Sipadan Diving Vacation Blog

You may have heard of the steel barge that crashed into Sipadan Island a while ago in May. The news broke on the Internet and spread quickly around the world. Thanks to Andrea and Antonella Ferrari, both veteran divers around the area, who first brought it to the world’s attention, there seems to be a positive outcome to this accident.

It happened when a local company, Kumpulan Surati, was contracted by the government to build amneties on Sipadan Island. Instead of transporting the building materials by kompit (small boat) the company used a large barge. During the transportation, while anchored off Abdillah Point (Dropoff Point), bad weather caused it to beach, destroying pristine corals in the area. The damaged area was estimated to be about 372.2 square metres.

For a while, I have kept quiet on the accident not because I was afraid that it would affect visitors to the island, but more because it is already widely reported and that I don’t have first hand information that has not already been reported in the news.

In the local news, the accident quickly became a political finger pointing fiasco. I won’t go into the details here.

However, I’m happy that something positive is being done now. The company involved volunteered to pay for the clean-up cost. Because of the accident, Assistant Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Karim Bujang said that now the diving haven Sipadan Island will be closely monitored by the authorities. The State government has also partnered with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as well as divers to rehabilitate damaged corals at the Dropoff Point.

How do I feel about the damage? I share the feelings expressed by Andrea Ferrari. Angela Lim, Communications Officer at WWF Malaysia, and a good friend, pointed me to this press release Sipadan Reef Damages Assessed by WWF Malaysia that details an unbiased assessment of the damge. Looking at the big picture, I take some comfort knowing that the damaged area only constitute less than 1% (0.10%) of the Sipadan’s total reef area.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 at 1:38 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.