UK Diving Conservation

Until the dust settles, few are willing to predict the outcome but most are happy with the move. 'It had to happen,' says Ron Holland, the unassuming Mancunian who discovered Sipadan as a diving destination. A former saturation diver and explorer of the Celebes Sea, Holland was sidelined when Cousteau claimed credit for the discovery in his documentary on the island's famous Turtle Tomb Cavern. As it was, Holland helped to set up Borneo Divers, the first dive centre on the island, and today is a very active director of the company.

'It couldn't go on as before,' he says. 'What I care about, and always have, is the island itself. We have a duty to protect it, not exploit it. So much was going on that made me worry about Sipadan's future that it's a relief that, finally, the authorities have moved. Now we can protect the island - now it has a future.'

Holland readily admits that the exact nature of that future is far from clear and is adamant that Borneo Divers will fight tooth and nail to protect its interests on the island. Just how the six operators will share the quota of tourists is a matter of heated negotiation at this time and Holland refuses to be drawn on the subject of how many operators he expects to be in business in a year's time.

'Before I set up the first Borneo Divers centre here, the place was blighted with dynamite fishing, the coral was covered in fishing line - the marine life wasn't anything like it is today. Tourism has had a beneficial effect on Sipadan, but the numbers have got to be kept in check. We have to work it out.'

There was a pessimistic school of thought that predicted that Sipadan would continue to be plundered until it was no longer of any value to the profiteers, in the same way that unrestrained logging operations have destroyed much of Sabah's rainforest. For the time being, however, Sipadan's underwater paradise can still rank among the best dives on the planet. Anyone staying there for just a few days will see dense clouds of reef fish and jacks, spiralling barracuda and at least three different species of shark, as well as countless macro opportunities. Sipadan's huge strength is that it is still one of the most varied tropical dive sites in the world.

There has been widespread damage of the staghorn coral at Barracuda Point, probably where photographers with no buoyancy skills have floundered in their attempts to achieve silhouette shots of the schooling fish. Otherwise, studies show that coral has flourished around Sipadan in recent years. But the level of concentrated tourism could not have been sustained. The three longest-established schools - Borneo Divers, Pulau Sipadan Resort and Sipadan Dive Centre - were officially endorsed by the state authorities. The three others, Sipadan Lodge, Abdilla's and Pulau Bajau Resort, do not have complete authorisation to operate on the island.

Sipadan's most famous residents, the hawksbill and green turtles, have become symbols of the island's fecundity. Officially, three-quarters of the island is set aside as a haven for the turtles: visitors are supposedly confined to the vicinity of their resorts from 7pm to 6am to allow the sensitive reptiles to lay their eggs, in darkness and undisturbed. In practice, however, the curfew has been frequently broken, and many traumatised turtles have abandoned their eggs on top of the sand, never to hatch. The divemasters - who effectively police the island - are simply too scared for their jobs to have a real 'go' at the paying customers, who stand there with their cameras flashing away in the faces of the poor animals who are attempting to give birth.

A survey carried out in 1994 recorded 1,500 turtle nestings in a year, each containing about 100 eggs. No subsequent surveys or direct comparisons have been carried out, but prolific nesting is now widely believed to have decreased because of shoreline development, and there have been recent reports of turtles uncharacteristically laying their eggs on nearby Mabul. Mabul itself is also being increasingly developed, and is marketed internationally under the name Sipadan Water Resort, despite the fact that it is not an oceanic island and cannot offer wildlife on the same scale as its commercial namesake - and is now banned from visiting Sipadan with day boats.

Ron Holland does his best to protect the turtles that helped establish his business. He recently joined forces with Pulau Sipadan Resort and Sipadan Dive Centre to buy up the government's concessions on turtle-egg collection, but he despairs of the lack of a co-ordinated approach to protect the island and its reptiles.

The three centres set up a hatchery system, in which turtle nests are exhumed and the eggs reburied in a central location where rangers can watch out for newborn turtles. The scheme is well intentioned, says Holland, but fails to take the complexity of nature into account. When the hatchlings emerge from their shells, a genetic command tells them to scramble off to the water: put them in a tank and their fins will continue to work furiously even as they bump against walls, gradually losing their energy like clockwork toys. When the time for release finally comes, many of them seem listless and confused. There again, that may be due to the bank of snorkelling photographers waiting in the shallows with their macro framers poised.

'In retrospect, I don't approve of the turtle hatchery,' Holland says, pointing out another snag: 'The sex of the turtles is determined by the depth at which the eggs are laid and the temperatures they incubate at, and that is practically impossible to simulate. For all anyone knows, thousands of turtles of the same sex are being reared.'

More trouble arises with the release of the hatchling turtles. Something of a ritual photo-opportunity for tourists at the end of the day (just before that other attraction on the Sipadan diary: sunset), there are fears that jacks, white-tip reef sharks and other predators have also become conditioned to the regular 'feeding time', and a disproportionate percentage of hatchlings are being picked off as a result.

Even with so many problems, however, it is wise to keep a sense of perspective about Sipadan's predicament - all has not already been lost. Stories may have appeared in some Asian publications claiming that the island is losing a foot of shoreline every month and 'collapsing in on itself', but such speculation has not come from official scientific sources and has not been substantiated.

The Malaysian governent recently completed constructing the tallest buildings in the world as a symbol of the country's prosperity. In Sipadan, the Malaysians have an opportunity to maintain and protect an underwater haven that is already the envy of the world - pretty good PR by anyone's standards. Clearly, they have taken heed of the growing fears of many about Sipadan's future and have at last acted with decisiveness. Now, they are obliged to make the new regulations work.

