Borneo From Below
Discover the rumble beneath the jungle with this new web series by Scubazoo
What is it about Borneo? Few places carry such exotic connotations. Jungles filled tree-to-tree with pygmy elephants, proboscis monkeys, sun bears and orangutans.
Head Hunters, crazy-looking bugs, rainforests, mountains. And that’s just above the water.
Borneo from below does little to dampen the romance. This massive coastline – Borneo is the 3rd largest island in the world – is home to world-class coral reefs that are visited by pods of pilot and sperm whales, mantas, whale sharks, gigantic schools of devil ray and more.
But Borneo’s not just about the big things: some of the planet’s weirdest and most downright bizarre underwater critters also call these waters home. This includes blue-ringed octopus, bobtail squid, hairy frogfish, pygmy seahorse and more.
And then there’s Sipadan Island, a dive spot that Jacques Cousteau referred to as an “untouched piece of art.” This extinct volcano cone is a shoe in on lists dedicated to the world’s top dive sites due to its tornadoing barracuda, giant schools of sharks, bumphead parrotfish and jackfish. It’s also one of the last remaining places where 30-40 turtles can be seen on a single dive.
What’s in the pipeline
In the process of filming BFB, Cameraman Will and I have been fortunate enough to shoot some incredible sequences. We went on board with the Bajau as they caught mantis shrimp, before they stuffed them into bottles and sold them to local restaurants. I also travelled out to sea with one of the last remaining sea gypsy families who still live on their boat.
Having watched a hawksbill turtle nest just two months earlier, we captured a rare timelapse of a ‘turtle volcano’ as hatchlings made their bid for freedom. I also attended a sweaty, colourful festival in celebration of the Bajau’s traditional boat, the lepa lepa, swam with scarcely believable schools of fish at Sipadan Island, filmed baby devil rays at local markets (that were sold for little more than the price of a Mars bar), and, in what could be a world-first…even photographed a nudibranch with two heads!
All this and we’ve barely scratched beneath Borneo’s surface. We hope you’ll be pleased to hear there’s a lot more where this came from. But most of all we hope that you enjoy watching the episodes as much as we’ve enjoyed producing them.
To watch all weekly episodes of Borneo From Below for FREE, please ‘like’ their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BorneoFromBelow