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Activities Report 1999 Nov Newsletter

DIVING AND FISHING IN PULAU SEMBILAN
By Sharon Chan


      At 9 am, on 12 September, 8 of us sailed off for Pulau Sembilan from Lumut Yacht Club. The beautiful 44-footer Grand Banks cabin cruiser, Tenacious II, belongs to Stewart Forbes, Marine Co-ordinator for MNS Perak. With Stewart at the helm and his wife Salmah to show us around the vessel, the two-hour journey passed in easy comfort and lazy conversations. We enjoyed the air-conditioned and carpeted living quarters for a while as we explored the fully equipped galley and two cabins fitted with comfortable beds. We marvelled at how every space on the boat is cleverly made use of. It has essential amenities of a regular home: two bathrooms with flush toilets and shower, television, microwave oven and other electrical appliances, fridge, cooking rings and kitchen hood, a sink, foldable table on telescopic legs that can be lowered to double as a bed at night, cabinets and wood panelling that lend that touch of class. What luxury!
      We went up to the upper deck to observe how Stewart skippered the boat and to feel the wind in our hair. As we reached the first of the nine islands in this small archipelago, we studied a large marine map to orientate ourselves. Our dive site that morning was White Rock, situated on the western flanks of the group. Fully aware that the day was not very suitable for diving, it being spring tide, we nevertheless went ahead with our dive plans. There were four scuba divers that day, Merlene Wong, Joon Yee, A.L. Chan and Yours Truly. Two other members who came along, Chang Kok Kai and W.F. Chua were more interested in fishing.
      It was a lovely sunny morning as we splashed into the water at 11.30 a.m. We soon reached 50 feet and finned around enjoying the myriad of coral and fish life, surprised at their survival rate in this area which has yet to be gazetted a marine park. The general opinion is that the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia is not worth diving except for Pulau Payar. But Pulau Sembilan and P. Jarak off Lumut, though not mentioned in the list of popular Asian dive spots are worth checking out.
      Visibility underwater on that day was only 10 to 15 feet but that did not prevent us from discovering many interesting life forms. Although fragile hard corals like staghorn corals were noticeably absent here, we saw an occasional Porities coral (boulder shaped and wave resistant), a testimony of the strong currrents in this site. Sea fans and flowery soft corals (Dendronephthya sp.) confirm the turbulent conditions here.  There is a predominance of dark green tree corals attached to the boulders and plenty of cave corals (tubastraea sp.). The latter is supposed to thrive only in low-light conditions of coral overhangs, though I see them growing in small colonies all over this place. There are lots of winged mussels, zig-zag oysters and some orange-coloured branch tunicates (sea squirts) about 10 to 15 cm tall. Barrel-shaped tunicates (Didenanum molli) were also sighted. We came across a small dark-brown sand anemone, not commonly seen, at least by me.  When disturbed, it retracted all its tentacles into an unattractive insignificant naked hard base, blending in with the sandy bottom. Another common feature in this area are the large tracts of encrusting coralline algae, purple in colour with white markings. There were plenty of sea whips (Junceela sp.), white and dark coloured ones, 1 – 1.5 metres in length. Their fluffy white polyps were fully extended ready to pluck food from passing currents.
      The abundance of fish life was a joy to behold. There were large schools of black-tipped fusiliers with many lyre-tailed wrasse (Thalassoma lunare), damsels and chromis swimming among them. Boenaki and six banded groupers were hiding under the rocks  A pair of Blue King Angelfish and a lizard fish were also sighted. Two examples of mutualism symbiosis were seen: a transparent shrimp was busy picking parasites off the body of a grouper while a 10 cm prawn was engaged in  symbiotic housekeeping with a goby. A prawn-related goby is a rare find for divers as the prawn is usually hidden in its burrow though the goby may well be seen standing sentry at the entrance.
      As we finned around we were swept down to 80 feet by a strong channel current. We quickly back-tracked, clutching on to rocks and corals to haul our way back. This was definitely neither the time nor place for a new diver. When we surfaced we encountered strong surface cross-currents. Only one diver managed to swim back to the boat unaided. Two of the female divers had to be pull-ed back with the help of a life-line and one diver was carried beyond this Jesus Line (as Stewart termed it). Although there was a lot of bantering like, ‘See you in Indonesia!’ and “Did you bring your passport?”, it was really quite a serious situation. Stewart had to weigh anchor to pick up that diver.
      After all that excitement and about an hour to calm down and dry up, we were served steaming hot coffee and a delicious home-cooked lunch of fried noodles, kerupuk and chicken by Salmah. For dessert we had a fruit cocktail of chilled nagka, rambutan, papaya and pineapple. After an adequate surface interval, Merlene and Joon Yee went in for a second dive. The currents were even stronger in the afternoon. “The fish also senget already!” Merlene commented.
      The anglers had a fairly successful day. Some of the fishes caught were brown banded snappers, red snappers, six banded groupers, threadfin breams (Scholosis vosmeri, nicknamed Toshiba fish), and even a fiery red spotted scorpion fish with all its fins bristling in indignation! We threw him back in true MNS magnanimity. We anchored off Pulau Buluh for a while to see whether the anglers could land bigger catches. Within sight was Pulau Lallang with an attractive sandy beach, a potential site for an MNS camping trip. Some of us were already discussing the possibility of such a weekend! At 4.30 p.m. we called it a day, though we had to literally drag Kok Kai away. He reluctantly reeled in his fishing line only when we threatened to leave him on the island and return to fetch him in a week’s time!
      The return sea journey to Lumut was uneventful but more treats awaited those who had to drive back to Ipoh or Taiping. One carload stopped for dinner at Lumut while the other car stopped at a roadside stall on the way to Ayer Tawar to buy some deliciously sweet big Maha mangoes at RM10 for 3 kilos!


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Created on 11th Nov 1999