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Kota Kinabalu: SIPADAN is still one of the best in the world, argues Simon Christopher, founder of Scubazoo. More emphatic still, he said “Sabah has more biodiversity than anywhere else on the planet because it is part of the Coral Triangle.”“Sabah is still one of the last places on the planet that has this amazing biodiversity, and I include cultural diversity,” he added. However, his warning is whether this great “treasure within” remains the case 10 years from now is dictated by what Sabah will do collectively now. The choice is Sabah’s.

“No one has a better opportunity than Sabah to remain a biodiversity top dog because we got choice, we got options in contrast to a lot of countries where it’s all gone. Destroyed by a ‘take, take and take’ practice,” Simon asserted ahead of World Ocean Day June 8 (Monday), and ahead of Unesco Decade of the Oceans 2021-2030.

So, Simon told Daily Express: “Twenty-twenty is a pivotal year and we have a head start”. Either we do something to reset, reassess the balance and rebrand some of the problems, or we risk undoing what is still “the last bastion,” Simon cautioned.              

The story of Scubazoo founder   Simon has been around for 25 years.      How he got here, why he got here in 1995, is a human interest story.

“I am a marine zoologist. It was that fabled and amazing Sipadan that brought me to Sabah originally and very quickly I headed for Sipadan where I fell in love with diving.” He struck a deal with Datuk Douglas Primus and Terrence Lim of Sipadan Dive Resort, did his Dive Master course in return for talking to the guests about fish. “After getting my Dive Master cert, I headed for Australia where I thought I could get a job as Dive Master on one hand and on the other hand spend my money diving in Malaysia, Philippines and the Coral Triangle.”   Arriving in Australia with 50 pounds Sterling in his pocket, he hitch-hiked to Cairns to get a job.

“I nearly had to fly back to UK in visa but I did get the job, luckily.”

It prompted a flight back to the UK on his visa card.

Then he saw a job ad for a cameraman – underwater cameraman, videographer.

“Being a Dive Master, I had never picked up a camera in my life but somehow I got the job. I did a year in the Great Barrier Reefs filming sharks, fish, corals and fell in love with it and within weeks of filming, I said to myself, alright I want to go back Sipadan and set up Scubazoo.

“That’s what I did in 1995 so I came back to Malaysia and set up Scubazoo. I arrived in Sipadan with a hired camera, I sold underwater videos to divers, then other partners, like Jason Isley, Simon Enderby and Roger Mann came on board.

“That’s why Scubazoo became so successful and created niche global brand because of Sabah’s biodiversity,” Simon stressed.

Story behind Sabah’s unsurpassed biodiversity

“The thing about Sabah is it has more biodiversity than anywhere else on the planet because it is part of the Coral Triangle,” he asserted. “The Coral Triangle is the most biodiversed place on the planet. There is more species in that three-tenths of the planet than the rest of the world combined. “That is an incredible statistics! So, if you want to tell stories, if you want to make videos there is no better place than, and more stories, Coral Triangle. I can tell you! “The point is, Scubazoo flourished because divers want to come to Sipadan. They save up all the money to buy up all the best dive sites in the world and they want a video to go home to show naturally all their friends and families themselves diving with lovely sharks and turtles,” he said.

“It’s a show of excitement. It’s great for the resorts – Sipadan Dive Resort, Borneo Divers – but also it promotes diving and creates awareness,” Simon looked back to those glorious beginnings.  

Voice of Sipadan

“I voiced out, I spent the last 25 years creating awareness about Sabah,” he said.

In the process, Simon managed to get foremost naturalist in the world like Sir David Attenborough and BBC to spearhead hotly pursued stories on Sipadan.

In fact, through Scubazoo, Simon provided the story ideas for Attenborough what he thinks on how the Sipadan story need to be told, particularly on the prime importance of conservation,

Attenborough’s support is a coup because his documentaries are nothing less than primetime slots where all the highest paying money advertisers are.

Attenborough’s Deep trouble in the deep

“The first eight episodes highlighted the amazing sharks, turtles, whales etc and then the Special, 9th Deep Trouble,” Simon noted. “In deep trouble, Attenborough is actually saying wonders aside, we got a bit of a problem, all the problems – we got plastic problems, acidification of the oceans, overfishing, shark finning, ghost fishing, dead zones, mercy pollution, ocean warming, destruction of habitats and coral reefs.” The message of Deep Trouble, World Ocean Day or Unesco’s “Decade of the Oceans 2021-30”, is clear.

