Mark McGinley's Fulbright in Malaysia: Pulau Payar

Although the best scuba diving in Malaysia is off of the east coast of the peninsula and in Borneo, there is diving near Langkawi. Pulau Payar, a small island located about an hour boat ride from Langkawi is rated as the 7th best place to dive in Malaysia (I have already been to #1 and #5 and hope to visit #s 2 and 3 in the next couple of months).

I started out my day trip to Pulau Payar with another cramped mini-bus ride across the island to East Marine Diver's shop.

Here is the view of the ferry terminal from the dive shop.

The dive shop was located at the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club.

East Marine Divers runs daily snorkelling-scuba trips to Pulau Payar. The day I went there were many more snorkellers than divers. We made the crossing in a nice big boat. When we arrived at Pulau Payar they moored the boat in a beautiful cove. The snorkellers were all transported to the snorkelling beach while the divers took their first dive of the day.

Getting ready to dive. I am second from the left.

Brief dive report- I must admit that that I started the day with minimal expectations of the diving, so I would have been happy just getting wet. However, I was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed my two dives. Although the visibility was not great, it was certainly good enough to be able to see lots of interesting marine life. I dove in a group with only one other driver and our dive guide Othman worked hard to show us lots of interesting critters. Because Pulau Payar is a protected marine park there is no fishing in the area. Thus, we saw lots of fishes and many of them (e.g., groupers) were quite large. The most interesting things that I saw were several pipefish, two sea horses, and some very strange crabs (I have never seen crabs like this before- I am still trying to identify them) living underneath sea anemones. I had a great day of diving!

After our morning dive we joined everyone else at the snorkelling beach.

We had lunch in very nice shelters on the beach.

I think that the snorkellers enjoyed their visit to Pulau Payar. Because snorkellers commonly feed the fishes, the snorkellers were able to get quite close to the action (including nurse sharks). It was common to hear a kid shrieking when a nurse sharke ventured a little too close. This photo, taken from the dock, shows a small nurse shark.