East Timor puts underwater wonders on show

By Stephen Coates

He wanted to find a blue-ringed octopus. She was looking for a certain eel. Together the self-confessed "spoiled Americans" flew 30 hours to Asia's newest country, East Timor, and found neither.

But scuba divers Brian and Gina Blackburn, from Houston, weren't disappointed -- they found new wonders which both amazed and humbled them.

"In the Caribbean, finding fan coral that big is impossible because the tourists have destroyed it," Gina said as she dried off after a dive last week within sight of Dili's ramshackle airport.

"We wanted to come here because it's undeveloped, people haven't been diving on it, it's undamaged and pristine. Our favourite, because we don't get it in the Caribbean, is all that soft coral."

The Blackburns were among around 30 mainly amateur photographers who took part in East Timor's inaugural scuba photo competition from October 11 to 15 -- President Jose Ramos-Horta's latest project to kick-start tourism in his tiny, fragile state.

It follows last year's inaugural Tour de Timor cycling race, the Dili Marathon and an international game fishing competition -- not bad for a country that barely managed to field an Olympic team in Sydney in 2000, a year after its bloody vote for independence from Indonesia.

Scores of thousands of East Timorese died during the brutal 24-year occupation, aspects of which were depicted in the recent film "Balibo".

Events like the photo competition help to "reassure people that the situation in East Timor is peaceful, that it is safe," Ramos-Horta told AFP.

"Anyone who is involved in diving will have read already about the potential in Timor, because there are not too many places left on earth that are unexplored."

Words like "unexplored" and "pristine" were heard frequently around the scuba shops of Dili as the photographers -- from countries including Australia, China, England, Italy, Singapore and South Korea -- returned from their dives.

Another word on many competitors' lips was Rhinopias, or Rhinopias frondosa to be exact -- a poisonous and bizarre-looking creature commonly known as a weedy scorpionfish.

It's the sort of thing that excites experienced divers -- Taiwanese enthusiasts, for example, were in a froth about them earlier this year. The reefs around Dili seem to have more than their fair share.

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