“We have an obligation to tell the story, the kind of things Scubazoo could tell conservation stories, stories about plastics. “We showed the stories about plastics, we showed all the people, the great conservation heroes on the ground. We did Borneo Jungle Diaries, filmed Benoit, all these teams of amazing scientists, studies, groundbreaking stories of all these people saving biodiversity. “We can’t save biodiversity until people know what there is, where it is and where it might be going,” Simon noted. “By creating awareness you create an understanding among the locals and then come love. That’s the whole thing.” 

Next phase: Shake up the system

“The next phase of what I am up to now with Blu Hope is the final story because the biggest story on the planet, how we are going to save it by pointing out that Covid-19 is a by-product of man’s out of sync, out of balance and out of spark in their relationship with nature,” Simon said. “We basically ‘take, take and take’ and we are destroying the planet. And so we got the opportunity now to reset the balance and pause and shake up the system and save biodiversity.” 

Sabah beat West Malaysia “Sabah has greater biodiversity than anywhere else in Malaysia.

“Just look at the map of Malaysia. You see the East Coast of Sabah is part of the Coral Triangle where West Malaysia is marked light blue whereas the map of Sabah on the right hand side is deep blue. That reflects the difference in biodiversity,” Simon noted. “Sabah is part of the Coral Triangle that encompass six countries, West Malaysia is not, so that’s the reality.” “Sabah is the bastion of biodiversity and we know the Heart of Borneo – you get pygmy elephants, the Orangutan – all those incredible biodiversity. “That’s also reflected not only on underwater, but biodiversity of people and so many cultures like some 32 ethnic groups who speak 50 different languages. So this is a grand showpiece of biodiversity,” Simon elaborated. 

Covid-19: Opportunity to take stock “The point I am making is we now got the opportunity to reset the balance and take stock because a lot of people cannot eat as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“That’s the big problem and right now when most people are focussing on survival, people are at home, I can see there’ll be more fishing, more poaching, more fish bombing going on. “A lot of people have become jobless and it’s all about food and security so Blu Hope is essentially a new campaign designed to refocus our attention to the ocean because oceans create 60pc to 70pc of the air we breathe but the world risk fishing out the last fish, the last shark and the last turtle,” Simon said. 

Dugong gone but … “When I first arrived in Kota Kinabalu, I heard about a place where you could swim with the dugong. “Sure enough, I went to Mantanani and saw one of the rarest animals on the planet. But now you go to Mantanani, there is not a single fish left in the place, there is no corals left, certainly no dugongs and it’s completely destroyed!

“This is one example on where we have gone but on the flip side, I don’t want to be too negative because the positive thing is I can take you on a boat three to four minutes out of  KK for a dive tomorrow with a camera and I can take a picture of you with a green turtle and black tip reef shark.

“When you pop up, there’s Mt Kinabalu and capital city Kota Kinabalu. There is no other capital city in Asia where you can do that, mark my word, where you can do that, within one side where you can see Hong Kong Bank from where you can see a green turtle and a shark. It doesn’t exist.”

“So, that’s so special. That’s Sabah’s opportunity. That’s our value. That’s our wealth.”

Blu Hope: Focus on the ocean “Blu Hope is all about this reassessing what’s of important value. The value of natural assets of the planet and essentially how we are going to protect it. So Blu Hope campaign is all about focusing on the ocean taking the minds off Covid-19. “Everyone is on Covid threat but there is a lot to be happy about. We need to all get together all the government departments for a revamping exercise. We need to focus on quality tourism, ecotourism rather than quantity tourism. “None of the tourism coming forward people who are spending money in Sabah. They all spending on C-trips from Beijing or whatever. Get on a Chinese chartered plane, on a Chinese hotel, Chinese mini bus, Chinese massage and none of the money comes to Sabah… whole thing is compromised, zero tourism, inevitably  the value of the biodiversity is worth to Sabah, to make that planet worth more to the locals alive than dead because otherwise it’s going to feed the Chinese tourists in shark fin soup or pangolin soup so now you have newly-weds arrived in Sabah having booked their pangolin online and with their guide to eat it in his house on the first day of their arrival here.”

