Tioman Island | Meet Malaysia
2. The Diving
Tioman is so obscure that nobody really expects anything from it, so divers are frequently caught-off guard by just how beautiful and fun the diving is.
Tioman has some of the largest coral meadows that I’ve ever seen. The hard coral meadows are the most impressive, made from species like plate, staghorn, and hump coral.
Soft coral meadows grow over the deeper rock formations, and they’re so thick and dense that in some places it’s difficult to find exposed rock.
Other dive sites have beautiful coral gardens with a nice mix of hard and soft coral, like a candy shop.
You’ll find beautiful reefs at all depths, from 5 feet to 70 feet, healthy and full of color. And healthy reefs mean plenty of fish.
Unlike so many dive destinations, the highlight of Tioman is not the bigger animals but rather the smaller fish, which loom over the coral in dense, drifting clouds. What the fish lack in size they make up for in sheer numbers. They’re practically bumping into your mask as you go along, and if you look up at the surface you’ll find it blanketed by their silhouettes.
Pelagic fish aren’t common here because the South China Sea is too shallow and too warm. But you’ll definitely encounter the bigger reef fish.
Schools of snapper cruise over the coral like passenger trains, and at some dive sites you’ll have 3 or 4 batfish take a swim with you until they find something better to do. Expect guest appearances by great barracuda, humphead parrotfish, titan triggerfish, and trevally.
Photographer: Martin Ritter.
The dive sites are very simple. For the most part, you’re going in one direction the whole time until you hit a current or run low on air. It’s the rock formations that make things interesting.
You’ll love this island if you’re a fan of swim-throughs because they’re everywhere. So many of the dive sites are cut by dazzling, dazzling swim-throughs. Inside them you’ll find clusters of little fish hiding out, with beautiful growth on the walls that just shine under the torchlight.
For example, there’s a rockpile called Batu Malang, which has a swim-through that cuts right underneath it and lets you shortcut across the reef. There’s also Fan Canyon, where you can swim through narrow trenches that are prodded with sea fans. When you dive Batu and Fan Canyon back-to-back, you’ve got a pairing as sweet as wine and chocolate.
Other dive sites feature huge boulder formations that are deep and steep, which make excellent canvases for coral reefs. At the bottom-end, you’ll find soft coral and sea fans, which are gradually replaced by hard coral as you head to the shallows. There’s always something new to see, always some interesting rock, or coral garden, or swim-through to explore.
Photographer: Martin Ritter.
However, Tioman is not all coral and schooling fish. You still get all the fixtures of Southeast Asia: pufferfish, cuttlefish, blacktip sharks, blue-spotted stingrays, clownfish, and the usual suspects of the Indo-Pacific. There are lionfish, too–and you don’t have to feel bad when you spot one because they’re not an invasive species in this part of the world.
That’s probably the best way of describing Tioman: it’s guilt-free diving. There’s no fretting about the cost of your trip, or the ecological impact of tourism, or having to leave your newbie divers at home. The price is low, the reefs are healthy, and the diving is for everyone.
Photographer: Martin Ritter.