentation needs to have large amount of funds to support. It'll also take very long time for the experimentation to produce any fruit if at all..

This might sound callous but I think you're over zealous and wanting to achieve feats that are out of your league.

also feel that you have been very evasive with regards to the questions being posed... Don't really have a reason to keep it confidential.

just my thoughts and feelings on your proposal.

[lightningstrike]

oi! I play Counterstrike hor!

BH, you don't seem to get what people are trying to say. You gotta learn to walk before you can learn to run. Ignoring AT's advice to start with softies and going straight to exotic SPS when your little research project hasn't even started up yet is not only unwise and potentially wasteful because of how expensive mistakes will be, but it reeks of self-serving commercial and recreational intent. Pardon my saying, but IMHO this is a way of using taxpayer money to fund a personal hobby. I suppose every frag of every exotic coral in the project will stay in your school tanks and no little fragment will mysteriously find its way into the homes of the students involved. Unless of course, the home tanks are part of the research project in which case I guess everything's hunky dory.

And whatever you may think of people who say "impossible", putting them down in that way is just as immature. You can stand on your box and proclaim that you will flap your arms and reach the moon, and when people say "impossible" you can call them narrow minded. That's really your prerogative. But when people give you well meaning advice and you respond with more than a little cockiness about your mysterious underground scientists and great system you are going to set up, it gets rather less than amusing. Perhaps you're actually working on a nuclear weapon or a death ray, so the cloak of secrecy is necessary. Other than that, when we ask for some accountability for how our tax dollars are being spent and we get evasive answers, it sounds more like there isn't a good reason other than "a really fun thing to do with other people's money".

Maybe when you start working and have to pay some bills you will understand why people are so concerned with these issues. Until then you can continue to dig your heels in and carry on despite all the advice that everyone is giving. At least you won't be the first to pour Singaporeans' hard earned money down the drain.

well said stitch....... well said.......

the reason why i suggested him to look for kenny yap for finiancial assistance.

[danano]

Well actually my school's propagation systems are meant for research and conservation purpose. But more emphasis will be put to research.

Nope, its just a grant given to me by the school to carry on my conservation efforts.

I'm going to propagate partly for commercial purposes but on the heart of spreading the nice strains so that they would not be lost. Another reason is to aid in current conservation efforts and projects.

As I've said, this is more for research purposes and not to make money.

Actually funding is not an issue as the school will pay for everything.

And because of this, I'm willing to purchase specimens costing $200-300

And the frags are going to my school's life sciences facility and to all conservation projects. Even those frags I've sold, the money goes back to the prop unit

And I'll most probably attend the frag swopping sessions overseas with my frags

And lastly, as I have said, I am only doing my part to conserve the reefs and even though its a small scale compared to the devastation

I finally know of the point of concern here and I would deeply regret to say that I cannot expose more of the plans other than the superficial ones. Its an instruction given to me not to tell anyone the details but when the time comes, I'll reveal everything. So, I can only assure you that we will have qualified scientists to aid in our research and not go blindly. And about the gene manipulation, we already know who can help us so don't worry.

BH, is the primary objective of your research project commercial or conservation? Regardless, they are mutually exclusive.

The following statement led me to believe it to be more self-serving than conservation. Conservation appeared to be a secondary objective. I hope you can help clear any doubt.

"I'm going to propagate partly for commercial purposes but on the heart of spreading the nice strains so that they would not be lost. Another reason is to aid in current conservation efforts and projects."

Further, as public funds will be used to fund part your project, and to ensure accountability and responsible use of hard-earned taxpayers money, now would be as good a time as any to share more details about your research and conservation project.

Have you considered making your paper/plan available for public comment?

Several reefers have also offered some good advice and feedback on your proposal. You may want to consider the advice given as you move forward with your project.

[untouchables]

It's the same reason why the public questioned the US government why it was necessary to send a man to the moon and back. It was a very very costly project involving billions of dollars but the benefits are nothing more than to win 'face' back from the Russians for sending a monkey into space first.

not monkey leh... they wanted to win back face after yuri gagarin was first man in space so US decided on first man on moon.

[Achilles Tang]

Monkey or man... it doesn't matter. The Russians beat the US to space.

i am a believer in the NASA Moon Landing Hoax Conspiracy.

