The Hidden Treasures of Muck Diving

Captured here by the camera of Lisa and Cian O'Fearghail are the tiny creatures that have created a new love of diving in me, totally different from the excitement of seeing sharks, turtles, or barracuda under the water. These are parts of the micro-life of muck diving, tiny inhabitants of corals, anemones, sea fans, sandy bottoms, and other remote habitats on the reef. They are more difficult to find than the large sharks that swim in depths and thus, despite their size, create a big excitement in divers that enjoy looking for them.

Savvy and local divers like to joke that diving on Sipadan is like watching TV. It's hardly a task to find the sharks and turtles and other large life that swim frequently in its waters. These sea slugs, called nudibranchs, aren't so obvious. These picture here are hardly more than an inch long and although they are brightly colored, they are easily over-looked swimming through a lively coral reef. It takes a keen, experienced (or just lucky) eye to find them. When I first was diving on sites such as Bohayan and Sibuan, DMs and other divers would point these out to me I would look around, all over the reef having no idea what I was even looking for.

Lisa and Cian work as Dive Master and manager of Blue View Divers, a dive shop on Koh Phi Phi in Thailand. I was lucky enough to spend my first several dives with them and they helped me look, feel, and act like I knew what I was doing amidst a large group of other divers who already knew very well what nudibranchs are. Thanks to their knowledge, kind helpfulness, and the beautiful pictures they took underwater, I can share these with you.

The micro life isn't exclusively nudibranchs. There is a multitude of other tiny, rare animals that live on the reef. Tiny shrimps often play symbiotic roles of cleaning, tiny crabs scutter about the reef too small to look appetizing, and juvenile fish flutter about swimming foolishly with their minuscule fins (a personal being a juvenile harlequin sweetlips, which might be the most clumsy and frantic of all swimmers in the ocean).

Pictured here is probably the most popular of the micro-life of diving in Semporna: pygmy seahorses. These little things are smaller than your pinky fingernail and they hang about on large sea fans on the reef. They can be terribly difficult to see, let alone photograph, so again I'm amazed Lisa could capture such a fantastic photograph of this one perched on the fan. Pygmy seahorses take care and patience to see. Often there's is a current in the water and to an inexperienced diver, looking extremely close to a large sea fan when there's a strong current could lead to a horrible collision. Also, diving with a number of other people, it's impossible for everyone to take a peek at the same time. Everyone must take turns shoving their mask up close to the seahorses in order to witness them.

Perhaps it's difficult to imagine enjoying watching a tiny, translucent shrimp running on a anenome more than seeing a shark scan the reef for dinner, but more than looking for the big things in the ocean, it is in the search for the smaller creatures that there are always discoveries to be made. These microscopic animals are vital to the reef's function as an ecosystem and watching them live in a tiny spot on a coral reef shows the entire system for what it is, an enormous inter-connected city of complex functions beyond our imagination.

Terima Kasih, Sama Sama

Sandakan is a strange little town. The former capitol of Borneo before WWII, the Japanese reduced it to rubble and today it is rebuilt to little more than a port town and former home of the not-so-famous author, Agnes Keith. Walking around was interesting. A third of the people gave me strange stares, a third of the people smiled at me, and the other third walked by me without notice.
Walking around town with my camera hanging around my neck, several groups of people asked me to take their picture. Some of them spoke English and we talked for a bit, others, for whatever reason, just wanted their picture taken. Here's some of them:
These punks put a lot of effort into the hagard clothes, odd hairdos, and extreme piercings. My favorite: the kid in the white's cut umbrella.
These two ladies worked a tiny restaurant where I had lunch. They also took pictures of me with their camera phones. When I paid, they asked if I could pay them in a single dollar bill instead of 3 Malaysian Ringgit.
These Malaysian dudes stopped me walking down the street just to pose for a pic. No English, nothing other than "photo! photo!" They posed and were on their way.
The back pocket of my shorts had a hole big enough that my wallet would fall out of it. This set up his sewing business on the sidewalk and fixed my pocket in a matter of minutes for 1 RM.
These are fisherman's kids who, when I walked by, were fishing a watermelon out of the filthy water of the Sandakan harbor. These kids loved the camera and loved to see their picture on the display after I took the shots.

Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary

Just over 20 kilometers outside of Sandakan is the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary, a rehibilitaion center created to help re-introduce Orang Utans back to the wild after being displaced by deforestation. Here guests are welcome to watch the two daily feedings in which the great animals swing from the jungle to eat a hefty helping of bananas and milk.Sepilok is one of the few Orang Utan sanctuaries in the entire world. Threatened by extinction, Orang Utans are only found on the islands of Borneo and Java. It is predicted that they could be extinct as early as 2012. That's 5 years away. Less than 7,000 remain in Java and the larger population in Borneo is constantly threatened by the unrelenting creation of palm oil plantations that have taken over an incredible amount of land on the island. The map below shows the remaining areas in the world where Orang Utans live. According to Harvard psychologist, James Lee, Orang Utan's are the world's smartest animal next to human. They use simple tools, build and live in nests often constructed with roofs to cover them from the rain.Orang Utans are the world's biggest tree-living mammal. They rarely come down from the trees and, unlike most other monkeys, do not jump between branches but always swing. They are also more solitary than most other primates, usually only coming together to mate. In Malaysian Orang Utan translates to "man of the forest." They are the official animal of Sabah and their pictures are found all over cities, advertisements, and souvenirs. Ironically, the country and the rest of Borneo has not done enough to ensure the preservation of the species. A bus ride through the Sabah countryside is more than enough cause alarm. Nearly the entire way the mountains and valleys are covered as far as the eye can see with palm oil plantations. I've never in my life seen one crop dominate an entire landscape so fully.
Above is a picture I took while spending 5 days living up the Kintabantagan river in the protected jungle. I was lucky enough to see this Orang Utan in the wild, swinging from tree to tree, stopping to pick and eat some fruit. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about travel is because in the constant change of the world there are many places in the world that won't be the same for much longer. Sadly, Borneo and its population of Orang Utans (as well as pygmy elephants, Sumatran rhinos and other endangered species) is one of these places that are unlikely to last unchanged long enough for my children to see.

The Sandakan Fish Market

Of all the markets I have been to in the world, the Sandakan fish market goes unparalleled in the variety of its catches, the character of its vendors, and its rank smell of its venue in the middle of the day. A breeze blowing through the building made the air bearable. The friendly men selling the fish proudly showed off their goods well aware I wasn't in the market to buy. The fish lying dead on the metal tables were tropical catches of such diversity that, had they been alive, an aquarium could have been opened and charged a hefty admission. Some men still hacked at the fish with butcher's knives, methodically chopping up large barracudas, tunas, groupers, sting rays, sharks, rays, and other fish I was planning to go scuba diving to see a week later in Semporna. When grabbing their whole fish to show potential buys, men secured their grip with a thumb in the fish's eyeball. After presenting the fish, the quickly held it over the scale ready to weigh it and give a price. Those without customers looking called out for attention announcing their cheap prices. When no one looked over their table, the men washed over their fish with buckets of water and cleaned the extra guts and eyeball jelly off the table down to the floor. Some of the fish had been split right through the cranium down the spine and, well, looked far from appetizing. Sharks and rays had tails and fins sliced off, each with the same precision.
The men spoke with limited English but held me in friendly conversation until they said every word in their vocabulary. Most were happy to have their picture taken but made me wait until they could hold up their biggest catch to pose with.
This large barracuda would have been only a tiny fraction of what it would cost in any major city but with no possible way of cooking it -or eating more than a couple small fillets of it- buying it, or any other fish, was out of question.
I never even knew sting rays were good for eating. Evidently some people like them, and there's obviously a specific way of butchering them to get to the good meat. I love seafood, but these were only fascinating, not appetizing.
How these rays were caught, I'm unsure but seeing just one flying through the deep waters on a day of diving makes a boatful of happy divers. Here, they lie having lost their grace a sad sight to any diver.