Two Idaho Divers Eaten by Sharks

     Tim and I were working our way around a coral outcropping when we saw two white tip sharks cruising toward us. They turned and swam through the reef heading toward shore. We followed. It wasn’t the first time we had been in the water with sharks ( I have memories of two lawyers in Bonaire and one in Fiji). As the reef closed in from both sides, we lost sight of the white tips and I realized that we were entering a ‘boxed canyon’. As we moved further in and the sides closed up to about six feet; I began to wonder about the wisdom of this move. We were effectively blocking the sharks only escape route. Before I could signal Timothy to back out,  we came face to face with the two white tips. They wanted to go back out to the open ocean and although we couldn’t communicate it to them; that’s what we wanted them to do too! I took several rapid, deep breathes and I’m sure Tim shared my concern. I could see the headlines “Two Idaho Divers Eaten by Sharks!!” Fortunately, the two sharks remained calm (sensing that someone has to in these situations) and lazily moved under us out to open ocean. “Ho hum, more stupid tourist divers.” WELCOME TO SIPADAN!

You can’t get there from here

     Divers from the “Great Potato” have a hard time getting anywhere, but trying to get to Sipadan, a small island off the coast of Borneo, is almost impossible. You really can’t get there from here. Fortunately you can get there from several ‘other places’ and you can get to at least one ‘other place’ from Boise. What was to be a two day trip from Idaho to San Francisco to Manila to Kota Kinabalu (KK), Borneo and finally to Sipadan turned into a three day adventure; starting with a missed flight in San Francisco (there always seems to be problems there).  Over night in San Francisco and negotiate a new flight out the next morning to Seoul Korea. Sit in Korean airport for four hours and get on a flight to Manila arriving ‘I have no idea when’ as I had lost all track of time. Over night in Manila and celebrate the New Year with several hundred cockroaches that are sharing their hotel room with us. Up early the next morning and welcomed to the Manila airport by AK47 toting teenage emissaries of the Government.  Come to agreement with Malaysian air for new tickets to Kota Kinabalu and sit on luggage in outer terminal for six hours. Finally fly into KK and spend two more hours waiting for flight to Sandakan where we find a nice room and comfortable beds and collapse for five hours sleep.

I wake up feeling terrible but the breakfast is good, the sun is shining and the bus is right on schedule to take us to Sepilok, an Orangutan sanctuary. We spend the morning in the sanctuary observing young orangutans feeding and watching films of their re-introduction to the wild.  Orangutans are protected by a fauna conservation ordinance and the animals at Sepilok were confiscated from dealers and private owners. They are reacquainted with and eventually released to the wild.  Back in the bus and on our way to a lodge in the ‘Rain Forest’.

Through this part of Borneo it is evident where the countries foreign export is concentrated; palm oil. Enormous palm tree plantations. Miles

Young Orangutan at Sepilok

and miles of palm trees planted in row upon row over rolling hills of what used to be rain forest. As we bounce, bump and ricochet down the dirt road I realize that I have lost all feeling in my backside, but my real worry is the camera equipment stored below. As we get closer to the river that will be our highway to the Sukau Rain Forest Lodge, the planted palms give way to second growth rain forest. The bulldozers are pushing the plantation farther and what they break down is burning in piles here and there.

Sukau Rain Forest Lodge

As we enter the forest the bus comes to a bone jarring halt; I smash into the seat in front and several people end up in the aisle. Did we hit something? Have we had a horrible accident ? No, the bus driver spotted a monkey and points it out to the group. Cool! Finally we reach the Kinabatangan river.

Up the Kinabatangan without a paddle (powered by Yamaha)

     This was more like it. We were really leaving civilization behind. No roads, no power and lots of large insects; we were in Heaven. We loaded our gear in a 16’ wooden boat and set off on our way up river. Tall trees lined the banks and impenetrable bush fit only for ‘macho men with machetes’ (good name for a rock group, don’t you think?), guarded entrance to the forest. This was the Borneo we had come to see.  The river ride was somewhat shorter than we had expected but the Lodge setting was perfect. A short walk from the dock up a path, “stay on the path we spotted a 10’ cobra last week on the grassy area to your right”,  (won’t have to tell me twice), and we arrive at the Lodge. ‘Take off  your shoes’; this would be standard practice for the rest of the trip. I believe this is a way of saving your shoes as the insects can get directly at your feet without the necessity of boring giant holes in your foot wear.

