After my trip to Mabul and Sipadan in 1998, my appetite was whetted for more Indonesian diving. I'd never seen a manta ray outside of one brief and distant encounter in Palau, so I picked a destination which pretty much guarantees mantas - Sangalaki Island, off the east coast of Sarawak, Indonesia's half of Borneo. Sangalaki, like Mabul, is difficult to reach. Fly to Kota Kinabalu in northwest Borneo, then to Tarakan on the east coast, then take a -long- boat ride out to Sangalaki. My overnights in Tarakan were made lively by the fall of Suharto's regime, which had just happened. Huge parades of vehicles making all sorts of noise continued well into the night. I had no idea what was going on or if it was dangerous; I stayed in my hotel room.

There's nothing on the tiny island of Sangalaki except the Sangalaki dive lodge

and a small turtle egg harvesting operation. Sangalaki is a major turtle breeding ground. Big females climb out of the water to dig nests and lay eggs; visitors, myself included, are often awakened in the night by the sound of a turtle digging a nest under their hut! Borneo Divers, who operated the resort at the time of my visit, were very proactive in protecting the turtles and making sure eggs hatch and the hatchlings survive and get back into the sea. Mainland egg harvesters have government permits to come to the island and harvest eggs, so Borneo Divers offers guests the opportunity to "buy" nests. They use the proceeds to pay off the harvesters, who will leave the "purchased" nests alone. The guest's name is put on a signpost at the nest. I found out subsequent to my trip that a German film crew visited the island not long after me, and that film of "my" turtles hatching and crawling to the sea was shown on German TV!

Since my visit, the Sangalaki Dive Lodge has become independent of Borneo Divers, and has its own website here. From their site:

The huts are tiny and spartan, but not uncomfortable. Food was good and plentiful. For most of the trip the resort had only seven divers :-) Boat rides to get to Sangalaki destinations are obviously very short. There are two other islands dived by the resort: Kakaban, about a 30-minute ride away, featuring dramatic walls, a thrilling entry with a ripping current so strong divers have to hand-over-hand along a submerged rope installed around the point of the island, and a jellyfish lake just like Palau's, and Samama Island, about 15 minutes away, which had the absolute healthiest and prolific corals I've ever seen anywhere.

Although the mantas were a primary reason for my trip, Sangalaki offers much more, as can be seen from my log entries and video clips. Great critter diving, especially for my much-beloved cuttlefish, including a pair of tiny Papuan cuttlefish on Samama. Visibility was generally poor, but that's not really a problem for critter diving, which is done up close, and it's the profusion of plankton in the water that draws the mantas in the first place. Click the thumbnails below to view 3-minute video extracts from my 30-minute Sangalaki DVD:

Mating Papuan Cuttlefish	Cuttlefish	Manta Rays

This was a two-destination trip for me; after leaving Sangalaki I headed up to Mabul in Malaysia for my second visit there.

Here are my dive log entries for the Sangalaki trip. Click on the links in the "notes" to view short video clips without sound.