Submerging Into The Unknown In Borneo: Lawas Exploration Dives

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Exploring the unknown: to dive new dive sites is one of my favorite kind of diving – what more if you are about to submerge into the unknown only in Borneo?  A few years of exploration dives has thought me well not to expect much on every dive excursions and this one is no exception.

Traveling to destinations where scuba diving is unheard of can be both fun and exciting – frustrating for visiting divers. The following story is my most recent one of this kind.

Lawas, the Northern-most town, is a small but lovely town of Sarawak. Its about 30 minutes drive from the bordering town of Sipitang, Sabah, where I came from – both of them are states of Malaysia on the island of Borneo.

Though scuba diving is unheard of here, I have come to learn that there are actually a few avid divers from this area. Well, of course they took up the diving lessons and most of their fun dives somewhere else.  But why? That’s what we wanted to find out – the Lawas underwater quest.

Day 1

Divers gearing up for the dives

I teamed up with 2 more divers, David Sigar (from Lawas) and Rozlan Wahab (PADI Divemaster from Kota Kinabalu) recently to do a 2 days area-survey and did a few dives in the area called Pulau Sari (pulau means island). Pulau Sari is not an actual island because a small portion of the island is connected to the mainland. But anyway the local there has been calling it “pulau” ever since.

We arrived in Lawas town on the 12th of November 2009. Checked in and proceeded to have a look of the area after having some lunch. It’s about 25 minutes drive, towards south, to Pulau Sari from Lawas town.

The view from the top (not really at the peak, just slightly elevated) of the island is superb. We could see the endless horizon and of course we could see our dive sites down there: though still unknown to us.

Our next arrangement was then to board a fiberglass boat to get a closer look of the area while at the same time to get a tour around the island. My team of divers together with our local hosts visited a few houses of the local people there to introduce ourselves and to convey our intentions – to do some scuba diving the next day in their area.

We were told that some university researcher-divers did a few diving in the area about three years back. Their studies or findings were not published to the public, as I can’t find anything related on the net. What ever it was, they (the researchers) must have kept everything to themselves.

Day 2

The sun was shining brightly since the early morning. We arrived at our starting point – one of the local contacts that we hired to take us around – and did our gear assembly. After double-checking that everything was in place, we set out just around 8:30 am to the furthest point first.

(1^st Dive) The plan was to do two dives in two different locations. The first one was in shallow water less than 6 meters deep. We tried to look for the deeper part but we were told that there is nothing to see there but sand. I had doubts of that fact but I will keep that to myself; well at least for now.

Intact: Underwater life of Lawas

We’ve been told (during the meeting with the locals on the first day) that the area is also home to many sharks. Wow! That was interesting enough already. None of us (the divers) could tell the exact species of the sharks as none of the local could describe the sharks properly. To add to the excitement, we managed to spot one shark (most probably a white tipped) from the boat as we were approaching the first dive site.

I was more than happy to explore the shallow reefs as they could be holding special creatures unseen or rare in other places – I’ve had my share of time diving famous places like Lankayan, Mabul, Kapalai, Sipadan, Layang-Layang and many more so I guess I know what to expect.

There are loads of soft and hard coral such as sea whips, barrel sponges, brain coral, cabbage coral, sand anemones and so on. We were very lucky to spot one sea snake: a rare encounter. Other than that, there are not as many fish as I expected it to be but there are loads of different kind of gobies, nudibranches and more.

Rare encounter: A curious sea snake

(2^nd Dive) This next dive point is right in front of the island and also a shallow reef but much nicer than the first one. The coral – a combination of soft and hard – formed a beautiful seascape that host more life such as brown sweetlips, rabbit fishes, spiny lobsters, blue spotted stingray and coral trout. The less than 5 meters visibility encouraged us to focus more on macro life, which was in abundance like nudibranches, flat worms, pistol shrimps and gobies of different types.

The 2^nd dive lasted for about 30 minutes. Later we were heading back to the shore with memories of Lawas underwater experience. We left for Lawas town around midday for lunch and checking out of the hotel. Kota Kinabalu was our next destination  – home sweet home.

Conclusion:

There is not a single scuba diving establishment in Lawas, as far as I know, so you have to organize everything in advance like dive gears, transportation and local guides. You’ll need to bring all your equipments (including tanks and weights) because there are no way you can outsource the gears in Lawas – the moment this article was written.

Fortunately there is one Lawas-based company, De Mid Borneo Sdn Bhd, who is in the process of finding suitable sites for scuba training (for their student doing Divemaster Trainee program) and the potential dive sites for the purpose of recreational scuba diving in or around Lawas.

My personal conclusion of the two dives: need to locate a deeper site with more diverse coral reef and sea life dwelling on them. But the proposed Pulau Sari Port in Lawas might not help for the further development of scuba diving activities around the two places we’ve been to.

I know through experience that there must be a few good potential dive sites around Lawas waters, which are yet to be discovered.

The unknown is finally revealed. It’s for you to absorb and digest (wink) !

More photos:

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All images: Amillson (MEL) Baragus (Top shot) and Rozlan Wahab (Underwater)

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If you wish to use any of the images in this site, a written permission MUST be obtained from the owner of www.abaragus.com.

Related posts:

1. Top 3 Diving Destinations: Dive BORNEO (Malaysia)
2. On The Road Again: I Hit It “Hard” This Time