Diving in Southeast Asia. David Espinosa
shorter.
A green turtle resting on a hard coral outcrop in Sipadan, Sabah.
Mandarin fish are one of Southeast Asia’s most colorful marine species. They are a shy species during day time and hide away amidst the base of corals.
Southeast Asia is also a great destination for continuing your diver training. Advanced open water courses are common as arespecialty courses and rescue courses. For those seeking training beyond recreational levels, Southeast Asia is home to a booming industry in professional level courses with divemaster courses and internships widely available and instructor level courses available in most major diving regions. The prices for professional level courses compare very favorably to prices in Western countries.
ECO-SENSITIVITY
Another improvement in the dive scene over the last three decades is the growing awareness of environmental concerns which touch not only the experiences of recreational divers but the lives of locals and the flora and fauna. Deforestation, discharge of sewage, oil and refuse in the sea, destructive fishing methods as well as coral and shell collection have also all come under the environmental spotlight in Asia.
While lifestyles have not radically changed, some of the destructive practices have been curtailed and local governments have begun to set up marine reserves to encourage the regeneration of the marine environment. Of course, mangrove swamps that have been suffocated by silt do not recover overnight, nor do coral reefs that have been blasted by dynamite or repeatedly broken up by anchors and fins. But recover they do, albeit more slowly than from the blanket damage inflicted by natural disasters, and the results are encouraging. The marine environment rarely returns to what it was before damage but it does recover and proliferate.
WHERE TO DIVE AND WHY
So where do divers head for and what can they expect to find in Southeast Asia?
In Malaysia, most diving has been centered from the east coast and Sabah, in Indonesia from Bali and Manado, across to Flores and beyond to West Papua, in the Philippines from Batangas and the Visayas, and on the Gulf of Thailand and Phuket.
MALAYSIA In Malaysia, the development of an infrastructure on a number of east coast islands has made it easy for dive enthusiasts to enjoy some of the best coral reefs, while the country’s premier dive spot in the deep waters off Sabah has developed into a real dive destination. Off Sabah too, the oceanic reef Layang-Layang has developed into a world-class destination for dive enthusiasts.
INDONESIA With far-flung islands, Indonesia has developed resorts in tandem with the establishment of regular air connections, and in many of these diving and snorkeling are given priority. An improving network of domestic air carriers has made many areas more accessible and liveaboard boats have also made an impact, offering divers the chance to explore really remote areas like the Banda Sea, Raja Ampat and West Papua and numerous other small island chains across the archipelago.
THE PHILIPPINES The diving fraternity in the Philippines has benefited from a burgeoning infrastructure in the smaller island destinations and a proliferation of liveaboard boats that explore the Sulu Sea. The retreat of the US military opened once off-limits areas to the public along with some fantastic wreck diving.
THAILAND In the search for pristine locations and big pelagics, Phuket-based operators have pushed out into the Andaman Sea as far as the Andaman Islands themselves, which are in Indian waters, and to the Mergui Archipelago in Burmese waters (Myanmar). They have also forged southward, toward the Malaysian border, where they have discovered, like their pioneering colleagues from Pattaya, untouched coral reefs and forgotten wrecks.
Juvenile round-faced batfish (Platax orbicularis) can be quite inquisitive.
DIVE TOPOGRAPHY
Most Southeast Asian reefs are fringing reefs, and most diving will be along the outer reef edge, often quite close to shore. The profile is sometimes gently sloping, and sometimes full of bommies and coral heads. But the region is perhaps most famous for its steep drop-offs, particularly in Indonesia and the Philippines. The wall at Bunaken near Manado is world famous, and Menjangan, Komodo, Kupang, the Bandas, Selayar Island, Weda Bay in Halmahera and Sangalaki also feature steep drop-offs.
The Philippines offers plenty of good walls—at Verde, Anilao, Nasugbu and Apo as well as a dozen more places. Malaysia offers fabulous walls at Sipadan and Layang-Layang, and even tiny Tenggol off Peninsular Malaysia offers a good one.
The Seven Seas liveaboard is a traditional Indonesian-style phinisi vessel that operates in both Komodo and Raja Ampat, Indonesia.
While not particularly widespread, Southeast Asia also has its fair share of wrecks. There are numerous war graves and vessels lost during World War II off Pattaya in Thailand and in the bay at Coron in the Philippines, and there are easily dived wrecks off Manado and Bali in Indonesia. There are also fishing vessels that have met an untimely end and even the odd dive boat or two.
In some places, artificial wrecks (tires, old buses and broken boats) have been sunk to encourage regeneration of reefs and their associated fauna. Singapore has done this outside its harbor waters. The Philippines and Thailand have also adopted this method.
You’ll find that diving in Southeast Asia is generally on the continental shelf but oceanic diving is possible too. This inevitably entails a trip on a liveaboard.
LIVEABOARD DIVING
Liveaboard dive boats have made a big impact on the scope and range of diving. In Indonesia, liveaboard operations take divers to the Banda Sea, the islands north of Manado, the Raja Ampat Islands of West Papua, and Komodo and other islands in the Nusa Tenggara provinces. Yacht chartering is becoming popular in Bali with holidaymakers who also enjoy diving. In the Philippines, the fabulous reefs at Apo and those of Tubbataha, Jessie Beazley and Basterra are only accessible by liveaboards while other liveaboards and chartered yachts ply the small islands of the Visayas and Palawan. So do yachts and dive vessels in Sabah, Malaysia, that offer diving in remote offshore areas, while yachts and small motor boats (often converted fishing vessels) offer diving trips in Malaysian and the northern Indonesian waters from Singapore. Phuket, especially, has developed this industry, building new marinas to accommodate charter yachts and dive vessels. And, if you want to, you can dive in the Mergui Archipelago from Thailand, discover the reefs off the southeast coast by the Cambodian border in the Gulf of Thailand, or head for the almost virgin territory of the Andaman Islands. Well-equipped liveaboards are the only answer to reaching these remote areas.
When diving first started in the region, it was a cheap hobby once you had bought a regulator and other basic gear. Today, the relationship between learning to dive, buying the gear and getting going has changed. The gear is getting more sophisticated but less costly, dive courses are becoming more competitively priced and the cost of diving itself is getting more expensive, mainly because today’s diver is a more sophisticated animal and not the hardy aficionado of yesteryear. In the Practicalities section at the end of this book you will be able to see how the cost of diving compares through the region.
Indonesian reefs are so rich that on a single spot one can find soft corals, sponges, hydroids, four species of algae and five species of tunicates.
Best of all, there are still many areas in Asia to be charted, let alone developed as dive destinations—areas that have, up to now, discouraged tourism and development, places that were off-limits for political or commercial reasons, and spots where transport was almost non-existent. But it is only a matter of time before these virgin areas open up to enthusiastic divers.
—Fiona