Benjamin van der Spek Photography
The Barracudas
No. 34 The Barracudas
Pulau Sipadan is just a tiny island. Just a little speck in the ocean. I guess it would take someone no more than an hour to walk around it. Its true treasure lies beneath the waves surrounding its shores. The island is actually a coral tip on top of an extinct volcano reaching up from the ocean floor, 600 meters below.
Pelagic animals such as manta rays and sharks congregate, feed and mate here. We had never seen so many green and hawksbill turtles swimming around before. It was beautiful. Then we saw it. A massive swirl of fish. Barracuda’s. Thousands, swarming together. I just had to get closer. It’s easy to lose your head and literally get carried away by something as stunning as a tornado of barracuda, so I checked my dive computer again and rose ever so slowly. In the eye of the storm I was so close to these amazing predators that I looked them in the eye and I could see them staring back at me. I took my photos as well as I could while amazement gripped me.
Suddenly I heard a deafening blast. So loud! It was something I had never experienced before underwater and it scared the living daylights out of me. “What the hell?!”. I looked around completely startled. It felt like a grenade had gone off close by. It was my first encounter with the horrible destructive force of dynamite fishing. The sound of the blast travelled far and wide, so it was impossible to say who did the bombing. Illegal in most places, dynamite fishing kills everything around and destroys entire marine eco systems in a single blast. It would not be the last time we would be confronted with the effects of these horrible practices.
The Barracudas
No. 34 The Barracudas
Pulau Sipadan is just a tiny island. Just a little speck in the ocean. I guess it would take someone no more than an hour to walk around it. Its true treasure lies beneath the waves surrounding its shores. The island is actually a coral tip on top of an extinct volcano reaching up from the ocean floor, 600 meters below.
Pelagic animals such as manta rays and sharks congregate, feed and mate here. We had never seen so many green and hawksbill turtles swimming around before. It was beautiful. Then we saw it. A massive swirl of fish. Barracuda’s. Thousands, swarming together. I just had to get closer. It’s easy to lose your head and literally get carried away by something as stunning as a tornado of barracuda, so I checked my dive computer again and rose ever so slowly. In the eye of the storm I was so close to these amazing predators that I looked them in the eye and I could see them staring back at me. I took my photos as well as I could while amazement gripped me.
Suddenly I heard a deafening blast. So loud! It was something I had never experienced before underwater and it scared the living daylights out of me. “What the hell?!”. I looked around completely startled. It felt like a grenade had gone off close by. It was my first encounter with the horrible destructive force of dynamite fishing. The sound of the blast travelled far and wide, so it was impossible to say who did the bombing. Illegal in most places, dynamite fishing kills everything around and destroys entire marine eco systems in a single blast. It would not be the last time we would be confronted with the effects of these horrible practices.