TIMOR-LESTE

THE FINAL FRONTIER

While making a television series, Aaron ‘Bertie’ Gekoski explored probably the final great diving frontier – blue whales, sperms whales, dugongs, superpods of dolphin, giant crocodiles, some of world’s best reefs and much more. Welcome to East Timor One of the sperm whales resident in East Timor’s waters . Photo Aaron Gekoski/Scubazoo

99 www.divemagazine.co.uk 99 TIMOR-LESTE

Anemone City - a EAST TIMOR dive site near the capital Dili. Aaron Gekoski/Scubazoo BANDA SEA INDONESIA Wetar Strait Atuaru Manatuto Tutuala

DILI Ossu Ombai Strait

Maliana Pante Makasar Suai SAVU Oecussi SEA ASIA

INDONESIA

TIMOR SEA

Weedy scorpionfish. OCEANIA Jason Isley/Scubazoo

Mature pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) reach 25m in length. Aaron Gekoski/Scubazoo

hanging around: they are on their mammoth 10,000km reef systems as Indonesia, Timor-Leste remains relatively yearly round-trip migration, from the feeding grounds untouched by dive tourism. Why, despite possibilities of sub-Antarctic waters, to mate and birth around of getting in the water with resident sperm whales, blue Indonesia’s Banda Sea. whales in season (plus a whole lot more, as you’re about to Skippered Australian, Kevin Austin, the MV Atauro learn), does it remain off our radar? manoeuvres into position, one which we hope is on a Well, first of all, there is Timor-Leste’s recent bloody collision path with the whales. There are no margins Exploring the coast of Oecussi in the history. The former Portuguese colony forms the eastern for error here – the blues only come up for air every ten MV Aturo. Aaron Gekoski/Scubazoo part of the large island of Timor (the western part is o we opt for the half a dozen sperm minutes or so before descending again. the Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara.) and gained whales next to our boat, or the blue whales on the The whales are about 50m behind us on our port side. its independence in 1975. Nine days later, Indonesia horizon? This isn’t a question you are likely to ask ‘Go, go, go!’ comes the shout from Kevin, as we clutch our underwater footage of pygmy blue whales on their great invaded and a bloody war ensued. More than 200,000 Dyourself many times in your diving life, however it is cameras and slip into the water. Keeping fin strokes beneath migration. Very few people have seen these animals East Timorese were killed. Indonesia relinquished our current dilemma. We are in the Wetar Strait - a the surface to a minimum, we make our way towards them. beneath the waves. And we’re starting to understand why. control in 1999 and the first new sovereign nation of the 3,000m-deep cetacean superhighway which runs along With the most imperceptible of movements, the whales While it was one of the most thrilling encounters of our 21st century was formed in 2002. A period of healing the north coast of the island of Timor. Despite being a manoeuvre beneath us, the shadows of three aquatic jumbo lives, it could have been better. We needed to get closer. ensued, and Timor-Leste began finding its feet. stone’s throw from Dili, East Timor’s capital, we are the jets. And then it dawns on us: we have just laid eyes on the So we had to keep on trying, for weeks, until we got that Life here – as one often encounters in countries only boat out on an ocean that is flat, clear, and most largest animal ever to have inhabited our Earth. magic moment: a 25m blue whale that nearly filled the recovering from war – moves at a snail’s pace. The importantly, stuffed chock-a-block with marine life. frames of our cameras. fighting is over, what’s there to be stressed about? Taxis, However, there are decisions to be made. We opt for the UNCHARTERED TERRITORY covered in graffiti, chunter along dusty streets, seldom blues (after all, the sperm whales are resident of these The crew and I are in the middle of filming a new dive A DIVE DESTINATION LIKE NO OTHER clocking more than 20mph. One of the problems for waters so we will have more opportunities). show for online wildlife TV channel, SZtv. Our mission Timor-Leste is no ordinary dive destination. Despite tourists is the cost of living. Having adopted the US We grab cameras, masks and fins. The blues aren’t for this episode of Timor-Leste from Below is to obtain being located in the Coral Triangle, and sharing the same dollar, Timor-Leste is now one of the most expensive

