Yesterday morning, I woke up bright and early at 5am. Decided to take a 5km jog and by the time I finished my jog, it was only 6am. The sky was not even bright yet. I decided I might do a little fishing, so I took my fishing gear and headed down to Bedok Reservoir. As I reached the new fishing platform, there was a guy already fishing. Beautiful morning. The sky was a little overcast but nevertheless, the scenery was beautiful.

As I walked nearer, I noticed some rubbish strewn all over the platform (see picture above). Boy, was I disappointed. Here we have a beautiful reservoir and the government has just opened it up for fishing and other water sports, and even before this new platform is opened, rubbish were all over the place.

As I looked around a little more, I realised that those were not the only rubbish I saw left around. There were plastic bags, leftover food, cups etc… etc… What’s really bad was that some of these were strewn in the water. While not all of these were left by anglers, I’m sure some unscrupulous anglers played a role in some of these as well.

A week ago, I saw a student from Damai Primary School, just threw a plastic bag into the water after fishing. Schools ought to play a bigger role in teaching our students not to litter. I’m always of the opinion that Singapore is clean because we have cleaners cleaning the streets every day. However, just look into some of the canals and rivers running through the housing estates (especially those in Kallang) and you’ll see that the general population are still not educated about keeping the environment clean, especially the waterways.

Well, these were definitely signs that the “ugly Singaporean” still exists. I applaud the authorities for opening up the reservoir for water sports. Now I can even understand why our waterways and reservoirs were opened for fishing and other water sports so late. If they had been opened many years earlier, the issues of littering might have been even bigger. As anglers, we definitely have to do our part to educate the general public on environment protection, otherwise, the fishes won’t be there for our enjoyment for very long!

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Just a few days ago, I decided to take a bicycle ride along the east coast park connector to look out for new fishing spots. The new track along the east coast of Singapore is about 30km long each way with beautiful scenery along the way. Such an awesome ride it was!

What spoiled the day day for me was that on the way back home, as I was riding along the side of the big canal, I saw a few people peering down as if there’s something really interesting below. Well, it sure caught my interest and I decided to take a peek myself.

What I saw was disappointing! A bird had its feet caught on a piece of rope, probably discarded by some indiscriminate picnicker or angler. Probably exhausted from trying to dislodge the rope, it now lay on the beach by the side of the canal, parched by the hot sun and salty water, awaiting a slow but sure death. Unfortunately (for the bird), the side of the canal was too steep for anyone to attempt to get down to free it.

Just so happens, I had my camera with me and I took a quick clip of the bird, so as to discourage anglers not to discard their rubbish indiscriminately. You never know it can endanger innocent wildlife and even humans. Leave only footprints wherever you go… more so when the place is pristine. Here is the video I took…

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