[untouchables]

bh, i think it is best if you can submit the project charter/plan (with sufficient details) on this research before you can even get src involvement. not expecting u to post it here but perhaps forward to the big boss? im pretty sure all the information that we are looking for is in the document since a research of this scale cannot be juz all "up here" kind of thing.

after reading all ur postings, i still got no clue how things gonna fall into place and all these sound too "dot com" for me must present real facts, real plans, real objectives, etc.

[XPeriment 626]

i am a believer in the NASA Moon Landing Hoax Conspiracy.

So was I, but I've changed my mind and you might want to take a look at these links:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

http://www.apollo-hoax.me.uk/homepage.html

[Archilles19]

OH that moon landing is sure a one mother big hoax.........

Anyway....BH....why not start with a smaller scale ...maybe like....smaller tank with more hardy corals or maybe just fishes & liverock then proceed to those hardy coral & in time of doing so we can get the student to do research during their free time on the how to copy the ls natural environment in the sea.

I'm doing that at home now with my 2 boys....explaing to them almost all their questions....why alomost....?...because some I ahve no answer lah

Even my wife just found out know that most corals need not be fead as they have their algea counterparts that keeping them alive....thus giving the green light for me to invest in my MH lighting....

Is that clever psychology or what

[blueheaven]

Ok, in response to everyone's concern, here's the whole plan:

Firstly, the main objective of this is on research puposes, with conservation as secondary and commercial in a sense to relief the costs of running the system.

As for research, we are going to look at firstly trying to understand current findings and from there, we try to make it more effecient. An example would be on sandbed dynamics and we are going to study and understand better the works of the different types of bacteria present in the sand itself and also the effect of using different types of sand for a DSB. The part about gene manipulation would be conducted under close supervision by our geneticist Dr. Dennis Yeo who heads our Life Sciences facility.

There are many more research topics we are looking at and they will be taken up by our students who will probably work on them for 2 year commitments whereby a next batch of students will take over the project. And if AT is willing to do the cherry picking, you're formally invited

As for conservation, we hope to donate frags to current conservation programmes by the SSC and NUS. We will also organise guided trips to sites such as Chek Jawa and the reefs around Singapore to understand the current situation there.

Another part of our conservation efforts would be selling/giving frags to the reefers out there and organise fragging sessions in the school and also workshops to share and teach the different methods of captive propagation to members of the public (reefers) who are interested to frag their own corals. And by doing this, we hope to reduce the amount of coral shipments and collection to Singapore and do our part to save the reefs.

And lastly, we will also be selling some of our frags to reefers and the money collected would go back into running the system. We are also roping our D&T team to design better and more effiecient equipments for sale to reefers as well.

And about the money issue, every purchase is to be reported and rest assured that I will not spend a bomb on ex. corals. And I remember a bro mentioned that purchasing corals are detrimental to reefs and I also agree, so that's why I am asking for frag donations so that I do not need to get wild colonies. Even if I were to purchase corals, I will get aquacultures ones so as to make zero impact on the reefs.

Since, this project is not going to be up till 2006, the team is still working on further details and collaborations with various organisations so therefore, this is the best I can provide for the reefers here who are interested. As we go along, I will post more details about what we are doing

[flubberina13]

BH...I am just wondering...as you think...as you write...as you speak...

Are you representing Dunman Secondary School's Life Sciences Committee.

From the portfolio of Dunman, I gathered it must be the COE of Science/Life Science in that E2 cluster or Dr Dennis Yeo. Thus, no doubts, funds can be allocated but I believe it will be shared by a few schools in that cluster. As such...do you represent the whole of the COE or even that cluster? Have you spoken to them of your intention to make known the plans that they were thinking abt but yet not conceptualized nor made concrete yet?

And are you talking abt Daniel(MSc)? Does Dennis know of your intention to seek help here? Have you spoken to them of your intention. Have you made your accountability known to them in revealing all these?

Do hope you understand the repercussions that may translate because of you making known in a public forum.

And all the best in your project if you become part of the team.

[corrado]

hi BH,

DO you remember someone was trying to start a local fish club that offers wholesale price? it was a huge laughing stock. it is a good lesson for those who wanted so badly to be involved in the industry.

May I ask who is the driving force behind this research?

I suspect he just wants to make sure he is gainfully employed by enlarging

his research portfolio. NUS is full of these good-for-nothing.

NUS ranked 18th in the world!?! - can only be heard from Jay Leno.