16 www.divemagazine.co.uk 17 TIMOR-LESTE

countries in Asia for travellers. Another peculiar fact of (thermoregulating, perhaps?), melon-headed and life in East Timor is that seemingly innocuous activities even the rare Cuvier’s beaked whales appeared briefly, such as changing money, or buying plasters for a cut hundreds of spinner dolphins surfed on the bow of our toe can consume baffling amounts of time. All of these boat and more. We even did an aerial study with a drone factors contribute to the country’s higgledy-piggledy for Professor Edyvane to get a bird’s eye view of the charm, while reducing its visitor numbers to only the action, counting thousands of individuals in the process. most curious and adventurous. Last year, Timor-Leste welcomed fewer than 100,000 tourists, compared to DILI ROCKS Indonesia’s 14 million. Following our successes on the high seas, it was time Us divers are a thrill-seeking bunch that will do to explore the coastline around Dili with Aquatica whatever it takes, wherever it takes us, to get our diving Dive Resort. Australian owners Desmond and Jennifer fix. So when we heard about the marine riches on offer have turned Aquatica into one of the best-known dive in Timor-Leste, we formed a partnership with a local centres in Timor-Leste. Dili’s star diving attraction organisation set up to promote tourism, Noble Timor, to is Tasitolu – a stretch of coastline eight kilometres make an online TV show about the country’s best dive outside the city that is packed with miniature life. locations. Over the course of our trips to Timor-Leste, However, we were more interested in a pair of local we would see not only the largest animal ever to have celebrities that hung out here: dugongs named Dougie lived (blue whale), but also the largest ever carnivore and Debbie. Every morning we sat on the beach, (sperm whale), in addition to resident dugongs, the waiting for Debbie to arrive. And at 9am, regular as world’s most biodiverse reef systems, free-diving clockwork, she’d show up, sometimes grazing less ‘mermaids’, superpods of dolphins, and ancient rituals than 20m away from the shore. Locating Debbie was involving giant crocodiles and bloody sacrifices. easy, however getting a decent shot of her – head-on as she chomped seagrass – was not. She would catch a A HIGH SPERM COUNT glimpse of us, rise up on her flippers, and head off to Once we were satisfied with our blue-whale footage, another patch of seagrass where she could eat in peace. we turned our attention to the sperm whales. We were joined on the MV Atauro by cetacean experts Dr Benjamin Kahn from Holland and Professor Karen Edyvane from Australia. Dr Kahn brought along his hydrophone. Looking like a small satellite dish attached to a piece of bamboo, this seemingly innocuous piece of equipment offers an intimate insight into the lives of these highly intelligent, social animals. ‘Those clicks you can hear are the whales hunting, using echolocation,’ Dr Kahn explained, as we listened Lizardfish, Synodus variegatus, with to the unmistakable sounds of a pod of sperm whales. captured damselfish. Jason Isley/Scubazoo ‘The clicks speed up when they approach their prey, which is primarily squid. And then, when the clicks stop – BANG – you know they have caught them. It’s pretty cool that we’re able to be part of their hunt, simply by Debbie, the shy dugong of Tasitolu. listening with this equipment.’ Jason Isley/Scubazoo These insights made us long for an in-water encounter. And oh, how we got one. One afternoon, with the water at its most pristine, director Will Foster- Grundy, photographer Gil Woolley and I, dropped into the water as a lone female approached. We waited at the surface, hoping for a fleeting glance. As she arrived a curious thing happened. She rolled her body and leaned on her side, sussing us out with one beady eye. Then, with a deft waft of her fluke, she cruised straight past our cameras, before descending into the deep, showering us in a cloud of her poo. We raised our heads out of the water and whooped. For the following week, we were treated to more encounters with Timor-Leste’s other 24 whale The healthy reefs of Timore-Leste covered in and dolphin species. Risso’s dolphins sat vertically soft corals. Aaron Gekoski/Scubazoo in the water column, waving tails up in the air

