Editorial

Staff · Issue 19, Jun/Jul 2004 · pp. 4

4 Editorial Sipadan to close In May this year it was announced that all the dive operators on Sipadan have to dismantle their developments on the island and vacate by the end of 2004. The aim of this is to try and help the island and marine environment recover from decades of concentrated tourism and diving. To anyone who has visited Sipadan recently I understand this should hardly come as a surprise. Such intensive activity on so small an island was bound to have a detrimental effect on the island and the marine life. What concerns me about this news is that the dive operators are not happy with the decision so I can only assume that they would be willing to carry on attracting divers to the island until they have sucked out the very last drop of the island’s resources then there would be nothing left to attract divers and their businesses would go bust. This attitude is fairly typical …