     We were briefed on proper rain forest etiquette and dining apparel. Oh Boy!, the guys get to wear dresses to dinner! But first a short evening boat ride up the Kinabatangan river and into some of the backwaters. Before the river ride, Tim and I set off on a trail behind the lodge. Dense vegetation  blocks the sun completely in some places. Looking up into the canopy you can see the effects of leaf eating insects as the sun filters through millions of holes in the leaves. Butterflies with wing spreads of 6” and more, float serenely by as 8” centipedes search the grass beside the trail. We discover a small termite mound and note a spider that mimics an ant by holding it’s two front legs up to look like antennae (insects have 6 legs; spiders, arachnids, have 8 legs). So much to see and explore, I am sure we are going to miss most. You would think a biologist would be prepared for the fauna and flora of Borneo but I find myself overwhelmed by the numbers and the diversity of the species we encounter.

     Back to the lodge where I pick up my sun screen and bug repellent and head to the boat. As I sit in the boat I check the ingredients on the repellent and screen. Both contain palm oil……hmmmm….   We spend the next three hours cruising the Kinabatangan and its smaller tributaries and backwaters. Two hornbills fly over us and troops of proboscis monkeys and macques  are viewed in the trees. In the backwaters we turn off the motor and paddle through stagnant  waters lined by heavy vegetation that in some places blacks out the sky.

pictures of the guys in skirts. I pinch myself several times and keep saying things like ‘this is so cool’ to Timothy. He patiently puts up with his father but agrees with the ‘cool’ part.The next morning we are up at 6 a.m. and prepare to leave. The rest of the group is going to Oxbow Lake and will trek through leech infested jungle in search of  local wild life and possibly elephants. Having missed a day because of flight problems we must leave to make connections to Sipadan. On our way we will visit the Gomantong Caves.

To the Bat Cave Robin , and bring your rain coat

     We motor down the Kinabatangan to a different landing from where we initially put in and find two Toyota vans waiting for us. After the traditional ‘whose going where and whose driving for the driver that didn’t show’, we move our gear from van number 1 to van number 2. More conversing and we move our gear from van number 2 back to van number 1.  Off to the caves. As we exit the van I notice other members of the group donning rain gear. Rain gear?, the sky is clear, the sun is shining, what’s this? Tim and I turn out to be the “10% that didn’t get the word”, two words actually : ‘bat’ and ‘guano’. Well at least we remembered hats!

     We trek the ½ to ¾ mile to the caves on a muddy trail. Either my tennis shoes are really ice skates or this is the slickest mud I’ve ever encountered. I make a mental note to bring traction hiking boots next time. Then I observe Timothy, who does have traction hiking boots, and he’s slipping as much as I am.  6” butterflies flit around us as we try to look cool and avoid an embarrassing  face plant in the slick Borneo mud. I decide to raise the stakes and pull my video camera out of my back pack. Running after butterflies with one eye looking through the lens and my feet sliding every which way in the mud, is great fun. The other hikers seem to appreciate it, while the locals disguise their awe by giving the impression that  they’ve seen it all before.

of the natives are allowed to scale the ropes and collect birds nest from the ceiling and sides. These are cleaned and sold for making birds nest soup. As my eyes became more accustomed to the light and especially when our guide shines his flashlight on the floor, I could see that the floor was moving. The guano was covered with insects. Hundreds of thousands of cockroaches and beetles swarmed over their main food source. One of our party decided to leave the cave at precisely that time and did so without her feet touching the ground. She patiently hung around her husbands neck until he reached the entrance. I scooped up a handful of moving floor and brought it closer to the light. The cockroaches were 1 to 1 ½  inches long (quite small by Borneo standards). They had bright yellow legs and trim around their deep brown bodies. I told them we had celebrated the New Year in Manila with several hundred of their cousins, but they seemed unimpressed.   The beetles were black and appeared to belong to the Carabidea family although I couldn’t tell for sure.

From the caves we motor back to Sandakan and are taken to their only five star restaurant for lunch. We have spent several hours in the rain forest and caves and carry remnants of the floor of the cave on our foot wear and pants. I’m sure they were quite impressed with our dress and jungle ‘perfume’. After a great lunch we are dropped at the Sandakan airport and board an Air Malaysian jet for Tawau. We reach there early that evening and check in at the Marco Polo Hotel. After dinner in the hotel restaurant we walk to a nearby market where they have all sort of local merchandise for sale. We seem to be the only non-Asians in the market and perhaps in that section of town as well. We soon have a few children following at a discreet distance. They are pointing and giggling. We try to talk to a few but they are shy and retreat while giggling and pointing.

The next morning we spend another 3 hours on a shuttle bus to Semporna where we meet with Borneo Divers.  Other divers arrived from different parts of Borneo and we are all loaded on a boat and head for Sipadan. Our fellow divers are from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Britain, Taiwan, Japan and one from California.

Barefoot in the sand, I get the point; twice.

