Neutral by Nature

Dusk is approaching rapidly as we make our way along the rickety jetty in the harbour of Semporna, a town on the east coast of Borneo. The fishermen have come back with their catch and the jetty is strewn with the best fish for the buyers of the local restaurants to take their first pick from: large tuna, coral trout, stingrays. Zigzagging between the piles of fish, we reach the Sabah Parks boat that is going to take us to the string of islands in the distance, which together form the Semporna Islands Park, exactly at the border between the Sulu Sea and the Sulawesi Sea. Seen from the shore, only the tallest islands are visible as a line of peaks and curves that resemble, according either to local lore or to the boatman’s imagination, a sleeping princess (albeit a big-nosed one). But seen from the sky, it becomes clear that the string is actually a ring, which continues under water. For the main islands of the park form the rim of a caldera, the remains of an eruption that left behind a semicircular crater of fertile volcanic rock, which now, as we see while the boat skids over the choppy waves into the amphitheatre of imposing reddish cliffs, is clad in pristine emerald forest. Around it lie mangroves and coral reefs, and, built in the shallow water, a few clusters of palm-leaf thatched shacks on tall, thin stilts: the temporary homes of the Bajau Laut or ‘sea gypsies’, the only nomadic seafaring people left in the world.

It is hard to imagine what the scene must have been like when the volcano erupted two and a half million years ago. The event must have wiped out all life from the volcano slopes, leaving behind the charred and sterilised islands that are now called Bodgaya, Bohey Dulang, and Tetagan. Since then, nature has repossessed the islands. Its forest, a dry and low type of coastal forest and scrub made up of some 100 species of figs, cycads, screw pines, palms, and an eclectic mix of various tree families, has reassembled itself from whatever seeds the wind and waves would bring in. And the 50 or so bird species that have been recorded from the islands are an assemblage of strong flyers such as doves and thrushes, and typical birds of islands, such as the megapodes that build large nest mounds of sand and leaves.