Sapi Island is a short jet-boat ride from Kotakinabalu, the pretty capital of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. 8º North latitude. At the Kotakinabalu jetty, there were floating pink jelly-fish the size of musk-melons. This time at least I could shout wolf without fear of being derided as a drama-queen. Our dive instructor was Jason, a native Sabahan who spoke the lilting Singaporean/Malay English with the delightful ‘la’ at the end of a sentence. “I am your guide la”, “I go, you follow la!” I guessed he’d be about 55, but he had a body like a whippet, gunned the boat like the devil himself and was a PADI instructor. In short, he inspired confidence. At Pulau (Island) Sapi, standing in waist-deep water of the South China Sea, he gave us a thorough half hour run-down on all that we needed to know for the upcoming one-hour dive. We were on our deepest dive yet – 14 m, or as high as a three-storeyed building as Jason told it. Just a metre or two below the surface, the water turned cold. There seemed to be a lot of sediment in the water, churned up from the white sand dunes stretching in all directions on the sea floor. At this depth, the reef was not particularly dense either. This time, I was wearing a mask with powered lenses for my myopia, and could finally get a fish-eye view of the underwater world without getting eyeball to eyeball with the demented-looking creatures. Jason let a long red and yellow striped sea-snake pass over his hand. I dared not. The small fish came investigating. I think at least two tried to take advantage of me being in unfamiliar territory and nipped me on my legs. No piranhas here, so I decided to take no notice of the cheeky fish.

When we returned to shore, our boys (we had two – two and three years old) were in the good care of our Sabahan friends June and Ray, and a big, friendly WWF-Sabah field team. They were both in the water, frisking about excitedly like two little cartoon suns in their bright yellow life-jackets. The younger one shrieked when he saw me, “See Mum-mum, the fisss is bitin’ meee!” A shoal of blue-white striped fish had surrounded him, looking for food. He could touch the darting fish! They are too young to snorkel yet, and can’t dive until they are 16, when their lungs will be well-developed, but they managed to put on their goggles and hold their breaths long enough to peep under the surface. What a world they must have espied just on that little patch off the beach! The Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine National Park authorities had put a nylon line with buoys to mark a large ring for snorkellers. I made for the far end, trying to leave behind some decidedly hairy, wormy things crawling on the sand. I chanced upon a mixed school of little fish feeding on the spines of a violet sea-urchin. Suddenly, a big bully of a pied fish, as long as my forearm, came charging and scattered them. Then he gave me a how-smart-I-am look - very like the late-comer college boy in the Mentos Dimag ki batti jala de ad - and proceeded to polish off the sea-urchin all by himself. On another part of the reef, the story of the small fish pretending-to-be-a-big-fish was being played out again…

Small animals, big value
 Coral reefs are the lungs of the sea, the way tropical rain-forests are on land. One of the most bio-diverse ecosystems on earth, reefs harbour over 2 million species, and provide food security, income and protection from hurricanes. According to the WWF Marine Program, South-east Asia’s reef fisheries alone are worth US $ 2.4 billion annually. The Great Barrier Reef of Australia is 2300 km long and 30,000 km² in area and is the only natural feature of earth than can be seen from space. It is amazing to think that such a structure has been built over the millennia by a humble animal called the coral polyp. The coral polyp feeds on suspended organic matter and the photosynthetic byproducts of its symbiotic algae, exudes a calcareous skeleton and builds up in shallow tropical seas at the rate of a mere 150 mm/year! Unfortunately, like the tropical forests, the world’s reefs are being destroyed at an unprecendented rate by over fishing, effluents and sediments, excessive tourism and the big ghost of all – global warming.

Anyone can reef watch
 The good news is that we have some of the world’s best, still-clean reefs right on our territory – in the Andamans and Lakshwadeep (which is the same chain of atolls as the Maldives). There is also good diving to be had off the mainland in Goa and Karwar (Karnataka). Almost anyone who is healthy, from 18 to 80 (as one website blithely says!), can go diving. If you haven’t got around to learning how to swim, you can at least put on a life jacket and snorkel in a safe area off the beach – it is just as wonderful. For all those who appreciate Nature (and who doesn’t?), this is a must-have experience at least once in a lifetime. The beauty and wonder will become part of you. (And remember, no matter now pretty they look at the beachside markets, you must please never buy corals – even if it is dead matter. Because they are the building blocks for the reefs and beaches, they are the hide-and-seek place for the little fish and they simply have no place in your living room or jewellery box).

The Andamans had been first on my wish-list for years. Why haven’t I gone there yet? It’s an incident that Sarang Kulkarni, a marine biologist and colleague from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun narrated to me some years ago. One fine morning, he was on a dive in the Marine National Park of the Andaman Islands, engrossed in studying corals for his project. There were bright white ripples of sunlight in the water, he was where he wanted to be and he felt on top of the (underwater) world. Suddenly, he felt a large, large shadow blot out the sun. He looked up to see a huge salt-water crocodile above him, paddling in that determined way that crocodiles do when on the hunt. Then it saw Sarang, and paused...............

I am thinking I’ll wait a couple more years for my goose bumps to subside before I head that way!

Further Information
 

Kashmira Kakati