The north tip of Pom
Pom island (Semporna, Sabah, Malaysia) is a wall dive with the best
wall starting at 30m. The reef crest at the north end of the Pom Pom
reef wall has a large flat plateau The current splits at this point
and there is a choice to swim either W around the N tip wall or East
around the Fleavie wall.
The boat ties to the
mooring and we kit up. Quick check of the current direction and last
minute gear checks and we are off.
Backwards roll dive
entry into 3-4m of water next to a large mushroom shaped bommie and a
large area covered with bottle reefs planted by TRACC. The reef
slope is covered with rubble and macrolife such as nudibranchs and
frogfish can be found. Our dive is to go deep, so we pass rapidly
across this shallow dive site down to 20m. A quick ok and then we
curve off to the left and down a gully. The visibility is awesome at
least 40 and maybe 50m and the wall looms up some way in front. The
currrent has started to pick up and there are increasing numbers of
small schooling fish. Big black coral bushes (“I must remember
to ask the TRACC scientists why black !!! coral is actually red or
white or green”) and a school of bannerfish mark mark the end
of the gulley. I learn later that in 2012 when TRACC first surveyed
the island of Pom pom, there were 3 of these schooling bannerfish.
Now they are impossible to count. Everything is so approachable,
the current is quite strong and all the fish are facing the current
looking for food and ignoring the divers. A shoal of bait fish swims
past and the big fish follow, 2 giant trevally, a small group of no
idea (rainbow runners – id later from the photos) and a larger
school of the bluefin trevally. I stop on the corner of the wall and
try to get a good photo of the red tooth triggers when the school of
big eye trevally swims past. Not worried by the 4 or was it 5
species of trevally, the small fish suddenly scatter. Swimming along
the wall is a huge dogtooth tuna. It glides past a few metres away
and then all the small fish return. Beep Beep, all to soon the
computer says go up and then the best part of the dive started.
As we slowly ascend
cross the plateau we see one or two then 5 or more, green turtles
resting. Each bommie has at least one large female turtle and in the
water column, a male is cruising looking for action. The females are
not timid, they generally ignore divers, one female lifts off slowly
and the nearest male cruises alongside. I learn later that mating
was finished a few weeks ago, but the males are still searching for a
willing partner. The cameras are clicking and I can see my buddy
gesturing for me to swim into the right place to get that fantastic
picture of me and a turtle drifting across the reef.
We gradually ascend to
9m and the seabed is a flat gentle slope of broken rubble. There
clearly was a great reef here once but the blast fishing has
decimated the fragile coral and it looks like the gravel when a road
is being built. The vis is definitely 40m and I can see rubble in
all directions, flat and featureless. But ahead past the dive master
is a cloud of small fish. I look closer and they are living on a
bottle reef. It is made from a ring of glass bottles embedded in
cement and then the centre of the ring was plastic bottles. The
whole structure is covered with coral and spomges and only a few
bottle tops can still be seen. The fish definitely like it - there
is a sabre tooth blenny hidden in the neck of lots of bottles and
many many small fish. It is easy to see that the artificial reefs
built by TRACC volunteers are making a huge difference to reef
recovery..
Floating up into the
shallows, there are more TRACC reefs, the ribbon reef snakes across
the reef crest and is a highway for butterfly fish, blue devil
damsels, anthias and many others. With successful artificial reefs
like these I am fired up and will definitely be making reefs this
afternoon.