Community News 03.06.2023
Bubbles of Hope Reef Clean-up
written by Julia Rabenjoro
The 15th May marked the 10th Bubbles of Hope reef cleanup done in 12 months! I couldn’t be more proud of the young divers that joined me on these amazing day trips and our achievements and can’t wait for the next ones to come. This one in particular was extremely special after our rewarding, unexpected encounter with the biggest fish in the ocean!
If you haven’t read about Bubbles of Hope, it is a group of teen divers that I created in April 2022 where we regularly do reef and beach cleanups with the local dive centers in the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park. We are lucky to have a few members from our very own KIS community as well as from other schools. This time, I was joined by Pik Yen, Lung Ip, Isabella and Mischa (from another school).
On this particular day, the weather couldn’t have been better and the water visibility was probably the best I’d ever seen in the park. We set off with Scuba Junkie in the morning and started with our usual reef cleanup dive in the Sulug Island House Reef. We were immediately greeted by “Bumpy” the hunchback hawksbill turtle as soon as we descended and collected all the trash we could see in the area, mostly consisting of cans and plastic bottles. Awie, one of our two divemasters for the day, even let loose a little crab that had got tangled up in the rubbish. As usual, we also took notice of all the little critters that resided in this area, including a moray eel, a stonefish and catfish.
We then headed to a little sheltered beach where we had our surface interval before heading out again, this time for our fun dive, to Sulug Island once more, at Sulaman Reef. We rolled straight back into a world of vibrant color and life, first seeing a huge school of hundreds of bigeye snappers as well as feeding parrotfish, and then seeing the brightest purple nudibranch ever. No one expected that around the corner of the reef, we would run into a baby whale shark (already 5-6m long). The crazy 2023 whale shark season had seemingly subsided for a few weeks, only a few rare sightings around the park and no more krill (whale shark food), and yet against all the odds, at exactly the right place and time, we spotted one! It looped around us slowly before fading away into the blue, leaving us stunned mid-water.
There was no other topic of conversation as soon as we got back onto the boat and headed off to lunch. Before coming back to the mainland, we spent some time saying goodbye to Awie with some delicious cake and celebrating all of the new adventures he could look forward to as he was leaving KK.
However, this was by far the best way to celebrate our 10th dive trip, Awie’s departure and an amazing reminder of what we were contributing to help; of what we were cleaning up the ocean for. We hope that our impact in this park (however small it may be in the grand scale of this global problem) throughout the year will encourage incredible marine life like this to visit us more often and that our little piece of paradise within the park will forever be a safe and clean home for our marine neighbors.
Please remember that we are always looking for new members, if you are or know any PADI certified teen scuba divers (between the ages of 10-17 years old), please feel free to message me through email: juliaintotheblue@gmail.com or Instagram: @julia_into_the_blue to find out more!
Julia Aveline-Rabenjoro Year 10
MORNINGTON CRESCENT VILLA
