Terumba Tiga Dive Site, Perhentian
Terumbu Tiga, also known as Tiger Rock or T3, refers to one of the most popular dive sites around Perhentian. It is a granite pinnacle located on the seaward side of Pulau Perhentian Besar.
Stacks of gigantic sized boulders form overhangs, swim throughs, crevices and bedrocks that make this dive site heaven for scuba divers. A diversity of marine life is also packed into this underwater paradise.
Be it fish or macro life or a sand community, it is found here in abundance. Predatory fishes like Barracudas, Trevallies and Black-tipped Reef Sharks are often seen around this pinnacle. Coral fishes inhabit the shallower waters on the west side.
Even the crown of thorns starfish at this site houses some species of shrimps.
Scattered rocks on the outer edges of the pinnacle support trees of black coral, spiral whips and gorgonians. Patches of sea whips can be found in sandy areas to the south of the pinnacle. Seafans, tube corals and wire corals thrive on the sides of overhangs and rocky cliffs.
Bedrocks and boulders on the west side are filled with staghorn and table corals. Beyond the pinnacle on the west side is a reef flat that is densely colonized by branching coral species.
The reef flat is linked to a smaller pinnacle called Anak Terumbu Tiga or Baby Tiger Rock, which is considered a separate dive site. Diving at Terumbu Tiga begins at the mooring line on the seaward side.
Sugar Wreck Dive Site
She is a sunken freighter located just off the shores of Kuala Besut. A cardinal buoy marks her final resting place.
She lays in 18 metres of water on her starboard, her bow pointing northeast and parts of her gentry cranes and cargo hatches strewn on the bottom in the vicinity.
Sugar Wreck sank in the monsoon of 1999.
Tidal stream affects diving at this site. Diving at the wreck is best during new moon. At this time tidal changes are insignificant, causing little or no currents. Visibility also improves as there is no stir up.
Being recent, the wreck harbours little marine growth, but fishes are abundant.
Teeming school of juvenile barracudas can be found around the wreck, especially near the cargo hold and wheel house.
Red snappers and sweetlips are plentiful.
Shipwrecks are usually home to many species of venomous fishes like lionfish, scorpion fish and stonefish.
Most conspicuous at the Sugar Wreck are the Plain Tailed Lionfish ( Pterois ruselli) and Tassled Scorpionfish (Scorpionopsis oxycephala).
The shallowest part of this wreck is only 6 metres below the surface where a mooring line is attached to the superstructure.
Like Tokong Laut, the Sugar Wreck is one of the most popular dive sites in Perhentian.
Tanjung Bassi Dive Site
In the early days when the islanders are harvesting turtle eggs around these islands, they go from beach to beach on their sampan (a small skiff). They will paddle the sampan from the village to all the beaches starting with the ones on the seaward side like Pasir Pinang Seribu.
The journey is long and strenuous. They will normally take food with them and worked all day. The process of paddling and extracting their harvest is lengthy and tiring. By the time they reach the northern headland, the food they carried will normally turned stale.
The word 'basi' in malay literally means 'staled food'. Therefore they named this place 'Tanjung Basi'.
Tanjung Basi is located at the northern tip of Pulau Perhentian Besar. Just like Tanjung Butong, this site is an extension of a rocky headland that stretches out into the sea at a maximum depth of 22 metres.
Large granite boulders make up most of the seaward landscape. The steep rocky formation gradually levels into a gentle reef slope inside a narrow bay on the west side of the island.
The rocky headland makes up one third of the dive site with crevices and substrate that house a variety of marine life.
This includes moray eels and marble groupers. Macro organisms along the rocky landscape include pipefish and nudibranchs.
The coral reef in the remaining parts of the dive site consists of table corals on the reef top, branching acropora on the reef flats and massive coral heads (porites) on the front reef slope.
Vast areas of rubble on the reef crest are also known as current beds where rubble is deposited into the bay as a result of current eddies that bring in the debris from upstream. This in turn becomes a habitat for shrimp gobies, triggerfish and a few species of shellfish.
Discoverers of Perhentian
The people of Perhentian and Redang Islands are descendants of the Bugis who were the first to establish a settlement here. They were seafarers and traders who initiated trade links between the Malay Archipelago, Siam and the Khmer Empire.
Among the islands along this coast, Perhentian Island has always been a stop over venue for sailors seeking shelter from foul weather as well as protection from piracy.
Many of the first traders married locally and later became trade agents for their compatriots who visited these areas. The first village to be set up was on Perhentian Besar (Big Island) at Teluk Dalam. The former village, now known as kampong lama, has been replaced by holiday resorts.
At the height of trading, spice and trepang (sea cucumber) was the main commodity. Trepang in particular is much in demand by the Chinese and is was trafficked through Perhentian to the ports in the Khmer and Siam.
In the seventies, in conjunction with the booming numbers of travellers who came to watch the Leather Back Turtles on the beach in Rantau Abang, islands within the vicinity like Pulau Kapas and the Perhentian Islands seemed to move into a new era.
Travelers arrived on these islands and home-stayed. Divers arrived on their shores for adventures in spear fishing. Recognizing such potential, holiday resorts soon lined the beaches on these idyllic islands, thus the foundation of tourism in Perhentians was laid.
Now the fishing industry has diminished to almost nothing. The people of these islands accept tourism as the main source of revenue.