DAY 1, 4PM
THE telltale blips in the hiss emanating from the receiver's speaker, tells us that the fishing cat is in the area. But it is not close by.

For an hour we scramble through thick brush, crisscross prawn farms and rice fields, step across water channels on bamboo bridges, and wade across ponds, following the signal. Mosquitoes whine around us.

Eventually we come up against a patch of very thick cover. The increased strength of the blips tells us the fishing cat is somewhere in here, within 50m of us.

He is two kilometers from where he was first fitted with the radio collar, two days previously. And he is also outside the protected area of Khao Sam Roi Yot Marine National Park.

"There's no point disturbing him," says "Namfon" Passanan Cutter, who is doing her Masters degree on the ecology of the fishing cat.

One of the increasingly rare fishing cats.
PHOTO: Courtesy of 'Namfon' Passanan Cutter

We are just outside the legal boundaries of KSRY, which in 1966 became Thailand's first marine national park.

The good news of the discovery last year by Namfon that KSRY has more endangered fishing cats than any other area in Thailand – and possibly south east Asia – is tempered by the fact that most of the cats she has recorded on camera or radio collared, spend much of their time outside the boundaries of the protected area.

Collaring one of the fishing cats.
PHOTO: Courtesy of 'Namfon' Passanan Cutter

This is likely the last significant population of the beautiful wild cat left in Thailand, and still they must face perils every day of their lives.

KSRY is an assortment of "karst" outcrops, their lower slopes clothed in dense vegetation, their bases eroded by seawater.

Below is a mosaic of woodland and wetlands, including mangroves, all crusted with fragmented seas shells. Much has been lost to prawn farming, but Thailand’s department of national parks is replanting mangroves in some areas.

DAY 2, 6.30AM
I WANDER down to the beach to take a few pictures of the slow dawn.

Behind me I can hear Pornchai Patumrattanathan tinkering with his Range Rover, which at 38-years-old is only 11 years younger than he is. After my pictures are done I go back and help him load his para motor into the back.

Pornchai is in the frontlines of wildlife conservation in Thailand. A few years ago when researchers in a national park lost track of a radio collared tiger, he flew up strapped into the harness on what I jokingly call his flying motorbike, and purred across the sky above the vast forest, listening on his headphones for the telltale blips of the signal.

He eventually detected it, but it was an estimated 9 kilometres away. Pornchai followed that signal like a homing pigeon, suspended in his harness.

"In the end the tiger was right below me. I took the GPS reading and told the guys on the ground, and they went to the location and found the tiger, alive and well," he told me with a grin.

KSRY is a magical little, 98 sq km gem, with serow roaming the jagged cliffs, dusky and spectacled langurs roaming the leafy trees, and fishing cats ruling the coastal wetlands by night.

Pornchai needs to go up again, to find two fishing cats radio collared by Namfon. She has lost the signals, and fears for the cats. Up in the sky, it will be easier for Pornchai to pick up a signal from a cat possibly in a crevasse or rivulet or hidden among the lower rocky outcrops.

Namfon is worried, because already two of her collared cats have been found dead. A host of problems beset the cats as they struggle to survive in marginal habitat.

Pornchai and I drive to a patch of open ground which offers a clear run. The air is filled with the trills of wild doves. Bits of toilet paper left to float in the air tell us which way the wind is blowing. He straps on boots and helmet.

The antenna which will pick up the signal, is strapped to the frame of the harness. He checks that his hand-held GPS (global positioning system) device is working.

Then as Pornchai braces, a field assistant pulls the starter cord on the motor. It sputters to life, all 210 cc of it. Behind is the colourful parachute laid out on the ground. Pornchai has the throttle with its little red button in one hand. He starts running, pressing the throttle for full power. The huge fan on his back roars. The parachute unfurls perfectly.

Pornchai and his 'flying motorbike'.
PHOTO: Nirmal Ghosh

In just a few metres he is airborne and the sound of the motor dwindles in the sky as he becomes just a blob against the grey monsoon morning.

Pornchai could not complete his mission that day, because it was raining in patches all over the park, and rain and gusts of wind are not happy combinations when you are strapped into the flying motorcycle. But he will try again.

Meanwhile, every day as she trudges the wilderness or writes up her notes and data sheets in her cabin by the quiet sea, Namfon crosses her fingers that the cats will be found alive.

The fishing cat team.
PHOTO: Nirmal Ghosh

Later that evening I interview Namfon on the beach, as the full moon traversed the sky. My tiny recorder picked up the sound of the waves as she spoke about the project.

Listen to the sounds of the waves and Nirmal Ghosh's interview.

Read my full report on Namfon's fishing cat project at The Straits Times online or in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times!