Snorkeling at Pulau Lima

As the boat anchored off the shores of the rocky islet of Pulau Lima, everybody was in a chaotic rush to jump into the water, leaving Cherlyn and I pretty confused onboard. We were the last off the ladder into the sea, being slightly apprehensive initially. Once in the water however, I dipped my head underwater and saw an amazing spectacle of marine life laid out 15feet below me. At first, shocked at the depth of waters below me, I was quickly thrilled to push off farther from the boat to inspect more of the coral reefs and the myriad of fishes, unexpectedly lurking below these waters all the time I was above it, not suspecting a thing.

I swam close to Cherlyn and we both gazed dumbfounded at the scissor-tailed silver trevallies that swam close to the surface. Branching fire corals covered the entire ocean floor with their brown stag-horn hard corals, tipped with white. Large tunicate ochre sponges supported brightly colorful pink, yellow and blue Christmas tree worms, which retreated into their holes upon being touched. A palette surgeonfish, blue with a large black stripe across its body, of the type known as Dory in the cartoon Finding Nemo, swam in a veering manner around the hard corals, as a clown triggerfish, darted its black-spotted white body amongst the caves formed by the corals.

Being beginners, Cherlyn and I only dared flounder about the boat, but luckily, the snorkeling guide come to our rescue and brought us in search of more beautiful reefs further away.


“Come, hang onto the float. I’ll bring you to see more.” The guide, instructed.

“Is it safe?” Cherlyn needed to confirm.

“Of course, don’t worry, I’m Harry, a qualified staff.” He affirmed. We held onto the float trustingly, and faced down, back into the blue waters and amazing world below.

Further on, a school of black trigger fishes darted repeatedly downwards, picking algae off the corals to eat. I murmured unintelligibly to Cherlyn as we both saw a pair of the largest butterflyfish we have ever seen. Many small purple queen anthias were seen fleetingly amongst the caves, along with ochre-striped cardinals, which surprised me greatly as I thought cardinals were freshwater fishes.

Harry signaled to us and dived down to grab a sea cucumber for us. We were fascinated when he taught us how to squeeze the water out of the animal, as the water jetted out from a small hole in one end. He also got hold of a mushroom coral, which secreted saliva-like gel once it was dry, signifying that it was alive.

Passing by many colonies of translucent white anemones, Harry dived again and caught hold of a bright orange clownfish.


“Nemo,” he named it, and handed it over to Cherlyn. We both played with it for a while, before other people swam over, attracted by the brief commotion that Cherlyn and I created at delightfully playing with nemo.

Tiny bright blue damsel fishes, beautiful black-spotted white humpback groupers, big bi-color parrotfishes, which in truth, contain all the colors of the light spectrum from neon pink to the deepest blues, yellow spots and aqua blue stripes and a large purple head. We even saw an extremely large white-spotted puffer fish near the edge of the rocks; it was easily the size of an adult pair of sports shoes put together. Both Cherlyn and I were clearly astounded.
 
We just couldn’t get enough of it, but all too soon, an hour and a half was gone and we headed back to the boat. We’d by then rounded a stony outcrop onto the other side of the island and had a long way to swim; subsequently we were also the last people to get onto the boats.
 
Exhausted we were happy again to receive V.I.P treatment at being invited to grab our stuff and head over to a larger speedboat to sit on the sundeck. We dried off with our small towels and let the ocean breeze dry the remaining sea water off our bikini, as the boat sped off towards the resort.
 
We arrived at the resort slightly past 5pm and had only half an hour before our meeting time with Mi and Eddie at the More More Tea Shop. We decided to jump into the swimming pool to wash off some of the saltwater and refresh ourselves. At that time, we were still hesitant at meeting with two strangers, but we decided that since they were members of the hotel staff, and we were registered guests, they wouldn’t do anything to us since they would be detected pretty quickly. As a note of precaution however, I left a piece of paper indicating that we’d gone snorkeling with Mi and Eddie on the table of our hotel room, notifying whomever reading it that we might be in grave danger if not back by the next day.
 
Mi was waiting for us at the shop as we strolled by wearing only a wrap-around sarong dress to cover our bikini for convenience. We were led to the far left of the beach, beyond another resort, where a rocky hill broke the sandy stretch. Little did we know that we were to skirt that hill, of which girth was about 10km in diameter.
 
This trip was infinitely more interesting than the afternoon’s for only 4 of us disturbed the waters off the coast. When the furthest tourists were surpassed as they snorkeled only in front of the resort areas, we were alone and the fishes came out to play, undisturbed.
 
Eddie grabbed hold of my life jacket from my back and with powerful kicks of his flippers, brought me to a stony outcrop of coral and showed me the head of a large moray eel. It was bright yellow with red spots and the head alone was as big as my open hand, its full length being up to 8feet long.
 
We saw a lot more corals as this area was very rocky and the marine animals hooked onto the cliff sides and grew abundantly. Sea cucumbers abound on the sides; blue spiky ones, black ones with fire red-tipped short rounded tentacles, black soft ones found on white sand. Anti-social black sea-urchins poking their needles dangerously rested lonesome on the rocks. Giant clams lay stuck among the huge coral masses, seemingly not having moved for decades, only having enough space to open and close their purplish blue lips. Beautiful cone shells camouflaged as corals lay half-hidden amongst them. Large turban snails rested on peaks upon the coral hills. Aeolid nudibranches, the sea slugs of the ocean floor littered it, dotting the scape with colors. Flat worms that were black with a white central stripe weaved about like leaves on the ocean floor.
 
A school of common reef squid swam past our path as I was led by Eddie around a large rock, and Cherlyn and I exchanged underwater charmed glances. Their slim body was encircled with a layer of lace-like translucent wings; its head contained 2 large eyes that stood out white and black like bull’s eye and the whole glowing iridescent neon blue upon purple. They were truly magnificently colorful animals, and I’d never have guessed from all those years of eating their boring white flesh.
 
Large schools of ikan billis swarmed us from time to time, giving off a crackling sound whenever they approached to about 15 centimeters away.


Finally, as we swam to our furthest away from the shores, a school of about 6 baby gray reef sharks swam below us. They were silvery gray with black tipped dorsal fins, and already had the ominous style of swaying as they swam. Luckily they passed benignly, and weren’t followed by their parents!

As we neared the other shore, Eddie brought me to a growth of coral and had me dive down holding my breath to touch the Christmas tree corals and watch them disappear into the tunicate sponges. We followed a school of white groupers all the way to the sandy beach and then stood up on the other side of the same shore from which I set off an hour and a half ago. By then the waters had turned cold and it had started to drizzle. Cherlyn and I ran off to our chalets to rest after an extremely fun and exhausting day
 
It stormed that night, and so both of us, being extremely exhausted, went to bed immediately after our BBQ dinner and slept soundly until daybreak the next day for another wonder-filled day of sea, sun, and reefs.