Lying 22miles (35kms) of the coast of Borneo in the Sulawesi sea is the coral-encrusted, jungle-covered tiny island of Sipadan. The Malaysian-owned island is the crest of an extinct volcano, 0.5km wide and 200metres long and rises 2000ft (600metres) straight up from the sea bed. Its geographical location in the indo-pacific basin puts Sipadan in the richest marine bio-diversity area in the world.

The island is a haven for over 3000 species of marine wildlife with loggerhead, hawksbill and green turtles making the reefs and beaches their home. Barracuda amass in their thousands like a shimmering silver curtain. Massive whale sharks and mantas rays frequently visit the island on their yearly migrations. White, black and silver tipped reef sharks cruise the reefs. Various species of trigger, angel, damsel and butterfly fish live on the reef, all brightly-coloured and vibrant. Sponges, anemones and sea squirts contribute to this alien landscape. The coral reef itself is a living organism, breathing life into everything around it. It is the beating heart of the island, concrete and seemingly dead. The tiny polyps give the reef life, building on the remains of creatures past, taking centuries to create a home for all.

Sipadan was once in the top five scuba diving destinations in the world and rightly so, appearing on the same page with the likes of the massive Great Barrier Reef and The Galapagos Islands. The documentary maker and diver Jacques Cousteau once talked about the island “I have seen other places like Sipadan 45 years ago but now no more. Now we have an untouched piece of art”.

Sipadan became popular after that and it wasn’t long before resorts started springing up. At that time the islands ownership was in dispute, Indonesia and The Philippines both laid claim. In 1985 the first dive operator arrived and it wasn’t long before others followed suit. The dive operators had a free reign, knowing full well they were squatters and could be evicted at any time. They didn’t bother to install proper sewage facilities and this led to the polluting of the ground water. Rubbish piled up and the numbers of nesting turtles reduced, disturbed by the lights and noise on the island. The coral itself started to die; huge areas that were once thriving became deathly white. The number of dive boats were stirring up the sea bed and choking the tiny polyps with sand making them unable to feed. Once ownership was finalised in 2002 the Malaysian government ordered the dive operators to leave by the end of 2004 to stem the flow of disintegration. They left but most were unhappy with the decision. The lucky ones had similar resorts on Mabul and Kapalai a mere fifteen minutes away by boat.

The unwillingness of the dive operators to provide divers with proper on-board amenities as well as obvious feelings of animosity at being evicted from their island led to their support of a building project led by the Chief –Minister of Sabah State Datuk Musa Aman to construct a $1.3million clubhouse. Encompassing toilets, staff quarters, restaurant, scuba shop and sewage facilities enough for 50-70,000 dive tourists per year.

On May 15th 2006 a flat-bottomed barge containing thousands of tons of building materials and equipment loosed it’s moorings in a high wind and carved its way up the beach decimating 372sq meters of coral reef. Reef that had taken centuries to create was reduced to limestone rubble in moments. It was as if someone had taken a scalpel to the cheek of the Mona Lisa.

At first it was reported that the Chief-Minister Musa had denied the project existed even blaming his deputy, the minister for tourism, culture and the environment. Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Chong Kah Kiat had publicly admitted what the materials were for and also said that the project was approved by the state government. Chief-Minister Musa went ahead with the project even after the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told him not to. In a very public statement the Prime-Minister said “I was very angry with Musa, I told him not to build it…”. The project was stopped but then later allowed to continue as long as environmentally-friendly building materials were used. The new contractor would have to build the now much scaled down facilities of toilets, basic sewage treatment plant, staff-quarters showers and a divers rest area but also clean up after the previous contractor which involves the removal of rusting metal rods, planks and cement that the previous contractor had sent to the island.

We have broken this “piece of art”. In just fifteen years we have turned what should have been a world heritage site into a toilet. The once pearl in the Sulawesi sea has become a cess pit. Why do the divers need somewhere to rest between dives? What did they do? Swim the 22 miles to the island? The boats they came on are sufficient to rest, change tanks and have lunch and if not then Mabul and Kapalai are only fifteen minutes away. It’s the dive operators’ duty to obey the rules laid down on the numbers of divers entering the park each day. It’s in their interest to protect Sipadan for their own futures. No one will want to visit a cess pit on a concrete atoll in the middle of the ocean and that’s exactly what Sipadan will become if all work and all diving is not stopped right now. The place needs time to heal itself. Nature does not need our help to survive; it needs our absence.

The end.

SipadanBarracudaGreen TurtleReef fishDive resortThe reef before and after