Diving at Pangkor - A personal experience

I get these queries: "What's it like, diving at Pangkor? Is it any good? How's the visibility? Is there anything interesting to see?" In other words, is diving at Pangkor possible and worthwhile? These questions came up in the first months of 2005.

The pulau-pangkor.com website was only a few months old when these queries where coming in. I couldn't ignore them. But I had a problem. I didn't know anything about diving, let alone diving in Pangkor! I had done some snorkeling in Thailand and Indonesia. For whatever reason I never came to dive myself. Even last year when I was in Krabi, I skipped diving.

But now I was living near the beach and I loved it. At the time a new dive shop had opened and as I was keen in promoting something else, I decided to write about it. It was a good moment to start my diving experiences. At the time Sembilan Divers had a shop in Lumut. This nice little shop was run by a German lady called Claudia with her husband Oliver.

And thus, from scratch I did my Open Water course. Hari Raju was my instructor. Hari is a nice guy who has done hundreds of dives. He has worked as a dive instructor on the east coast. No one better to find out the differences between east and west coast I thought! And Hari was a excellent instructor. He showed me under water also quite some amazing little things I would have missed because of my lack of experience. The first dives, as any diver knows are more into exploring yourself and the way the material works. But after a few dives you start to get to see more about the surroundings.

And with Hari as an instructor, I was lucky. But that was the Open Water course. After that I started to do some fun diving. Here begins the real fun. But you want to know what is there to be seen, what the visibility is.

The Sembilan Islands are about 40 minutes away from the mainland. They consist of a few islands, some no more then a rock in the sea. They're beautiful little atolls, eagles nesting sometimes on some of them. They're beautiful little paradises, not inhabited by humans (though I wonder if they were once used by pirates who were crossing the Straits of Malacca).

A stingray in a cave in the waters of Sembilan Islands, Pulau Pangkor

Going down there can be exciting. There is a problem with the tides. Also, two rivers drop their fresh water in the Straits of Malacca so on some days the visibility is poor, 2, 3 meters. Fortunately, many other days it's great with a visibility of 8 to 12 meters.

Of course I tried to join on the days good visibility was expected. I was lucky on some days, unlucky on others. On the good days I saw a sea horse, leopard shark, turtles, stingray, and all kinds of other tropical fish puffers, parrotfish, bannerfish, garupas, snappers and lots of angel fish among many others. Barracuda's are plenty to find here, some in groups up to 20 (that's at least the biggest group I saw), but also some loners. You need a bit of luck but there are scorpionfish, trumpetfish and even an occasional reef shark too and I saw them all.

The little atoll of White Rock with eagles nesting near the white tower.

Hari told me something interesting. He said that although Sembilan Islands are not a marine park, (Pangkor has a lively fishing industry, see my page about Ikan Bilis or anchovies). there's quite some species to find here you can't even find at the east coast although you will find many species in abundance there you can't find at Pulau Sembilan. Since Hari has been a dive instructor at the east coast, he talks with authority. Hari is also good in finding the little gems in the softcoral and nudibranches.

I did a few more course but then the bad luck came. The Sembilan Divers shop closed in June 2006. Thus, no more diving around Pangkor.

But although I couldn't dive anymore around Pangkor/Sembilan, the love for going down is still there. And I am not the only one. Here's a few people who have been diving with me at Sembilan Islands.

David from Leeds England has done quite a bit of diving in the North Sea. He joined for shooting some video. He found it good diving here.

Meg and Ken from Japan where diving at Pangkor too. They have been diving in the Caribbean, Californ1a and Mexico among other places joined a few days and enjoyed it too.

Frederick, a rescue diver from Denmark, who has experience with wreck diving in Denmark had a good few days. He has plans to come back later this year to explore more of the islands and its underwater life.

And once in awhile, a group of divers from Kuala Lumpur joined to experience to shoot pictures or just to have some fun. I can only hope that someday a new dive shop will open and more people can enjoy what I have enjoyed down in the Sembilan waters.

Snorkeling

The closest thing you can get nowadays is get a boat to one of the small atols. You can get a boat at Teluk Nipah to Pulau Giam where you can do some nice snorkeling. But there's no more diving at the moment at Pangkor or Sembilan Islands.

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