It's not often you see a scuba diving story in the Wall Street Journal, but here's a cool piece about an oil rig's second life as a hotel for scuba divers.
A onetime oil-drilling rig stands in crystal-clear waters dotted with tiny islands and their lush green hills. But most impressive is what's underwater—an amazing array of coral reefs swarming with hundreds of species of multicolored tropical fish, sea turtles and other aquatic life. The rig has been converted to a hotel for snorkelers and especially for scuba divers.
"The abundance of marine life is the best I've ever seen," with schools of big fish and without pollution or rubbish, said Craig Brown, a British electrical engineer and scuba diver vacationing on the rig for the second time in five weeks. Other divers agreed. (Mr. Brown's job, based in Dubai, involves surveying the seabed for potential oil deposits.)
The rig sits in the Celebes Sea, the part of the Pacific Ocean ringed by the island of Borneo, Indonesia and the Philippines. Getting here involves a flight to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia; another flight to Tawau, on the east coast of the Malaysian Borneo state of Sabah; an hour's drive and an overnight in the tiny port city of Semporna; then an hour's boat ride to the oil rig, now called Seaventures Dive Resort.
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Very cool.
3 comments:
Awesome place :)
Great to see that an oil rig can be useful after its 'use by date' is up
This is great!
I am just so glad that I came across this.
Thank you so much for sharing.
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