Sipadan the problems	Page 1 \| 2
Until the dust settles, few are willing to predict the outcome but most are happy with the move. 'It had to happen,' says Ron Holland, the unassuming Mancunian who discovered Sipadan as a diving destination. A former saturation diver and explorer of the Celebes Sea, Holland was sidelined when Cousteau claimed credit for the discovery in his documentary on the island's famous Turtle Tomb Cavern. As it was, Holland helped to set up Borneo Divers, the first dive centre on the island, and today is a very active director of the company. 'It couldn't go on as before,' he says. 'What I care about, and always have, is the island itself. We have a duty to protect it, not exploit it. So much was going on that made me worry about Sipadan's future that it's a relief that, finally, the authorities have moved. Now we can protect the island - now it has a future.' Holland readily admits that the exact nature of that future is far from clear and is adamant that Borneo Divers will fight tooth and nail to protect its interests on the island. Just how the six operators will share the quota of tourists is a matter of heated negotiation at this time and Holland refuses to be drawn on the subject of how many operators he expects to be in business in a year's time. 'Before I set up the first Borneo Divers centre here, the place was blighted with dynamite fishing, the coral was covered in fishing line - the marine life wasn't anything like it is today. Tourism has had a beneficial effect on Sipadan, but the numbers have got to be kept in check. We have to work it out.' There was a pessimistic school of thought that predicted that Sipadan would continue to be plundered until it was no longer of any value to the profiteers, in the same way that unrestrained logging operations have destroyed much of Sabah's rainforest. For the time being, however, Sipadan's underwater paradise can still rank among the best dives on the planet. Anyone staying there for just a few days will see dense clouds of reef fish and jacks, spiralling barracuda and at least three different species of shark, as well as countless macro opportunities. Sipadan's huge strength is that it is still one of the most varied tropical dive sites in the world. There has been widespread damage of the staghorn coral at Barracuda Point, probably where photographers with no buoyancy skills have floundered in their attempts to achieve silhouette shots of the schooling fish. Otherwise, studies show that coral has flourished around Sipadan in recent years. But the level of concentrated tourism could not have been sustained. The three longest-established schools - Borneo Divers, Pulau Sipadan Resort and Sipadan Dive Centre - were officially endorsed by the state authorities. The three others, Sipadan Lodge, Abdilla's and Pulau Bajau Resort, do not have complete authorisation to operate on the island. Sipadan's most famous residents, the hawksbill and green turtles, have become symbols of the island's fecundity. Officially, three-quarters of the island is set aside as a haven for the turtles: visitors are supposedly confined to the vicinity of their resorts from 7pm to 6am to allow the sensitive reptiles to lay their eggs, in darkness and undisturbed. In practice, however, the curfew has been frequently broken, and many traumatised turtles have abandoned their eggs on top of the sand, never to hatch. The divemasters - who effectively police the island - are simply too scared for their jobs to have a real 'go' at the paying customers, who stand there with their cameras flashing away in the faces of the poor animals who are attempting to give birth. A survey carried out in 1994 recorded 1,500 turtle nestings in a year, each containing about 100 eggs. No subsequent surveys or direct comparisons have been carried out, but prolific nesting is now widely believed to have decreased because of shoreline development, and there have been recent reports of turtles uncharacteristically laying their eggs on nearby Mabul. Mabul itself is also being increasingly developed, and is marketed internationally under the name Sipadan Water Resort, despite the fact that it is not an oceanic island and cannot offer wildlife on the same scale as its commercial namesake - and is now banned from visiting Sipadan with day boats. Ron Holland does his best to protect the turtles that helped establish his business. He recently joined forces with Pulau Sipadan Resort and Sipadan Dive Centre to buy up the government's concessions on turtle-egg collection, but he despairs of the lack of a co-ordinated approach to protect the island and its reptiles. The three centres set up a hatchery system, in which turtle nests are exhumed and the eggs reburied in a central location where rangers can watch out for newborn turtles. The scheme is well intentioned, says Holland, but fails to take the complexity of nature into account. When the hatchlings emerge from their shells, a genetic command tells them to scramble off to the water: put them in a tank and their fins will continue to work furiously even as they bump against walls, gradually losing their energy like clockwork toys. When the time for release finally comes, many of them seem listless and confused. There again, that may be due to the bank of snorkelling photographers waiting in the shallows with their macro framers poised. 'In retrospect, I don't approve of the turtle hatchery,' Holland says, pointing out another snag: 'The sex of the turtles is determined by the depth at which the eggs are laid and the temperatures they incubate at, and that is practically impossible to simulate. For all anyone knows, thousands of turtles of the same sex are being reared.' More trouble arises with the release of the hatchling turtles. Something of a ritual photo-opportunity for tourists at the end of the day (just before that other attraction on the Sipadan diary: sunset), there are fears that jacks, white-tip reef sharks and other predators have also become conditioned to the regular 'feeding time', and a disproportionate percentage of hatchlings are being picked off as a result. Even with so many problems, however, it is wise to keep a sense of perspective about Sipadan's predicament - all has not already been lost. Stories may have appeared in some Asian publications claiming that the island is losing a foot of shoreline every month and 'collapsing in on itself', but such speculation has not come from official scientific sources and has not been substantiated. The Malaysian governent recently completed constructing the tallest buildings in the world as a symbol of the country's prosperity. In Sipadan, the Malaysians have an opportunity to maintain and protect an underwater haven that is already the envy of the world - pretty good PR by anyone's standards. Clearly, they have taken heed of the growing fears of many about Sipadan's future and have at last acted with decisiveness. Now, they are obliged to make the new regulations work.
Previous Page
© COPYRIGHT Dive International for personal use only