Mataking
Island
Diving With Danielle ~ by David Lavoie And Photographs by Danielle Horsnell
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| June
2005
She glides
through the water like a sleek fish, her eyes constantly scanning for life
so miniscule I can barely see it. Danielle is not only an excellent diver,
but also a very good underwater (UW) photographer, hence her search for
subjects. By her example, she has been teaching me a different sort of
scuba than I have been used to pursuing. It’s called macro-diving, looking
for the sea’s smallest and most fascinating inhabitants rather than moving
more quickly and hoping for sharks and manta rays. Danielle has been diving
for only four years but her skills are very impressive. She is 14 years
old.
We are at twenty-five
metres diving just off Mataking Island which lies to the east of Malaysian
Borneo. We have seen some impressive things so far, lots of sea turtles
and several large Napoleon Wrasses, many Indian Lionfish and a brilliant
yellow Trumpetfish, but it has been the smaller things which have caught
my attention most on these dives. Never before had I seen such schools
of small Eel Catfish swimming frantically to stay together in the current.
At one point we stopped to admire two Ribbon Moray Eels occupying the same
den, the younger one a royal blue with yellow outlining and the older one
black. They threatened with their tiny yawning mouths. Later we saw a Banded
Snake Eel. |
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Perhaps saddest
on this dive was the half-kilometre or so of absolutely dead, shattered
coral. Nothing lived in the stretch. There were no turtles, no fish, no
crustaceans, no sea slugs… nothing. The reef had been the victim of dynamite
fishing by either local or Philpino fishermen. The practice is to lob sticks
of dynamite into the water and reap the vast harvest of stunned and dead
fish floating on the surface. It’s certainly an effective way to get a
lot of fish quickly, but it destroys an environment which will take at
least a half a century to re-establish itself.
All this Danielle
has been observing with her UW (underwater) photographer’s eye, but it
is she who spots the tiny Banded Shrimp hiding in the Anemone, not I. It
is she who sees the brilliantly beautiful sea slugs, or nudibranch, crawling
slowly across the colourful coral. It’s an interesting and very relaxing
way to dive, probably a better way to dive. In so many ways it’s the sea’s
smallest inhabitants upon which the whole ecosystem is built. And the various
ways that they have learned to survive in a pretty hostile environment
are fascinating. Back on land, I take a moment to mention this to her.
My reward is a big grin. Danielle knew this all along.
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The following are the previous articles
David wrote for the magazine:
 The
Sinai ~ Explorations
Lebanon
Beyond Beirut - Four
Must-Do Day Trips
Beautiful
Sipadan ~ In
Malaysia
Notes
From The Egyptian Desert ~ Adventure
In The Desert
Kuala
Lumpur’s Chinatown ~
Malaysia
To contact David Click
Here
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