Pics from Sipadan

[plc]

Hi! Incredible photos!

Anyone knows anything about this?
http://www.finsonline.com/blog/fins/?p=39

 

[Jason Ooi]

Cool pics

 

[kapula]

Hi! Incredible photos!

Anyone knows anything about this?
http://www.finsonline.com/blog/fins/?p=39

That is so sad! I've dived only Kota Kinabalu area which is also a marine sanctuary. Tourists need to pay a park fee to enter those small islands on coast of Kota Kinabalu. To dive there one niids to pay more. It must've been a beautiful area but continuous dynamite fishing had done it's work over there. One could find living coral only around islands and even there it was mostly dynamited to rubble. We even were in water when a boat dynamited an area some kilometer away from us. It was quite scary since it had just minutes before driven over us in some 10m water. Dive boat was just next to us with a flag up.

But then again Kota Kinabalu is surrounded by onwater slum and those people are just trying to survive the next day.

So what I'm trying to say is that conservation in Malesia (at least around KK) is a dead letter. They've done some work but for tourist it only shows the side of wanting some money.

As I wrote earlier Sipadan was one of my dream destinations before but it seems that those days are gone

 

[Tassie_Rohan]

Hi! Incredible photos!

Anyone knows anything about this?
http://www.finsonline.com/blog/fins/?p=39

This was first discussed in this thread. I think the wording in the blog is sensationist and over inflated. Others may differ.

The current post on the subject is here.

Doing a search for 'sipadan' will turn up several other threads on the subject. In a nutshell Sipadan is still there. The dive sites remain unchanged. The goverment is building rest rooms and a few other buildings on the island. The small area damaged by the barge was an area of shallow coral that was not a dive site. Sad that it happerned but I would not call sipadan 'ruined' as the blog implies.

Cheers,
Rohan.

 

[sea nmf]

Where were these taken, again? Did you say Jupiter????

Man, those are some awesome creatures and great photography!

 

[bigbadwolf]

Wonderful pics bigbadworld, I like the last two..
Very dramatic.., did your strobe fire in those??

Yes for the turtle shot, but not for the shark shot for some reason.

The turtles were too far so the strobe would not have illuminated them in any case. It turned out to be a silhouette photo which had some back scatter.

If you enjoy that type of shots, here are 2 more:

 

[bigbadwolf]

Those are all excellent shots!
About those closed resorts. Wasn't it that they closed all Sipadan's resorts because the island got so polluted so bad? Ground water got contaminated and all that. Unfortunately they seem to have gotten around those efforts cutting down number of people staying there. That is if there's an oil rig resort and resorts on other islands. It's a very tricky question since locals propably get good money on tourists coming to dive there but then again too many divers tend to damage those reefs. Not only by kicking it but sewage and all that.

Pictures are still just excellent! Did you use macro lens on those macro shots? For example that swimming pipefish is very well focused!

The government's position of closing down of the resorts on the island, purportedly to allow the island to regenerate and subsequent development of facilities on the island seems inconsistent with one another. The issue remains controversial even up to today.

Yes, I used a macro lens on the swimming pipefish shot. Honestly, given the long shutter lag of my camera and the narrow DOF, I have to say that it was a lucky snapshot.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Nice pictures. Did you dive Sipadan at all, or only Mabul and Kapalai?

Thanks, Bella. Due to time constraints, I only managed to dive Sipadan and Mabul. I dived Kapalai 2 years back and I enjoyed the macro life there.

 

[sasscuba]

Sweet pics!!!!!

 

[bigbadwolf]

This was first discussed in this thread. I think the wording in the blog is sensationist and over inflated. Others may differ.

The current post on the subject is here.

Doing a search for 'sipadan' will turn up several other threads on the subject. In a nutshell Sipadan is still there. The dive sites remain unchanged. The goverment is building rest rooms and a few other buildings on the island. The small area damaged by the barge was an area of shallow coral that was not a dive site. Sad that it happerned but I would not call sipadan 'ruined' as the blog implies.

Cheers,
Rohan.

Hi Rohan

I left the day before the barge incident happened and so I did not witness the destroyed area myself. I read about it in the newspapers and on the internet as many people have.

I tend to agree with you that the blog was sensationalist. And, to put things in perspective, the destroyed area a about the size of a tennis court and am confident that it will regrow. The rest of Sipadan is still very divable.

I just think that the environment there cannot afford more of these type of mistakes. As Kapula mentioned earlier, divers need to pay a levy to dive Sipadan. The levy is used to maintain and protect Sipadan. This incident made me want to ask for a refund! I would hate to think that my Sipadan diving levy financed the construction in any way(not saying that it did!).