Word: selayar
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...next morning, our first day of sailing, dawned brilliant and warm. As the sun rose higher, a stiff breeze rolled over the hills of Selayar, and the crew prepared to cast off. The passengers watched rapt as the five-man crew pulled lines taut and the two green and white striped sails caught the wind and filled with a snap. Some guests pitched in to help, others baited hooks and fished off the stern. A few hours later we arrived at a pristine beach surrounded by coral heads at the southern tip of the island. Divers readied their gear...
...which was just fine as during those days of utter relaxation I wanted nothing to do with gourmet meals and complicated sauces. After dinner we retreated to the comfortable chairs, pillows and mattresses piled on the foredeck to lose ourselves in the stars and watch the moon set over Selayar's hills...
Self-Destruction While the island of Selayar is largely unsullied by human development, the same cannot be said of its surrounding coral reefs. It only takes a quick peek below the surface of the island's tranquil waters to see the devastating consequences of unfettered local fishing practices. The sea floor off the coast, once heralded as one of Sulawesi's richest reefs, is now a barren, white wasteland of shattered coral, eerie stillness and craters the size of a child's inflatable wading pool. The effects of dynamite fishing are hard to miss...
Hitting the Wall The shifting of continental plates that created the Indonesian archipelago also gave Selayar Island its unique geography?the western side of the island slopes gently into the sea, but the eastern side's verdant hills plunge directly into the roiling surf, as if they were hacked in half with a machete. Thirty meters from shore, this geographic slicing is repeated underwater. The island mass stops abruptly in a vertical fall to the ocean floor, some 1,000 meters below. Unlike the dynamite-ravaged reefs that surround much of Selayar, the sheer rock face remains untouched and teems...
...These walls off Selayar can be explored solely by scuba divers. The seafloor starts its descent to the continental shelf a few meters below the waves, then rapidly turns vertical and beyond the reach of even the most deep-lunged of snorkelers. The sensation during that first wall dive is somewhere between giddiness and terror. Floating above an abyss populated by the flickering forms of deepwater sea creatures takes some getting used to, but distractions abound. The wall is covered with a moving mosaic of fat, brown sea cucumbers, vivid corals, shrinking anemones and tiny, glittering fish. The deeper...