Pulau Tenggol (Part 1)

Dungun is a sleepy little east coast town that seems only to shake her slumber by mid-morning when the jetty begins crawling with the activities of the local fishermen bringing in their catch. The deafening roar of the ice grinding machine reducing massive blocks of ice into bags of shavings confirms that Dungun is indeed awake and moving. We clamber aboard the speedboat bound for my first diving trip at Pulau Tenggol. As we leave the harbor, a turtle pops it’s head up just in front of the boat and I breathe lungfulls of the invigorating salt air. This is going to be a great trip! Almost instantly our eyes are drawn to Pulau Tenggol, sitting on the horizon, brooding like a distant storm cloud, dark and foreboding. As we draw closer to the island we see that sheer granite cliffs jut sharply out of the water and ring this island, not the usual wide, sandy beaches. The island feels like a medieval fortress, built to withstand long sieges and head-on attacks yet we are not an invading force but simply an alliance of friends coming to pay homage to this ancient keep and her inhabitants.

There is one long beach nestled amidst the cliffs and as we glide into it’s jade coloured waters rain starts to peck at the surface. We rush from the boat to the island to take shelter from the weather. Why have you come to dive Tenggol is one of the first questions I am met with. Why am I here? I am here because Tenggol is an enigma. Some dark whisper of the name stuck in the recesses of my mind and grew there, like a fantasy which became an obsession. Currents. Drift dives. Pelagics. Hump-headed wrasse. Bump-headed parrotfish. Possibly even elusive an whale shark or manta ray. These are not the idyllic waters of Redang or Perhentian. No, these are the swirling waters of the moat of Castle Tenggol, filled with strange beasts worthy of her reputation. This is why I have come to Tenggol.

As the dusk begins to gather on the first day, we head to a site known as “Mini-Highway”. “The Highway” is one of the most famous Tenggol dive sites but isn’t diveable this time of year due to unfavourable currents. “Mini-Highway” starts on one side of Tanjung Gemuk and then you drift in the current to the other side of the point. We start out in a sheltered bay and almost immediately after descending we spot a pair of humpheaded wrasse meandering out into the current. We follow suit. I have never done a real drift dive and my blood is pumping as we hit the current. It is an eerie and almost unnerving experience to have your regulator hit the current at just the right angle and start to vibrate in your mouth from the force of the current. As we start our drift, a school of trevally begin to envelope us. They stay with us for the first 200 meters or so of the drift, eyeing the invaders to their watery realm with an unblinking, steady gaze.

Continuing on in the current, we float over coral beds, mixed soft and hard. There, grazing amongst the hard coral is a hawksbill turtle. I turn and face back into the current, kicking against it, is not unlike walking down the ‘up’ escalator. In doing so I am able to hold steady with the turtle, watching him search for delicacies amidst the coral bed. Finally, content with my interlude with the turtle, I stop finning and let my torso catch the current and turn me back toward our original destination. Perhaps this highway was misnamed, because on this dive we see four turtles, ending our dive in a sheltered bay, hovering at 5 meters watching yet another turtle feeding amongst the coral. We surface to smiles and the last rays of light casting a rosy glow on the waters.