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Lost Cities and Undiscovered Gardens

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Labyrinth at anchor

April found Pulau Tioman bidding farewell to an unusually dry north-east monsoon. Having seen little rain since January, the many waterfalls that spilled from the high mountains towering over this jungle island were dry and, without the constant sediment they usually carried into the ocean, the seas were incredibly clear and coloured an incandescent turquoise as if they were from a painted postcard.

I could look between Labyrinth’s hulls and see the sea bottom twenty metres below, where schools of rainbow runners evaded predatory trevelly with great flashy manoeuvres, the sun glinting on their silvery sides as if they were a thousand tiny mirrors racing for their lives.

I was on the way back from Rengis Island in the dinghy on April first when I found an absolute monster of a ghostnet drifting towards the reef. Although Pulau Tioman is a marine park and fishing is forbidden, there is nothing to stop debris and rubbish drifting in from elsewhere and this mess had been in the sea for a while. It was an enormous bundle of rope, floats and nets, with huge basketball sized sponges welding individual chunks together like concrete.

Net panel

L-R: The net from below; the net from above; Jolene gets to work; James with the net, bagged’n'tagged

These nets are a nightmare for yachties and boatowners, catching in props and fouling keels, but the real damage is the ecological havoc they leave in their wake. The nets continue to catch fish, which in turn act as bait to larger fish which are themselves caught. The trailing ropes tangle in coral, which is then destroyed when wind and waves wrench the net free.

The net was upstream  from Rengis, a beautiful reef that is one of the best places to see sharks and turtles in these waters, and I knew I had to get it out of the water once and for all. After a few false starts I recruited James from Tioman Dive  Centre to help and we eventually got the whole mess into the dinghy. It weighed at least a hundred and fifty kilos and my dinghy was barely able to haul it into shore.  Finally we got it on land and we could cut it up.

This was easier said than done as the ropes were tough old nylon, covered in marine growth and slime. Knifes and scissors weren’t making a dent but it found it hard to argue with the brute force of the firewood axe and by the end of the afternoon (and with the help of some random German tourists shanghaied from their beach walk) we had the whole mess bagged up and ready for disposal.

That night the whole gang was down on the beach for a BBQ and bonfire. Our friend Chot, the long suffering bartender at the Tioman Cabana was departing the island to spend some time with his family and we were determined to see him off in style.

 

The gang's all here

It was one of those great nights you have on the island, with a clear sky speckled with stars lying like gems across a jewellers velvet cloth. The greatest gem of all was Jupiter which lay overhead like the diamond in the centre of a crown. All our friends were there, Chot and other Malays from the island, Rosie, Claire, James and the rest of the crew from Tioman Dive Centre and yachties from the Marina.

Anet, who worked with Chot, barbequed chicken drumsticks over the coals of the fire and eskies full of beer and wine were quickly emptied. Later in the night we moved into the water and splashed in the shallows where the bioluminescence in the water flared and glowed around our feet, lighting us with a pale fire that mirrored the Milky Way above.

A few days later we took Labyrinth out to Coral Island. It was three weeks since we had discovered the Cuttlefish mating grounds and we were eager to see if their eggs had hatched.  It was a beautiful clear day, with high clouds drifting like spider silk on the light northerly breeze. We were anchored in our usual site by late afternoon and a quick snorkel up the top of the bay showed the cuttlefish eggs still there, hidden deep within the coral like so many ping pong balls. We could see tiny infant cuttlefish curled inside them, their dark eyes peering back up at us through the milky skin of their miniature prisons.

The next day we investigated the southern side of the bay, where a great cascade of boulders tumbled down from the ridge into the shallows around the point.  To our delight we found it to be a coral wonderland. Only five or six metres in depth in most places, it was a garden of staghorn and lettuce coral surrounding large bommes and coral towers rising almost to the surface, each one a skyscraper home to millions of coral polyps and dozens of fish and other creatures. An enormous cowtail ray hid in the shadows under a boulder, surrounded by half a dozen smaller blue spotted rays, who glided away at our approach like a strange fleet of UFOs surrounding their mothership.

We knew this area was unexplored by local scuba divers, with only the local fisherman visiting hoping to poach a lobster or two, so we decided to spend the next few days exploring Lobster Gardens, as we christened it.

The point was exposed to the ocean current and a falling tide could drift us out making the return to the dinghy and Labyrinth a tiring and risky proposition. I wanted to place the dinghy on the point so that we could explore the Gardens knowing the dinghy was downrange of us. That way if we were caught in a current we would be taken to the dinghy and be able to escape; but I didn’t want to anchor the dinghy as the same currents would drag the anchor, damaging the pristine coral garden.

The answer to my problem lay just beneath us. There has been numerous attempts over the years to set up the West Bay as a mooring place for yachts and the bottom is littered with scores of discarded concrete blocks, their buoys long gone, ranging from smaller ones weighing a hundred kilos up to giant metre-by-metre sized ones weighing tons.

We decided to move one of these smaller ones over to the garden and place it in a bare patch. That way we would always have a secure place to tie up the dinghy, certain that the dinghy would not move and there would be no chance of any anchor damage.

We soon found a suitable block – just under Labyrinth’s anchorage, in about twenty metres of water, not too much marine growth with a secure metal ring cemented firmly in place and, most importantly, weighing no more than  a hundred kilos.

