"Into A Lost World" (Part 2)
Life TRAVEL / August 2000

HOME TO THE MOKEN

The area is also home to an indigenous people called the Moken, better know as sea gypsies. It is believed that these seafaring nomads wandered into the area centuries earlier to escape the brutal piracy in Malaysian waters (they speak an old Malay dialect). Today entire generations of one family live completely self-contained on primitive wooden boats. Surprisingly, they do not fish with nets, hooks, or lines, preferring instead to collect mollusks, fish and sea urchins left behind on beaches during low tide. They also dry seaweed and sea cucumbers, which they trade for rice, diesel fuel, or opium, the later being mixed with dry banana leaves and smoked in water pipes. It is only during the heavy monsoon season (June through September) that the sea gypsies venture to live on land, where they supplement their seafood diet with a few subsistence crops.

Before continuing on our way, we boarded a sea gypsy junk and made our own trade: three bags of rice for three of the largest lobsters I've ever laid eyes on (and each side thought it had gotten the bitter deal!). This would be part of our evening's feast, and our Thai chef skillfully began the preparations. But meanwhile it was time to head north for Great Swinton Island, the site of our first dive.

UNDERWATER FANTASY

We geared up in tight-fitting wet suits, heavy tanks, and full face masks (which had communication devices to allow us to speak underwater) and merrily jumped, flippers flapping, into the 80degree water. Andy Cornish, a Honk Kong expert in the biodiversity of reef fish, was to be our guide in this extraordinary environment, As he acknowledged: "because this area has been closed off for so long, no study has ever been done on the types of fish inhabiting the reefs and coral beds. So it's a great opportunity to find out what is actually here."

We slowly descended to about forty feet below the surface. At first, Fred had a problem equalizing his ears, as his diving buddy, Paveena, hovered nearly. I heard Fred say, "I've made only about six dives in my entire life. Paveena has made about a hundred - so I will be sticking to her like glue!" As flailing Fred slowly maneuvered his gear into cohesive balance, we all glided around the impressive reefs rife with red and orange corals and hardy sponges. (Because the area really gets pounded during the monsoon season, nothing too fragile can survive.) The ecosystem here is driven by plankton, taken in and out by the tides; and when stimulated, the bioluminescent types give off a wonderful glowing light.

Eclectic groups of pelagic fish (those who live in the open ocean) darted in and out of the rocky outcroppings: giant grouper, powder-blue surgeon fish, lion fish (whose spines are very poisonous), black-spotted sting rays, and bearded scorpion fish completely camouflaged against the rocks.

"Uni, Uni, Uni," shrieked Paveena, who had almost brushed up against a spiny sea urchin. "Let's try some. They taste better raw!"

As I daintily danced through this fantastic undersea world, I felt like Alice in Wonderland swimming through the Looking Glass. I gazed with awe upon living gardens of sea anemones, displaying rare miniature shrimp who spend their entire life in the anemones' interiors; the shrimp clean the anemone and, in turn, get protection. Ledges were filled with lurking lobsters and three different varieties of moray eels, whose mouths opened wide as we stared eye to eye.

"When they open their mouths wide like that," Andy informed us, "the eels pumping water over their gills." He pointed out other species with names right out of the latest rap lyrics: colored nudibranchiates, checkerboard wrasse, and juvenile harlequin sweetlips alongside damsels, dog-faced puffers, and sea whips - all hip hopping in banners around us.

The currents and surges moved around an impressionistic palette of hard and soft corals: Large table corals were speckled by purple plume worms, yellow brain, and brownish stag and elk corals, as well as huge, Gauguinesque gorgonian cluster corals that spread out like fossilized birch trees. Amid all this, I sighted my favorite - a group of squidlike cuttlefish - swimming one behind the other in a swing dance line formation.

Soon it was time to surface: After forty-five minutes, we had run out of air. Back on deck, when she realized we still hadn't seen what we came for, Paveena exclaimed, "I can't even imagine adding sharks to what I just saw. Don't think I can handle that!"

That night we partook of a sumptuous lobster feast that would inadvertently fatten us up for the next day's to see sharks, a dive that weighed heavily on our minds.