Scuba Sipadan

Because everybody hates the tourist (Pulp, Common People)

I was sitting on a porch in the front of Scuba Sipadan dive shop and following the action. People were running around, browsing papers and test shouting names. No-one replied. Most of the people demonstrated various degree of confusion. One voluble English girl was complaining about unprofessionalism and the worst dive shop in the world. One of the instructors was sighing loudly. An other one was very concentrated on smoking. It was not the easiest morning for Scuba Sipadan.

One of the reasons why I chose Scuba Sipadan from many dive operators was that it was the only IDC (Instuctor Developement Centre) in Borneo. I wanted to check it out. Maybe I would have liked to come back and possibly learn more about teaching diving. After hearing all the stories, I don't want to do it here. The staff is complaining. Some of them are not getting paid anymore. The customers are complaining. They are feeling being ripped off and forced to dive at worse dive sites. In the diving business world a shop like that cannot exist very long. Not even, if it would have the desired PADI 5-star IDC rating. Customers are escaping. It seems that Scuba Sipadan has turned from one of the most respected dive shops in Borneo to the most unwanted one. Every other shop has booked Sipadan for months ahead. At Scuba Sipadan one can get a spot after diving two days in the other places. Booking less than a week ahead. Althought the staff are professional and very, very experienced, it's not easy to work in a dive shop, where the management does not care about anything else than money. The problem seems to be the managers wife, who actually owns the whole place. She just can't run the business. The shop is diving into deep waters.

However, back to the story. Finally after an hour of fixing, customers complaining, changing boats and the managers wife looking stupid and angry at the same time we managed to depart for my first dive drip to Semporna Marine National Park. We would not to Sipadan this time (since I had to have those two days elsewhere), but to Sibuan, an island nearby. After twenty minutes of driving (and listening the voluble English girl complaining) we arrived to the most lovable island in the world. It was just like those paradise islands in the TV.
Yellow sand, coconut trees, small huts and turquoise lagoon. There was a Bajau sea gibsy community living on the island. Their kids were running naked on the beaches. Small hand-made boats were resting on the shore. The sea was as calm as in a small lake on a windless summer day. Sun was shining and the sky was blue. The diving was something different.

It was like hiking in a graveyard. A bomb field. Sand everywhere. Once living coral reef was turned into small gray pieces of stone. The pieces were covering the slopes as far as one could see. There was lots of confused looking small fish trying to hide between the dead coral fragments. Some living soft corals, occasional chunks of living reef, few turtles, a lion fish, sea urchins, mandarin fish hiding under the urchins, one sea snake, quite lot of plastic wrappings, glass bottles and cigarette buds. That's about it.

I was especting quite a bit more. Of course it was beautiful in a sad way, but it was supposed to be something over the scale. I had seen enough dead reef on Koh Tao.

However, there was a reason for the destruction. As in so many other reef places, also here the locals had found an effective way to fish. Dynamite.

Dynamite fishing was banned already years ago, but still some small scale bombardment was going on. No matter how hard the army and police was trying to guard the area. People needs to eat. Sea gibsies were apparently doing whatever to ensure their food supply. Can't blame them. It's their home. They don't have the education to understand the impact of their acts. That coral need hundreds of years to form a new reef even without any human impact at all.

Borneo is apparently a land of destroyed nature.