Of course the next problem is how do you lift a hundred kilo block from twenty metres of water? We did not have a suitably large dive lift bag but I had developed a technique I wanted to test.

We dived down and fixed a ten metre rope with a buoy on it to the block. I attached a lift contraption I made from blocks and lines to the buoy and winched down empty twenty litre jerries, clipping them onto the buoy until enough were down until they overcame the block’s weight and it rose to the surface.

L-R: Winching the jerries down; the block floats!; curious fish investigate this new addition

L-R: Winching the jerries down; the block floats!; curious fish investigate this new addition

It took us about four hours but late that afternoon  the block was floating under a bundle of jerries, looking for all the world like a cube shaped balloon salesman.

Then it was simply a case of moving it into position with the dinghy and, with a final check of the bottom to make sure there were no hapless critters beneath, the rope was released and the block plummeted into position. Immediately scores of curious fish rushed in from all directions to investigate this new feature and we returned to Labyrinth, tired but satisfied that we now had a safe new dive site to explore.

Later that week we were heading along the coast in the dinghy when I looked down and saw an amazing sight. The water was about ten metres in depth and crystal clear and I had the most incredible sensation that I was in a helicopter flying over a city, as there below us were dozens of strange concrete structures – towers and pyramids – spread out across the bottom of the bay. We jumped in and found that was the case – concrete ziggurat structures were arranged in streets and avenues, looking like the lost city of Atlantis.

L-R: Atlantis rediscovered!; Exploring the ruins; A fish eye view

L-R: Atlantis rediscovered!; Exploring the ruins; A fish eye view

We decided this must have been an attempt to establish an artificial reef that had failed as there was only minimal coral growth. But there was plenty of fish life,  hiding in the hollow structures and watching us cautiously as we dove and snorkeled through their peculiar home. It was yet another half-started abandoned venture, like the science facility we found last year overgrown in the jungle, that dot the islands around Malaysia. Discovering these ruins, usually less than twenty years old, is always a surreal adventure and I wonder what it would be like to discovered something truly abandoned by a civilisation thousands of years ago, rather than by a failed businessman  a couple of decades past.

April_netremoval2We also found yet another net caught up on the reef near Atlantis. This one was a light nylon net that lay across the reef like a blanket. Algae was growing on the threads of the net, causing it to smother and suffocate the coral below. This one was far more finicky to remove as we did not want to damage the surviving coral beneath but we did it and got another death trap out of the water.

April_Coralcrab

Citizen Snips!


I was cutting out a strange lump of coral when it suddenly moved and lunged at me with a claw. What I thought was rock was in fact an old and extremely irate coral crab, trussed up in the net like an Christmas turkey. He was perfectly helpless there and who could say how long he had been caught – he was missing one claw and several legs had been wrenched off in his attempts to free himself. We carefully snipped away the web he was caught in, while avoiding his single remaining giant claw (on second thoughts, we should have freed his claw last) but after a while he was released and we placed him a quiet corner of the reef to recuperate and regain his strength.

A week later we headed back to Coral Island to explore the Lobster Gardens. It was also the night of a projected meteor shower and we hoped they would be more spectacular in the darkness of the uninhabited island.  Just after we left the marina a pod of dolphins joined us. They love Labyrinth, possibly since she is a trimaran so they get three bow waves to ride instead of just one! They always bring us good fortune and I was happy for their company.

The meteor shower was a non-event but our efforts to move the block were vindicated when I checked out Lobster Garden the next morning and immediately encountered eight giant  bumphead parrotfish. These are huge fish, over a metre and a half long but tall and solid. They eat coral, crushing it with the powerful jaws and excreting a fine white powder once they have extracted the coral polyps. It is this fine white powder that makes up the  beautiful white sand that so many people visit the tropics to see, probably unaware that it had once passed through a fish’s gut!

That night we went back to the Lobster Garden to see what came out once the sun had set. It felt like we were visiting an amusement park after dark.  The structure was the same but strange in a somewhat sinister way. Fish slept wedged in between rocks and under bommes, sometimes encased in a cocoon of mucus. The night animals were out and we saw tiny graceful Bamboo Cat sharks feeling their way between the spins of sea urchins with all the elegance of their feline namesakes.

Jolene discovered a yellow spotted Fimbriated Moray eel curling around a coral spire, flexing its impressively toothed jaws in the current and I found a tiny orangutan crab browsing in the stag horn coral. This coin shaped creature gets its name from its orange hair.

April_nightdive

L-R: Fimbriated Moray shows us his chompers; a Bamboo Cat shark takes a rest; either an Orangutan crab or Bigfoot

The month came to its end as Aprils always do with Australians with ANZAC Day, a day of remembrance and reflection on those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice during military service during wars, conflict and peacetime operations.  No matter where we are in the world, we always mark the day and this year was no different. There was only a few of us but the important thing was that we were there and we stopped to remember. We said a few words on what the day meant to us, played the Last Post, had a minutes silence followed by Roust (Revielle).

April_anzac

We sat on the beach and watched the day creep bright as the sun rose into the sky, reflecting on the beauty of the natural world and how lucky we were to be able to experience it as we did.

 

 

 

 


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