Semporna: Two Faces of Paradise 🌴🌊

If someone had told me I would find a place nicknamed the "Maldives of Malaysia" and be confronted with such a raw, confronting reality, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. But that’s Semporna: a fascinating corner nestled in the immensity of Borneo, a giant island bursting with life, mystery, and stories older than memory.

I came chasing turquoise postcards and the promise of vibrant underwater worlds. I found them. But the true adventure, the one that changes your perspective, often comes uninvited.

A Hypnotic Seascape and a Harsh Reality 🐠🚫

Here, where the Celebes Sea unfolds in mesmerising shades of blue, another world exists. Just beyond the horizon of dive sites and luxury resorts, wooden stilt houses cling to the reefs. This is where the Bajau Laut, the "sea nomads," live. They are a people without borders, living entirely on or beside the ocean. Their lives are woven into the rhythms of the tide, and their ancestors navigated these waters long before maps had names.

Walking through their floating villages hit me like a punch to the gut 💔 — and also offered a deep lesson in humility.

The poverty is visible. Children run barefoot across shaky wooden planks, sometimes surrounded by floating plastic waste. The first thing that struck us wasn’t the poverty itself, but the plastic. 🧃🛍️ It was everywhere: drifting near mangroves, tangled around stilts, floating between homes.

As divers, this image was particularly painful. The ocean gives us so much beauty, and yet here was its most devastating mirror: a sea choking in trash. 🐢♻️ It reminded us how much work still lies ahead, and how interconnected we all are in both cause and consequence.

Sea Nomads of Borneo: A Vanishing World Beneath the Surface 🚤🌅

If there’s one thing Semporna gifted me, beyond turquoise waters and epic dives, it was the powerful encounter with a culture I had only heard whispers of: the Bajau Laut, or Sea Nomads.

Who Are the Bajau Laut? 🧭

The Bajau Laut are an Indigenous people of the Coral Triangle, traditionally living in the maritime zones between Malaysia (Sabah, Borneo), the southern Philippines, and eastern Indonesia. For centuries, they have lived almost entirely on the sea, aboard small handcrafted boats called lepa-lepa. The ocean was their home, their school, their temple, their grave. 🌊⛵

Their knowledge of the marine environment is profound. Bajau divers have been known to dive over 30 meters deep on a single breath, fishing for octopus, sea cucumbers, and reef fish. They navigate by stars ⭐, read the tides like a language 🌙, and live with a spiritual connection to the sea passed down through generations.

But this ancient way of life is now under threat ⚠️.

Stateless and Forgotten 👤🚫

In places like Semporna, many Bajau Laut are not legally recognized as citizens. In Malaysia, they are often considered undocumented or “illegal,” despite having been born and raised in these waters. Without ID cards, they cannot access healthcare, education, or legal employment. Their children grow up invisible to the system, often not even knowing their exact age.

Today, most no longer live aboard boats. Instead, they inhabit wooden stilt villages built over coral reefs, often surrounded by floating plastic, clinging to an increasingly unsustainable way of life 🏚️🌧️.

A Culture on the Edge 🧨

The arrival of mass tourism in Semporna has drawn attention to their existence—but not necessarily in a good way. While glossy resorts rise on nearby islands, Bajau villages remain in deep poverty. Tourists are sometimes brought to see them as a kind of "cultural display", often photographed without consent or context 📸🙅‍♂️.

Their traditional fishing methods have become less effective in depleted waters. In desperation, some turn to illegal and highly destructive practices, such as blast fishing 💣 or using cyanide to stun fish. These methods destroy coral reefs 🪸❌ and harm both marine biodiversity and their own long-term survival.

Diving Beneath the Surface: Our Responsibility 🤿🌍

Underwater, we found beauty, yes — but also signs of exhaustion. Overfishing is real. Many of the fish caught and displayed at local markets are juveniles. Their sizes speak of a desperate search in a depleted sea. Species that should be protected or allowed to grow are caught too soon, sold off to unknowing tourists, or shipped to foreign markets 🐟🛒.

As divers, we are witnesses to this crisis. We cannot pretend we didn’t see 👁️. Our very presence in these regions gives us both the privilege and the responsibility to act:

• ✅ Support dive centers that operate sustainably and invest in local communities.

• ❌ Say no to practices that exploit people or the sea.

• 📚 Learn. 📣 Share. 🙋 Advocate.

• ♻️ Always bring a mesh bag and pick up debris during your dives.

• 🗣️ Talk about what you’ve seen. Use your photos, your stories, your voice.

The ocean doesn’t need more tourists. It needs protectors. Storytellers. Allies. 🌊❤️

Closing Reflections 🧘‍♂️🌅

Semporna left a mark on me that goes far beyond coral and current. It showed me both the wonders and the wounds of our blue planet 🌐. It's not a destination for everyone. It’s raw, real, and sometimes uncomfortable. But for the curious and the compassionate, it offers one of the most powerful lessons the ocean can give: that beauty and struggle can coexist, and that true connection often begins when we look beyond the surface.

If we want to keep diving into paradise, we need to help protect it — for ourselves, for the ocean, and for the people who call it home. 💙🌍🤝