"What do you mean there's crocodiles in the channel?"... Night Diving in Borneo

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The boat made its way down the channel in the inky darkness toward the site we would be visiting for our night dive. We had already had our briefing while at the shop getting kitted up. As we near our location our dive guide Rory scratches his head, turns to us and says “Now that we are on the boat there is just one more thing I should mention...there have been crocodiles sighted while night diving in the channel. It’s best not to flap around on the surface, just go straight down.” Heidi enquired as to whether she might take a big stick with her. Unfortunately big sticks don’t mean much to 4mt estuarine crocodiles accustomed to taking down buffalo from the water’s edge. What we hadn’t yet been told was that many of the divemasters and instructors refuse to do night dives and that a 4mt crocodile had indeed been seen during a dive only 3 nights earlier. And to think I’d been told this was a ‘macro dive’, where you keep your eye out for the small stuff!


There was a slightly obnoxious, arrogant englishman diving with us who kept talking incessantly about it and joking about us being eaten. I simply told him that in scary movies it’s always the cocky guy that gets eaten first so I was really happy he was there. I pretended not to be nervous but will admit that I was. I love to see sharks but crocodiles...well... they are a different matter.


We did a backward roll into the black soupy ocean and it was then that I realised I had been so preoccupied with not looking nervous (while secretly shitting myself) that I had forgotten to put on my weight belt. Doh! The others were rather nonplussed at bobbing around like bait on the surface and I could see their nervousness as they floated close to each other in the darkness. With as little movement and as quickly as possible I slipped my on belt at the surface and we made our descent. We were diving Pontun which is under the fish farms and the ambient light from this filtered down to cast an eerie blue glow in the shallows, illuminating the silhouette of the various items littering the sea floor and the multitude of lines crisscrossing from the farms above down to the bottom. It was exhilaratingly creepy! The channel is a rubbish tip, the water smells and unfortunately I can testify that it tastes bad too. Diving here you’ll spot tyres of course along with assorted bottles and cans, shoes, razors, toothbrushes, discarded nets, bits of tin and plastic, twisted pieces of steel, all manner of miscellaneous detritus and literally hundreds of plastic bags.


Actually the plastic bags were the scariest thing we saw on the dive. They scare you not only because there are so many and you know they aren’t breaking down anytime soon but because you know that everyday more and more make there way to the open ocean. Even worse is that many of them are not half buried in the silt or snagged on a coral bommie, they are free swimming. And they sneak up on you, like silent stalkers. Like the serial killer with a knife, creeping beside you in the darkened alley and pouncing on you from out of the shadows.


There you are minding your own business, poking around looking for camouflaged critters in the muck and then out the corner of your eye, right at the last second, you glimpse something racing toward you on the current and right before hits you, you are convinced it is a crocodile gunning for you head on. Your heart skips a beat then pounds in your throat, you shake but then you feel it is soft, it barely kisses your skin before floating off to startle another. The momentary fear is suspended then passes. When you see someone else jump out of their skin underwater and recoil in terror from a plastic bag floating on the tide it’s kind of amusing. When it happens to you though it’s not quite so funny. At one point I was blind sided by a bag and I almost had a heart attack, physically jumping to the side underwater and clutching at Heidi's arm in fear (this is one of those rarely situations where you find yourself diving half a metre away from your buddy, just like they teach you in the manual). It was a subconscious reaction. My grabbing her violently scared her and she jumped too. We looked at each other for a second or two, should our heads and both started laughing at ourselves... We must have looked so ridiculous! I really liked it though, in the same way I get a thrill out of scary movies. I kept looking out into the channel, over the sand or out over the debris imagining... what if? What if a 4mt crocodile went cruising by out of the black and into the blue and what if he came right up to me or what if he just swam by in and out of view like a ghost...what if...


Sorry to disappoint those of you who were hoping for a crocodile in this story. Truthfully, now that I am safely on land I’m a bit disappointed I didn’t see one as well. Many of you might be wondering why anyone would want to dive at night in filthy, putrid water in a channel full of crocodiles among the rubbish and effluent. The reason is that here you can find the most weird and wonderful creatures imaginable. You move slowly tracing the outlines of things, examining everything like you are studying for a test, probing every nook and cranny to find creatures that have adapted so perfectly to their environments you can barely tell they are there. With almost flawless camouflage the leaf fish looks just like a piece of sponge, the stonefish like stone, the sea hare like some rubble, the arrowhead crab like a knob of crusty rock poking up off the bommie. With your face inches away from the rubble maybe you spot something eye-like or perhaps something leg-like; inspecting carefully you notice another leg-like piece, this one more encrusted than the other. Slowly, piece by piece - like solving a puzzle - you get a picture of what you are looking at. It’s a strange, alien like crab that blends in so perfectly a less attentive eye would never guess he’s there. It’s a frogfish, like a piece of sponge, partly encrusted, blending in like a plant. Quietly invisible to the prying eyes of a predator, it’s an animal who’s name remains a mystery. To you, he’s an anonymous imposter looking just like a lump of seaweed until you pick him up and then he swims, still imitating a floating weed swaying in the current until you’re not quite sure yourself that what you really saw wasn’t just a weed and so you need to look again to be sure.


Here you will find rare, exotic species as well. We weren’t lucky enough to peek at the ghost pipe fish although we saw many other different kinds and we didn’t spy a seahorse although I know they are there, tangled in the weed and nets. We did see two flamboyant cuttlefish which are very, very rare. In 16yrs I had never found one before. Roughly the size of a mango, patrolling the seabed with waves of colour fading in and out of them, crimson tipped tentacles folding back and forth and yellow trim shaping their silhouettes, to me they were completely hypnotic. We discovered a tiny red cuttlefish swimming freely; it was about the size of a 8yr old child’s pinky fingernail. While admiring the colourful swirling patterns inside a clam I noticed a ridiculously small shrimp. He was less than a centimetre long, transparent pink with black polka dots, nestled in the fold of the clams’ scalloped edge. We found so many beautiful flatworms and nudibranches. In fact we found so much amazing life down there that before I knew it, we’d been down there 80 minutes and I’d been too mesmerised to notice I was freezing cold in dirty water among the rubbish. I’d also forgotten completely about the crocodiles.

NB: Sorry there aren't a bunch of amazing pics here, but it's difficult trying to photograph underwater at night with one hand holding a torch, trying to stay still in the current, zooming in on tiny creatures and keeping your hands still despite shaking with cold (or was it with fear?) but thanks to Heidi for being a patient buddy while I tried. I wish the photo of the arrowhead crab worked..ho hum...oh well...

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Photos

Flamboyant Cuttlefish
How cool is this little guy? Very rare and a first for me!

Sea hare
the hole in the middle is his anus. It's a filter feeder.

Can You See the Frog Fish?
He's hiding in there...

Flat worm
on a tyre in the channel

Comments

[Kirstie]

Thanks for sharing... always a great read :)
Hey spunky girl, Love to read of your experiences... makes me feel free as a fish! xxx

[Maisondubonheur]

Hi Leigh
We were in Sipadan around the same time...interesting story you've got there. Nice to go through your blog...the more divers, the best...where is your next diving? Peter...in Bangkok

[orgjb]

see dark sea water at day light already make me spooky. imagine there probably a monster waiting for me in there....ahaks.