     Our launch leaves the harbor after loading all our gear. Everyone seems to have some type of underwater camera system, either still or video. Some of the equipment is quite exotic. We leave the dock and motor out to open ocean. On our way we pass fishermen casting nets and several villages that stand on stilts. These seem to stand on dry land at low tide, while at high tide there is only water under the houses. Some of them are quite far off shore. Very picturesque. After a ninety minute ride we arrive at Sipadan. This is an extremely small island. Tim and I would later walk completely around it in less than thirty minutes. It is absolutely beautiful from the water. A white sand beach with palm trees and vegetation rising to the sky and surrounded by greenish blue, clear water; it is a remarkable site. Although small it houses six resorts, all packed close together on one end. Borneo Divers has the best location as it sits at a deep water area close to shore.

We receive our hut assignment and start ferrying our gear. Our hut has two small beds with an aisle between and one small locker. There is a common bath house 50 yards in back. Everyone we see is barefoot letting their feet enjoy the release from confinement and the great feel of sand between their toes. Although we both brought sandals, they are still in our suitcases that we are going back to retrieve. On our way back to the dining area I feel a sharp pain in my right foot. I jerk it back out of the sand and discover a piece of wood attached firmly to my foot by a large rusty nail. As I pull the nail out I’m wondering how big a problem I have. I’m at least three or four hours from medical help and I’ve run a Sipadan punji stick into my foot, loaded with who knows what exotic Borneo bugs. Fortunately I had a tetanus shot before  leaving Idaho so I hobble back to our hut and dress the wound. Back to the dining area where we pick up the rest of our suit cases (with sandals inside) and head to our shack. My left foot, not to be out done by the right, finds another nail in approximately the same area of the path. I had just about perfected  my right foot limp but now am faced with modifying it to accommodate the new hole in my left. There is no way to limp gracefully on both feet.

For the remainder of our stay I wore my sandals while everyone else, including Timothy, went barefoot. No one else had any experiences with Sipadan punji sticks so I guess the two in one day for me appeased the Sipadan Gods and the rest of the group was spared.

First Dive Disappointment

     We met that afternoon in the dining area to receive our first site orientation. Our first dive would be from the shore in front of the resort. No cameras allowed as the dive master wanted full concentration on diving skills, so he could evaluate the ten divers under his care. Tim and I never take our cameras on the first dive of any of our trips. It’s a rule we decided on eleven years ago and we have not broken it. The first dive of a trip should be to confirm that all the gear is working properly (yes, we do that at home before the trip but traveling can damage dive equipment) and to become accustomed to the area and to the skills of the other divers in our group.  Timothy is a Padi Dive Instructor  and I am a Padi Dive Master and we take this portion of the dive trip very seriously. We want to know the abilities of all the other divers that will be in our group.

     We entered the water near the equipment room and swam about 10 yards to the drop off. As I looked down toward the reef I saw two lion fish swimming a few feet below me at the top of the drop. Pretty cool!, two lion fish and I just got wet. As I dropped over the reef with the rest of the group, disappointment started to set in. The visibility wasn’t very good. It averaged thirty to forty feet and in some places was down to around twenty feet. I was thinking that we had traveled half way around the world to dive in visibility not much better than that offered by Idaho lakes. All the travel brochures said crystal clear water; 100 to 150’ visibility. That wasn’t what we were experiencing now. I couldn’t help wondering if we had made a mistake and should have traveled somewhere else.

So the visibility wasn’t so good, there was a lot to see and a lot of it was new; Sipadan was starting to look a lot better to me as the first dive progressed. As we swam along the wall back toward the resort we encountered our first two white tip sharks (mentioned at the start of this article). As we exited the water we were both very excited and totally thrilled to be diving Sipadan.

     After our first dive we met the rest of our group in the dining area for lunch. There was always plenty of food and usually a couple of options for each meal. We were able to sample some of the local foods as well as having a choice of ‘Americanized’ fare.  For example, we always had rice for dinner, but french fries were available too. After our first lunch we lounged in the dining area for sixty minutes and then went back to the equipment area to get ready for the first boat dive. Because the sites are so close all the divers suit up in the equipment room and then enter the boat ready to go. It is only five to ten minutes to any of the sites. The dive master gives us a description of the site and the dive plan and the boat moves into the reef, we all roll off backwards and the boat moves away to follow our bubbles.

