"You won't last the dive!"

Narrative & Images By Paul Tan

“You won’t last the dive!” This I was told when I said I wanted to dive without my camera for a while. “You’ll be absolutely bored.” And yet another reminder.

I was so inspired by what I saw in a photo journal of a nature magazine a while back. The said photojournalist of that feature spent 90 days in the wilderness, allowing himself only one exposure a day with his camera. That exposure was to encapsulate his day spent in the woods. His reason for this restriction was that he wanted to feel, rather than just see, nature again. He wanted nature to talk to him and then use his skills to capture the essence of what was “said”. The result of his work was a really stunning 90 exposures that were published.

I felt that, for a while, I was diving with too much of a photographer’s mindset. It was always perspective, lighting, strobe angles and composition. At times, I became a forlorn wretch when I ascended without the shots I was hoping for. Was I missing the forest for the trees? Or the reef for the corals? I had to agree the decision was more impulsive then something clearly thought out. I just wanted to recapture again, hopefully, without the encumbrance of a massive amount of equipment, the simple joys of diving.

But I compromised from the start (Shame! Shame!). How could I do otherwise? There were reports of a whaleshark sighted at Tioman [1] the week before. So, I guiltily decided to take along my camera for certain dives and then, only the minimum – a Sea & Sea MM II and a single strobe. To use only in the event of a whaleshark making an appearance. I admit, the possible photo opportunities caused me all this self-justification… but can the photographer in me be blamed?

We went on a grand tour of some of the larger and smaller swim through. It was always in a single file into a dim twilight opening and out into the light again as we emerged at the other end. Our final swim through was one filled with a large school of little cardinal fish. They were there to escape the currents. Into this we plunged, again in a single file. The cardinals opened up, allowing us passage and closed up again behind us. Before our mask was nothing but these little creatures with rather shocked expressions. They finally opened up to reveal light and the opening at the other end.

That was a good dive. So much so than when it was suggested that we do Labas again on the last day of the trip, one of the divers who did the Labas dive with me remarked: “That last dive was perfect, we shouldn’t do it again.” We did Chebeh [3] instead.

Chebeh was a rather uneventful dive, except for that cuttlefish orgy at the end. We were headed back to the boat and, as we approached a coral patch near the anchor line, we saw them. We counted thirteen of them. Their colouration, like multi-coloured lights running along the length of their bodies, only served to highlight their amorous intentions. Did I say my camera was for whalesharks? This was like a once in a lifetime encounter! Self-justification again and an exception was made. I stalked a few of them till they got used to me and allowed me the opportunity. I was trying to get a shot of them planting their eggs but they were too shy. Try as I might, they withdrew as I neared them. When I finally exorcised the photographer in me – perhaps running out of film had something to do with that too. I spent the remainder of the dive just observing them. They were absolutely bent on using that particular patch of coral. When they saw that I was just a mere spectator along the fringes, they hovered back to the patch and carried on with their duties of procreation.

At Tiger Reef, we set a course away from the reef and finned out. We passed a school of barracudas and a school of batfish. I’ve always felt that no sensible fish would hang around the reef when a group of bubble blowing pseudo marine mammals decided to descend amongst them. Chances were they would be hanging around the fringes of the reef, out of sight, biding their time. I always had visions of sharks, rays, and other notable creatures coming back to the reef with their deckchairs the moment we left – too heavy a dose of “Sherman’s lagoon”, I think. But the further we swam out, the more pelagics we saw, which only seemed to confirm my original premise. And just out of range of our visibility, there were yet more shadows.

I also spent a fair amount of time finning on my back during the trip, looking towards the surface, hoping to see a large shadow loom overhead. Whaleshark hallucination, did I hear? Even though I didn’t see THE FISH, I saw more then I expected. I didn’t realise there was so much happening above me. Silhouetted against the sun, I saw jacks and other pelagics herding the smaller fishes. There was always a chase going on, I realised, as I saw them darting back and forth, fleeing for their lives. I had taken fleeting glances of all this activity above me while I had a camera but had always dismissed them as being all too messy and none too photogenic. But now I saw an order in the chaos, a purpose that could never be captured in still frame.

On our last dive at Bahara Rock, I headed out into the deeper waters in the hope of finding something a little more substantial – “Whaleshark fixation”, someone chided later. We saw schooling fishes in abundance. We circumvented the reef in deeper waters before heading back towards the shallows again. As we did, we crossed an anemone garden. I did a double take when I saw a little rock outcrop. On it were two delicate sea fans, in pastels of blue and orange. Perched on them were crinoids of a stunning red and black. A school of juvenile cardinal fish was hovering around them, becoming specks as the sun reflected off them. It was stunningly beautiful. I actually regretted not having my camera! But then, could I do it justice?

“A boatman spends his whole life ferrying people across a river, and in his daily routine, he finds the meaning of life.” This quasi-deep thought was related to me during the trip by one who can best be described as a non-believer but with an inclination towards Buddhism. You have time for semi-theological discussions when you are not lumbered with a camera system that demands constant attention.

This “deep” thought crossed my mind again on the last evening of the trip. Our dive boat had been anchored off DiveAsia [4] in Salang [5]. The divers had been dispatched to dive the wreck. I sat atop the boat, alone, on the sundeck. I looked across the narrow expanse of water that separated my boat from the next.

The divers from the next boat had obviously decided to call it a day. For all I saw was an old Malay boatman I knew – I dived on his boat on previous trips, scooping water from the sea to clean himself. How apt, I thought, cleaning himself with the same water on which he plies his craft for a livelihood. First, the hands. In goes the pail again and he cleans his body. Subsequent pails were needed for the head and the legs. I was mesmerised by the enthusiasm of what was, obviously, a ritual for Mahmud, this old boatman I knew. A final pail of fresh water over himself and his ablution was complete.

He walked into the cabin of his boat and emerged in a sarong and his prayer mat. On the deck he laid out his mat, bowed low on it and gave thanks to an unseen God for this day. This simple act of faith must have happened countless times over the years I was diving here but this was the first time I’ve seen it. I was too busy with… The complexity of our pursuit juxtaposed against the simplicity of a boatman’s life. Simplicity, or just the witnessing of it, seems to always strike that chord of yearning in those who have been, for too long, entrenched in modernity. Is my life that that has been complicated unnecessarily? But it’s too late to turn back now… but still?

I am still quite ambivalent about the whole experience. Could all that has been experienced be explained away as the result of an idle mind? When I started on underwater photography, I started to see so much more as I began to be more focused on a dive. Most of the time, the focus of my dive was decided by the type of lens I had on. But, strangely, diving without my camera this time around, I felt I saw so much more. And in more ways than one…

[1] Pulau Tioman, or The island of Tioman is about 44 km offshore from Mersing on the southeast coast of Peninsular Malaysia. It is the third largest island off the coast of Peninsular Malaysia.

[2] Labas is a rocky outcrop in the middle of the sea 11 km west of Pulau Tioman.

[3] Pulau Chebeh is a small uninhabited island 6 km west of Pulau Tioman.

[4] Name of the dive operation on Pulau Tioman.

[5] Main village of Pulau Tioman.

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