BootsnAll Travel Network



Tulamben: Shark Bait!

Because of John’s infection, the diving part of our holiday had been cut short; there wasn’t enough time to do a 3-days course to get–at long last–PADI certified. Even though we’ve been diving on-and-off since the mid-nineties, lazyness and forgetfulness (such as leaving the qualification booklets at home during diving weekends) meant that we were not officially sports divers, or even open-water divers. This was especially embarrasing because our mates, some of whom had started after us, all reached advanced instructor level by the time they finished university.

In the Togeans over dinner one night, one of the dive masters proclaimed me “probably the most experienced non-open water diver in the world” (The flu kept me from diving there, but that’s another story).

It’s like that with karate where, after two decades of on-and-off training, I have yet to grade to black belt.

But I digress.

We prefer diving with a guide anyway, even in safe sites like Tulamben. Local knowledge is invaluable. Actho has worked as a dive master for ‘Tulamben Divers’ for six years and knows every nook and cranny, pointing out spectacular hidden creatures. BTW I much prefer local dive guides. What is it with the influx of western ‘dive masters’, some of whom drop by to teach for a few weeks in various resorts after not diving for years and without any knowledge about the local sites? It comes across like some form of neo-colonialism. With just 4 weeks needed to train a novice up to PADI dive-master, why not train more local people? Egypt made it law, and it is time that Indonesia and Thailand followed suit.

Our second dive of the day would be at the ‘drop-off’, a near-vertical wall of coral close to the beach. This is usually a deeper dive, but according to Actho’s computer, we could go down to 18m (we have left the tables behind—according to them we could have barely gone for a 20min dive, let alone the hour or so which we had planned).

The pebbly beach soon gave way to dark grey silt forming a dramatic backdrop for the colourful fish which darted across our field of view. We dropped gently along a steep slope strewn with pebbles and followed it to the north-east, John keeping track with his compass for practice. We intended this dive to end at the point where it had started.

I felt somewhat queazy from a rushed lunch and the visibility was lower than it had been around the ‘Liberty’, but the spectacular sea-life covering the wall soon distracted me–as it had done on the wreck. Here, however, many of the organisms appeared larger–and weirder. A huge box-starfish. Barrel sponges big enough to stand up in, scatterings of mushroom coral on the silty bottom looking for all the world like alien mouths.

Rocky spires rose from the mud, covered in finely branching hydroids and gorgonians, and rust-coloured bivalves which looked oddly two-dimensional like partially unfolded paper fans (cock’s comb oysters, Lopha cristagalli) Finning past them, we found ourselves again over muddy silt with anemones clinging to the odd boulder, each with their special associated species of clownfish. Actho tickled a particularly large specimen, causing a whole gang of the little fish to dart at us aggressively. Huh? — I thought the deal was that the anemone protects the fish!

Back at the precipice, Actho pointed out another huge anemone; flat as a dinner-plate, sprawled out across the rock at least an arm-span across, its paper-thin body dotted with stubby tentacles. As we followed the wall gently down to our alotted depth, I became so absorbed in the display of encrusting life that I forgot to look ahead. I always found invertebrates the most fascinating part of Zoology–with the exception of cetaceans–and nowhere else had I seen such diversity.

A signal from Actho caught my gaze: ‘Follow me, back’. Apparently his computer had told him it was time to return–with all the life around us it was easy to get carried away and once again I was glad that we did not have to rely on tables (hey–when we started diving, computers were new-fangled gadgets. Plus you wouldn’t want to stay down for an hour or more in Scotland!).

At six metres, we hovered over the silty bottom, bored, counting down the minutes of decrompression, when Actho signalled again. There, just ahead at level depth, was a twirling amorphous shape: balling jackfish (or big-eye trevally, Caranx sexfasciatus). Characteristically, these fish gather in shallow depths during the day; away from deep-water predators but perilously close to fishermen, except that they are protected in Tulamben. This particular shoal is a regular sight. As we gently finned towards them they parted and closed again all around us, circling us like salmon in a cage. They kept level as we finned along like mice encased in a giant underwater kritter krawler.

Back at the surface, John and I were buzzing, but Actho looked disconcerted.

“Didn’t you see it?”

“See what?”

“When I signalled! Tiger shark!”

“Oh–that’s what you meant,” said John and mimicked tapping his thumb and fingertips together–the signal for things-that-bite.

“Meant what?” Engrossed in sealife, I hadn’t seen it.

Actho shook his head: “I’ve never seen one this close to shore.” He kept shaking his head.

An ice-cold shudder crept up my spine. I had my period. I hadn’t given it another thought, but we weren’t diving in dry suits and this was the tropics! First we had seen a black-tipped reef shark and now a tiger shark. What if I had attract it? What if I had become shark-bait?

Of all the unforseen risks of diving…

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