99 99 TIMOR-LESTE

With Debbie elsewhere, we were left to wallow in the whittled away hours seated on beanbags, sipping from muck. On a single dive we saw two species of seahorse, coconuts and eating slices of fresh mango. Life as an mimic octopus, algae octopus, two leaf fish, tonnes of explorer had its perks. different species of shrimp, and a frogfish. Not a bad We arrived into Oecussi unsure of what to expect way to spend a morning. from the next ten days. Our host for the week was The other site that excited us around Dili was located Veronica, an Oecussi local who made us feel part of her a two-hour drive along the coastline, via a seemingly family instantly, as children of various sizes tottered half-built road littered with potholes. A stone’s throw around. Every day we boarded the MV Atauro via a from an abandoned digger was Anemone City. Wading deserted beach with a mountainous backdrop before in from the shore, a blanket of anemones – maybe 50m scouring the coastline. Our method of finding a site was by 50m – pulsed with clownfish. It was worth every somewhat primitive: spot a reef at around 15m, stick second of our back-jarring journey. our heads in the water, decide whether or not we liked the look of it, and then jump in (or not). THE REEFS OF ATAURO With few pressures from fishing in Oecussi, there From Dili we made our way to Atauro Island (Goat was ample fish life. A dugong even swam past us on Island in the local Tutum language). Atauro lies 25km one dive. But what impressed us most were the unusual north of Dili. Atauro gained recognition in 2016, when coral formations. On most dive sites, a single species Conservation International counted 642 species of reef of coral had colonised a vast area, treating us to fields fish around the island, making it technically the world’s of daisies, grassy meadows, mountains of cabbage, and most biodiverse dive destination. Our home for the more anemone gardens. The fact that that no divers had week was Atauro Dive Resort, run by German Volker ever laid eyes on these sites made the whole experience and his Kenyan girlfriend Saffy. The resort has charm a little more special. in abundance and excellent food. We spent the next few days exploring the reefs lying on their doorstep. AN ANCIENT RITUAL Although big schools of fish are hard to come by around In Oecussi we were invited to a ritual that suely very few Atauro, the seascapes are spectacular, with sites covered outsiders have ever witnessed. We were off to sacrifice in hard and soft coral, and giant sponges. Shark Fin a pig in a swamp to a 5m-long crocodile. The Timorese was our favourite dive site: a coral-splattered sloping have a special relationship with crocodiles. Creation reef, prone to strong currents and often schools of myth has it that an ageing crocodile transformed barracudas and sharks. himself into the land of Timor-Leste, to repay a child who helped him when he was sick, in turn offering a THE MERMAIDS OF ATAURO safe place to live for the child’s descendants. Nowadays, Our other reason for visiting Atauro was to document crocodiles are sacred animals that the Timorese believe the Wawata Topu, aka The Mermaids of Atauro. This to be their ancestors. group of local women catch fish using homemade At the swamp, home to the giant crocodile that the spear guns and goggles, all while wearing flip-flops and community believed was their relative, the sacrifice dressed in a lipa, a colourful cloth that the Timorese began. When it was over, the village elders picked up the wear around their waist. pig’s intestines, stretching them out with knarled, blood- Our home for the next 24 hours was Mario’s place. The Mermaids of Atauro in action. stained fingers. As they studied the intricate system of Aaron Gekoski/Scubazoo Mario – a chirpy character with a booming laugh – veins, they murmured to each other, nodding excitedly: collected us in his handmade wooden boat for the two- the crocodile had spoken. The ritual was over. hour journey around the island. Here we would stay We slumped on MV Atauro’s beanbags and made our with his family at an impossibly pretty stretch of beach. EXPEDITION OECUSSI Fishing boat off Adara. way back to Dili: our Timor-Leste adventure was over. We spent the afternoon speaking to the women, who The final segment of our Timor-Leste tour involved AaronGekoski/Scubazoo All the hyperbole in the world won’t do our trip justice. ranged in age from early twenties to mid-fifties. They venturing into the unknown. It was the part we had Diving and travelling around Timor-Leste isn’t always explained that they started fishing this way many years been anticipating with a mixture of trepidation and easy, but open yourself up, sit back, and soak up one of ago, as they wanted to earn extra money. ‘If the guys can excitement. We were heading to the province of Oecussi, the last untouched dive wildernesses on Earth. It might do it, then why can’t we?’ laughed Eunicia, one of the an enclave 200km to the west surrounded by the just be the best dive trip you ever do. n more experienced fishers. Now, women from all over Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara. Timor-Leste visit them to learn how to spearfish. The major issue with diving in Oecussi is, well, there The Wawata Topu showed us their skills. With heads is no diving. There are no known dive sites, let alone a submerged, they scoured the reefs for sign of life, barely dive centre. It was therefore up to us to find some. This pausing for air. Some free-dived a few metres to look was true exploration diving. for octopus and other goodies under rocks, while others We loaded up tanks and a compressor, and set off on ‘Timor-Leste from Below’ is the third series of SZtv’s ‘From concentrated on the shallow waters, collecting clams the MV Atauro with Kevin and his crew, on the 10-hour Below’ dive shows - ther first features Malaysia, the second and spearing the odd small fish in the process, as Will sail west, into uncharted territory. No trip with Kevin Indonesia. All episodes can be seen on www.scubazoo.tv and I photographed the stunning reefs. is complete without endless supplies of treats, and we or on Facebook www.facebook.com/scubazoo.tv.

99 www.divemagazine.co.uk 99