Perhaps all these euphoria on SRC has given you a bullish outlook for the coral industry. Look beyond the bubble and you will see the project will die of natural death when the interests wane by mid 2005.

FYI,

The news reported a monitor system against drowning in pools by NTU.

*it shows how uncommon innovations are in Singapore no matter how silly it is.*

[Achilles Tang]

IMO, if your school lab is buying corals to do mainly research on corals, I don't see the need for buying that many corals. I also don't see the need for coral propagation.

Unless its done on a very very large scale, the contribution to conservation is negligible. And there should be no sale of corals as it contradicts the motive.

Unless its done on a very very large scale, the fund-raising profit from the sale of frags would be negligible compared to the money your school (I mean, the tax payers money) would have to invest in this long-term project.

And the frags should not come from imports at all if the essence of your motive is to reduce the number of coral imports in Singapore. (then again, what kind of corals are you doing research/propagation on? Are you intending to research on every single species of corals or are you just concentrating on exotic coloured SPS? ).

Corals do take a long time and a lot of care and effort to grow. SPS may take a slightly faster time provided you are willing to spend a bomb for their upkeep. Even then, species-specific, you may take a few months before you can break enough frags and WAIT a few more months for these frags to grow up. And if you break frags, how many percent of these will be left for 'conservation purposes' and how many frags are you intending to sell?

So even if you can make the effort to grow frags into palm-size colonies, are you even certain that these corals will prosper if transplanted into the seas around Singapore? Have you even found a site for them yet?

I'm curious about the conservation efforts that you talk about. We are not talking about filling a 6ft tank with coral frags to be viewed as substantial, we should be talking about at least a football field of frags to grow a reef bank at least. Frankly with the dark silty waters around Singapore not going to abate (with the new developments in Sentosa and the Southern Islands for the casino resort), I am quite sceptical about the visible viabilities (pardon the pun).

Lastly, your project will only start in 2006? So where are the frags that you're asking for now going to reside? In your home tank?

Back to the research objectives... what are they again?

[BFG]

Ouch!

Looks like this forum is in good hands.

[blueheaven]

The whole point of why my statements are now still quite vague is because it is going to start in 2006 and the team is still working on the details and contacts. If its going to start like next year, of course all these are insufficient to run the project. And the reason I am starting this in 2006 is because I have my "O" levels next year and I can't afford too much time spent on this.

[untouchables]

And the reason I am starting this in 2006 is because I have my "O" levels next year and I can't afford too much time spent on this.

wow bro, seems like u r the man behind the entire project! u sure this is the right way to run a project? sounds like a huge risk for the project, imho.

question... after O u will be out of the school. what makes u think u can be around to help out and provide sufficient time to it?

[sps_dude]

bro.. u sure u can handle it...... u also wqanted to be a cadet inspector for NPcc if i am not wrong........ and u also want to handle this coral conservation thingy....... are u really sure.............

[AlfaRomeo]

Blueheaven, trust me, you will not have the time to run the project once you have finished with your O levels. You will most prob start with As/Poly and there is no way you can support and run the project with the commitment required... if you are the one who is going to drive it..

Any of your teachers very interested in this and will be willing to drive it without your continued presence?

[tineng]

Blueheaven, trust me, you will not have the time to run the project once you have finished with your O levels. You will most prob start with As/Poly and there is no way you can support and run the project with the commitment required...

hahaha...i remeber at that age...i only have time for studies and dating/staring at girls.....

Blueheaven, trust me, you wouldn't want to miss the 'golden time' you will have in JC/poly..... ....how i wish i can be that young again.....

[Dispar_Anthias]

But seriosuly if you do ever propagate corals.... Watt smith can close shop go sleep liao

[ryz]

yea. and if ur teachers manage to manipulate the coral's genes thus manipulating the colours, growth and other phenotypes of the corals, probably nobel prize worthy.

[XPeriment 626]

yea. and if ur teachers manage to manipulate the coral's genes thus manipulating the colours, growth and other phenotypes of the corals, probably nobel prize worthy.

It will take goodness knows how long just to isolate the gene for colours, don't talk about manipulating it.

Imagine, what if they manipulate the wrong genes by accident, then instead of colourful corals we get giant mutant ship-eating corals that walk out of the water and smash skyscrapers.... muahahahahahahahahhaah