     Underwater photography is not really a group activity. Tim and I made arrangements with our dive master to dive at our own pace. We would enter with the group and surface with them at the end of the dive, but we were on our own in between.  This allowed us to take enough time to set up our shots and get close enough to the sea life for the shots we wanted. Our second dive, first boat dive,  was at Coral Gardens. The visibility was much better (at least 50’). We were promised turtles and we were not disappointed. Green and Hawksbill turtles were everywhere.  We were starting to realize that the general theme of Sipadan diving is ‘quantity’.  It was the exception if you only saw one or two of a particular species. Tim and I were in La Paz, Mexico a couple of years before and we spent several days diving. During that time we saw only two Morrish Idols , here at Sipadan we saw a school of two hundred. Our second dive produced a few  more white tip sharks, as would most of our dives, and we were seeing other species new to us at a pace too fast to mentally process.  Sipadan was winning me over. 

miss the sea life near the surface. They enter the water and immediately head down and when they get back to the boat they get out. I try to spend some time in the shallows as I have learned that there are many species here that you will not see in deeper water. I usually do this at the end of the dive which is an excellent way to do a safety stop without just hanging  out on a line waiting for time to pass. Typically this is the area in which you will see squid, pelagic tunicates (separately and in chains), pipe fish and many, many other species.

     That night after dinner I put my throbbing feet up on the rail and shared a Tiger beer with Timothy. The night is clear and the stars seem especially bright. We watch the giant bats swoop through the trees and listen to the sound of male insects hoping for a chance to mate.  Small waves crash on the beach a few yards away and I get the feeling (except for the two holes in my feet), that this is the way things are suppose to be. Although I have only been away from work for five days it feels like weeks and I wouldn’t mind too much if it lasted a lot longer. We turn in early to get some much needed rest, for tomorrow we get to do it all again.

Becoming a part of the food chain

     Over the next few days we dive all of Sipadans dive sites and then dive some of them a second and third time. One of our most memorable dives is ‘Barracuda Point’, which is aptly named.  The dive master tells us we might see a gray reef or a leopard shark if we go deep. Tim and I both set up for wide angle; he’s using a Nikonus V with a 15mm lens and I have the Nikonus RS with a 13mm. If we see sharks, we believe we are ready. We roll off the boat.

     The entire group starts down the wall as the current takes us toward ‘Barracuda Point’. We go down fast and spend several minutes drifting along at 90’. As is usual we have two or three divers that can’t quite find 90’ and drift along at 100 to 110’. But nobody is seeing sharks and really not too much on the reef at this depth. The group starts up and moves along the reef at a fairly fast rate with the current. Tim and I start up at the same rate as the group but slow our lateral movement by just drifting with the current. We soon lose sight of the group. I’m taking some daylight exposures shooting up through the coral to get silhouettes in the sunlight above. Tim pokes me in the side and points down. I turn just in time to see a large leopard shark swim up under us. I swing my camera down and take a quick shot on automatic. I hear the shutter click …click and realize I am stopped down too far. I quickly open the aperture, but I’m too late, he’s gone. The picture turns out looking like a transparent white dish cloth on a blue background, but the caudal fin is clearly visible (twice actually) and recognizable as a leopard shark so I leave it in my Borneo slide show tray.  It was the only leopard shark we would see on the trip.

As we near the top of the reef we are in about 20’of water. The other divers in our group are watching a large school of Tuvali. Timothy and I move up near them and as our courage increases we move into the school. All eyes of the metallic fish seem to follow our every move. Fortunately we have film left and start snapping away. The school circles around us watching us closely and staying a discrete distance away. Making as little movement as possible we swim in and with the school as it swirls slowly around the top of the reef. Suddenly they are gone.

Tuvali

I look over my left shoulder and see a large school of barracuda. Other divers later told me that there were 1000 to 2000 fish in the school. I didn’t count them, but there was a great number. We watched as the school slowly circled the top of the reef. They were watching  

School of Barracuda

 us closely. You can’t help but be intimidated by thousands of mouths with large needle sharp teeth, but chances to swim with a school of these fish are rare and we move into the school. They keep a discrete distance, only approaching me as close as five feet. Timothy points in back of me and I turn slowly around. From this side, where they can’t see my eyes, the distance has narrowed to one foot. I take several pictures as they move back out to the five foot range. I’m close enough to see their eyes clearly. I watch as each fish eye follows even my slightest move. The sunlight flashes off their silvery bodies and their needle like teeth. I wonder if their sizing me up for their next meal and realize that if it’s me they want, there’s nothing to stop them.  I look up and see that they have formed a circle around me. I am cut off from the rest of the divers as I swim in the eye of a slow-motion barracuda tornado. With my camera out of film, I float in the center of a school of  some of the most efficient predators nature has produced. I contemplate my place in this scenario and realize that I don’t belong. My air is getting low and I must surface.

     I drop five feet and move out the bottom of the circle and join the other divers in my group. We all watch as the school moves slowly off down the reef.  Our dive master uses a neat trick to attract our boat. He turns his alternate air second stage up toward the surface and pushes the purge button. The boiling water at the surface can be easily seen even in heavy, choppy water and I have used it many times since then to let boats know there are divers below them.