Tunku Abdul Rahman Outer Reef

Kota Kinabalu · Sabah · Malaysia

Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park comprises five islands scattered across the bay from Kota Kinabalu, Sabah's bustling capital on the northwest coast of Borneo. Most visitors know these islands as snorkelling and beach destinations, ferrying across from Jesselton Point to spend afternoons on white sand. But the outer reef fringe, facing the open South China Sea on the western side of the island chain, offers diving that bears little resemblance to the trampled shallows of the tourist beaches. I dived the outer reef on an April morning when the sea was unusually calm, the kind of flat conditions that make the exposed side accessible perhaps sixty per cent of the time during the dry season. Our boat curved around the western tip of Gaya Island, leaving behind the sheltered waters where tourist ferries buzzed, and anchored above a reef slope that descended from eight to twenty metres before meeting a sandy bottom. The difference from the inner reefs was immediately apparent. The coral here was healthier, denser, and more diverse. Massive Porites heads the size of small cars anchored the reef structure, their surfaces colonised by Christmas tree worms in red, blue, and orange spirals. Between the massive corals, branching Acropora tables created layered habitat, their undersides sheltering cuttlefish that watched me with their remarkable W-shaped pupils, changing colour in rolling waves across their bodies as they assessed whether I posed a threat. The current, a gentle but persistent push from the northwest, brought visibility that reached eighteen metres on the deeper sections. It also brought fish. A school of chevron barracuda, perhaps sixty strong, hung in the blue water off the reef edge, their striped flanks creating a shimmering wall of silver. They parted around me as I drifted through, reforming behind with a precision that seemed choreographed. Beneath them, a blacktip reef shark cruised the sand channel at the base of the reef, its movements unhurried and confident.