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Published: September 5th 2008
Life is full of experiences...and diving well...has a lot to offer! Diving in Sipadan is truly magical, colorful and full of life but for the more adventurous minds it has as well something else to offer: cave diving! Welcome to a pitch black underworld where one’s life holds to a tiny lifeline...Ready for some high adrenaline sensations? Guess it took me half a second to make my mind...the very moment I saw on the diving board that cave diving was available I was technically harassing our dive master to meet the tech dive instructor and immediately put my name down.
The next day, one of our new Australian friends, Marissa, tells me that she feels like giving it a try too, so two cave divers we will be!!
We met the following day with David, THE technical dive instructor and within seconds we were all discussing very intensely the upcoming dive, watching video, reviewing the map of the cave and all the safety related aspects linked to cave diving.
A 30 mn brief ended up in a 2 hours long discussion. David is not only a recognized expert in Asia for tech dive
(deep diving and cave diving) but as well a very passionate person that clearly loves what he is doing. We didn’t have to insist much to have him plugging an other DVD in his laptop: the very first documentary on the Sipadan Turtle Cave by no one else than
Jacques Cousteau and his team in the early eighties!
We were about to see it by ourselves, more than 20 years later and if we could have gone there immediately we would have done so! Well, instead we had to patiently wait for two more days before the big adventure.
Friday, August 15th ...after a 15 mn wait at the Sipadan check point that felt like ages, all geared up, light on hand, Marissa, David and myself jumped in...
Slowly going down to about 20 meters where the main entrance of the cave is located. As we enter the cave, a very reassuring “DANGER” warning sign greeted us at the entrance...
The first chamber, cavern style, is very large and offers a good visibility, as ones turns and looks back, the deep blue entrance is still visible, the sun still making his way
in, but we were soon to be immerged in a pitch black underwater world.
As we reached the first tunnel, David tested our buoyancy one last time before loading us with one more bottle and fixing the life line at the entrance of the tunnel. We were then to only use the secondary bottle, keeping the main one for our way out only.
Interesting enough, the second bottle had been equipped with a special regulator making a distinctive sound should we start to panic (breath heavily) which would then allowed our dive master to intervene immediately.
We were then to enter and re-descend down a
bell shaped tunnel, equalizing our ears as we were going up and down and being extremely careful not to touch the sandy bottom as we exit the tunnel. In this second chamber, the water was amazingly clear, and at some stage I actually nearly forgot that I was actually under water...strange sensation, first time ever, but I truly felt in perfect connection with the environment, at ease up to the point to forget for an instant that I was diving! Guess my mind was busy discovering this new environment, light
on hand: plenty of turtle skeletons, and as we kept diving we discovered
the Cathedral, one of the most majestic sections of the second chamber. A white line clearly indicates the change of the water level following the Ice Age and stalagmites can be found easily on the ceiling of the cave.
At the end of the cathedral section, one can see the
"window" a tiny opening that let a ray of sunshine coming in: fish are passing by, and although you can only see their shapes and not their colors due to the contrast, it just felt really peaceful!
This opening is as well one of the main entrance used by the turtles. Local people say that when a turtle is about to die, she would lie next to this window and once her time has come she would enter the cave to die inside...
The other explanation, slightly less poetic but none less quite interesting is that the turtle would enter the cave by mistake late in the day, reassured once inside by the fact that light could still be seen and then fall asleep... By the time, the turtle would
Our life sometime hold to so little
Fixed at the entrance of the cave, this is the line that allowed us to get back to the entrance...better hold!wake up, it would be pitch black as no sunshine would come in anymore, and the turtle would lost her way inside the cave and die there.
The turtle remains would then float to the roof of the cave system and as the turtle further decompose, each piece would fall on the sandy bottom thus recreating a perfect skeleton on the ground after a few months.
Time to leave the window area to further explore the second chamber...starting to be a bit cold and feel like time has stopped!
After further exploration, we all leave the second chamber to reach the one from where we were coming from, David last, and I first, following the life line, back to pitch black. This was an even stranger sensation as for the first time during the dive, I couldn’t see any of my dive buddies as they were behind me. Here I was focusing on the tiny tunnel, trying not to hit my head or the lifeline..(might still need this one...), we finally safely exited the main cave and reached the starting point in the entrance cavern.
Both of us still had
plenty of air, so we kept exploring the first cavern that we had only briefly seen on our way in.
It is then that David pointed out a small rock in the center of the cave, facing the main entrance: this was the sign...
We all took a sit on the rock and turned off our lights, facing the entrance from deep inside the cavern and again, the same magic as earlier when looking outside through the tiny window: fish would stand out even more as you can only see their shadow...felt like watching a
shadow puppet show … This specific rock is as well of special meaning for David as he has obtained from the Malaysian authorities to become his last resting place.
A few seconds later, we were absolutely surrounded by
firefly fish and that's when David started to sing!
Both Marisa and I started to laugh so much that one could hear the other one laughing and David just kept singing....
A few good laughs later, it was time to go back to the day light, slightly lighter as we gave back to David our extra
one diver, 4 tanks ?!!
ok...2 of those did bellong to us! bottles, and in style, as we got to see what must be one of the biggest turtle of the entire trip! Lying down by the window...
Obviously, the first thing we both asked David as we reached the surface was...’Was this turtle waiting to enter the cave and die inside???’ Don’t know whether we both looked really concerned but David promptly replied that no, this one looked healthy and just having a rest...It is thus with a sigh of relief that we went back to the boat!
This really got to be
the most supernatural dive I ever done and the longest one too!!! 86 minutes under water...no diving until tomorrow morning!
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Ali
Ali Watters
Nice write up!
I'll have to get in touch when I next go to Sipadan and do the cave diving course as well :) How many turtle skeletons did you see?