“When I arrived in Sabah no one knew what a pangolin or pygmy elephants were and you go to dive in Sipadan was 350 pounds Sterling a day. Now you go dive in Sipadan for 70 to 80 pounds a day, the value is gone completely. So there is no value, the whole value system is changed for Sabah.”

Refocus, rebrand Sabah “Blu Hope refocuses, appreciates what we have – the treasure that we have,” he said. “The first book that we did as Scubazoo was Sabah’s underwater treasure and we still have that treasure, we can still save that treasure but we have to create a youth movement so the kids will be the ones zooming in on plastics is one of the biggest issues because plastics is everywhere now, for every plate of seafood you have, you eat micro plastics. “If you have two to three plates of seafood you have enough to make a credit card and only few people realise how much you breathe in nano plastics.”

“What we need to do is we need to teach people to change the way we treat plastics, we got to live more sustainably, we got to look after our biodiversity, we got to create a new type of ecotourism and for our government to rebrand Sabah so people come here they are going to leave something of value and the money got to go to the local stakeholders.” “If you don’t do that the local stakeholders don’t value it and start to resent it. It then becomes something they can’t make money out of, and money goes away and harder and harder for them to live, so it’s complicating. “It’s going to take time and I see a real opportunity for our government to embrace this and Sabah is one of the Coral Triangle’s (the world’s) last Blu Hope. It is really an opportunity to celebrate what we have for now.” 

Biodiversity gives options “The question is for now because five to 10 years. If we don’t change our ways we don’t appreciate the value of protection and really increase the amount of protected areas then you have nothing. “It will disappear and then it will be like Manila, Kuala Lumpur and all these other places where it gives you no options. Biodiversity gives you options, we have a lot of options now and what we need to do is to get a map out and show the pockets of biodiversity and that proper sustainability where the money comes back to the locals as stakeholders, communities who actually deliver the experience , they live part of the biodiversity.

“World Ocean Day is on Monday (June 8) so Dr Sylvia Earle has announced Timor Leste as a new Hope Spot.”

“I was in Timor Leste to try and help there because they have amazing biodiversity there. They still have dugongs outside their capital Dili, they have hundreds of blue whales swimming past their capital city each year. “So imagine what it would do to Sabah if we have hundreds of blue whales swimming past KK every year. It’s already exciting when we get whalesharks outside KK last March-April – the biggest animal to have ever lived on earth is off the charts. So I have been there.”

Dream for Sipadan “My dream would be to pitch Sipadan as our Hope Spot to Sylvia but it wouldn’t qualify yet because of the way it is not being managed properly. But there are enough people working together and if we get it right, remodel it right and fix the problem then Sipadan can be relaunched anew and should be brought to the world in a more new, fresh way and champion it and celebrate it because before Covid-19, a lot of it was all day small money. “It’s all people who book their trips in China so the value system of biodiversity in Sabah has been completely changed.”

“Blu Hope is essentially to take stock of what we have and 2020 is essentially a pivotal year where we are creating an awareness campaign. Plastic Oceans UK has an amazing series of educational pieces recorded with Maya. She does it in Malay version, that will be launched in next two to three weeks.”

Plastic Intelligence via all languages

“Educationists will start talking. They will embrace this and work on how to deliver to all the stores, village stores so that kids will start to appreciate a new type of plastic intelligence. That’s the way to get mummy and daddy to change because they are not going to listen to you and me. “The idea is to kick-start this momentum of awareness across the whole Coral Triangle so we are doing versions in Malay, Tamil and Mandarin, and each country will have its own variation and create this new type of Plastic  Intelligence, create this new level of awareness. “Sabah has an opportunity to embrace and bring what it has to the world as one of the last places that has this amazing biodiversity. The next 10 years will be all showcasing and protecting these locations.”

Our brand is our unique selling point “No one has a better opportunity than Sabah because we got choice, we got options whereas a lot of countries don’t have that – all gone, all destroyed so we have a head start.”

He said the beginning of the new normal will show how they are going to protect the biodiversity in 10 to 20 years. “Because each day we protect it, it makes the sea more unique, so the point is we have to create value, we have to show everyday our biodiversity gets more unique. That’s our unique selling point.”

Please check out www.bluhope.orgonline for free to watch Blu Hope/ADEX’s Ocean Week from Monday (June 8-12) onwards.