Detour

Hitting the Wall The shifting of continental plates that created the Indonesian archipelago also gave Selayar Island its unique geography—the western side of the island slopes gently into the sea, but the eastern side's verdant hills plunge directly into the roiling surf, as if they were hacked in half with a machete. Thirty meters from shore, this geographic slicing is repeated underwater. The island mass stops abruptly in a vertical fall to the ocean floor, some 1,000 meters below. Unlike the dynamite-ravaged reefs that surround much of Selayar, the sheer rock face remains untouched and teems with varieties of fish, crustaceans and corals most people see only on the Discovery Channel.

These walls off Selayar can be explored solely by scuba divers. The seafloor starts its descent to the continental shelf a few meters below the waves, then rapidly turns vertical and beyond the reach of even the most deep-lunged of snorkelers. The sensation during that first wall dive is somewhere between giddiness and terror. Floating above an abyss populated by the flickering forms of deepwater sea creatures takes some getting used to, but distractions abound. The wall is covered with a moving mosaic of fat, brown sea cucumbers, vivid corals, shrinking anemones and tiny, glittering fish. The deeper you go, the larger and more exotic the marine life. At 10 meters, where the wall begins, schools of giant tuna and jackfish make their rounds, undisturbed by the occasional diver, while meter-long lobsters scurry for cover, unaware that their immense claws are enough of a deterrence. Farther down, giant sea turtles graze on the marine foliage, and manta rays the size of tabletops pass below. At 30 meters the narrow, vertical frame of a two meter-long napoleon wrasse slices through the water in search of prey, while barracuda, flashing their vicious teeth, swim by alongside the occasional eel. Each successive layer of marine life draws the diver deeper. The only risk: running out of air before you get to see everything.