Poni Marine provides turnkey project solutions for the offshore, marine construction and maritime industries with a vision to be an elite regional provider of maritime and subsea services with exceptional client satisfaction. Starting out as a recreational diving operation in 2009 as Poni Divers, our divers first received commercial diving work in 2012 when a crane collapsed into the sea pulling down along with it generators and large industrial welding sets that required immediate salvage & recovery.
Right Solutions With the Right Experts
Poni Marine has been operating since 2012 and has successfully delivered project results to our clients with high quality and the utmost safety.
Poni Marine
Solutions for the Offshore, Marine Construction & Maritime Industries
Our services quickly grew to include vessel propeller disentanglement, coral surveys, dam inspections, search & recovery for lost equipment in blackwater rivers and deepwater environments, body recoveries, and underwater sample collection for scientific expeditions. It has since expanded into a full commercial diving, public safety diving & scientific diving outfit offering services to the offshore, maritime & marine construction industries. After realizing the strong demand for such services, our management and divers went on to UK and Australia to get technical qualifications to offer more specialized services in this sector.
As Poni’s range of services developed, so did its fleet of speedboats and in-house expertise ranging from carpentry to fiberglass, engine maintenance, welding, metal fabrication & wiring for speedboat refurbishment. With our expertise in the marine sector, our corporate services expanded to include boat charters & transportation, engineering, marine supply & sourcing, safety standby, vessel hiring and diving equipment rental for projects. Having avid underwater photographers on our management often hired by clients and government for projects, our media services soon emerged as a leading local service provider for media projects underwater and along coastal areas.
Poni Marine’s attitudes towards its clients and employees are strongly grounded in our core values that include:
- Right Expertise: For every problem, there is a right expert with the right experience and we strive to connect the right experts with the right experience.
- Commitment: Full commitment to every client and service for each project ensures success.
- Innovation: Pursuing new creative solutions across multiple disciplines for dynamic solutions.
- Safety: Going beyond the legal requirements to provide an accident-free workplace.
- Empowerment: Encouraging employees to lead through constant development and training.
With our highly experienced staff with vastly different backgrounds, strong local network of affiliates & partners and diverse range of equipment, Poni Marine offers an extensive scope of services that include inspections & repairs for vessels and construction sites, search & recovery & salvage of equipment and persons, military & tactical supply, and professional training for tactical & occupational diving. Through our sister company, Frosty Refrigeration & Air-conditioning, we also offer over 35 years of experience in the installation & maintenance of HVAC, refrigeration, cold storage & showcase and kitchen equipment.
Our full range of resources are also regularly hired to support other projects along with services in manpower supply, heavy machinery & equipment rental, facilities rental, and materials fabrication.
We currently have 40 staff and 7 facilities in Serasa, Muara, Kuala Belait, and Indonesia and look forward to rapid expansion in the offshore, maritime, & marine construction industries following our official launch of this commercial & marine engineering division as Poni Marine in mid 2020.
Trust our Experience
9
Completed Projects
66
Amazing Staff
40
Poni Marine Milestones
2012
First marine salvage project
2014
First offshore exploratory expedition to Louisa, Spratlys
2014
Overseas expansion to Indonesia, Poni Bali Branch
2015
Opening of Poni Marine Base, Engineering Workshop
2016
ADAS Commercial Diving Certifications
2016
Purchase of 4 new boats for passenger services
2016
Launched scientific, media & archaeological diving training
2017
Landmark contract with Hengyi Industries, daily shuttles for 600 students at sea
2017
Poni Alpha 1 Work Barge in-house fabricated & launched
2018
Expanded the fleet by another 4 new boats
2018
Opening of new Poni Muara Admin office
2018
Received prestigious Commercial Ministry of Defense (UK) Approved Center (COMMAC) rating, one of ten dive centers in the world.
2019
Industry Certifications & Memberships in Development
2020
Received ISO 9001:2015
Solutions for Military & Tactical Diving Operations and Marine Emergency Response Teams
Poni Ops is our sub-division specializing in supplying equipment & training programs for military & tactical diving units and marine & coastal emergencies. Collectively, our training experts in military & combat diving, public safety diving, rebreather diving & occupational diving have over 70 years of experience.
As a Commercial Ministry of Defense (UK) Approved Center (COMMAC), our dive training center is audited annually by their inspections team on our diving equipment, filling station, dive operations, safety & emergency protocol, documentation administration, management checks, maintenance, training, health & safety management, and supervision practices for recreational dive training for their military personnel.
With our experts in military & combat diving, public safety diving, rebreather diving, our training programs cover a wide range of activities from amphibious attack & assaults, sabotage & boarding, bomb surveys, to marine salvage, body recoveries, underwater crime scene investigation and dive team management. Training programs also include courses for the use of military specs rebreathers including FROG, AMPHORA, Lav-6, Submatix, and the Poseidon-7 and the use of specialized tools for tactical & rescue operations. Sourcing & supply of military & tactical dive equipment & emergency response equipment includes consulting, demos, and a strong after-sales support with training and maintenance.
Poni Group Sdn Bhd was incorporated in Brunei with the ROCBN in February 2020 as the parent company for our wholly-owned subsidiaries below.
Poni Divers is our recreational diving division with a beach-side facility at Serasa and Kuala Belait offering diving courses, guided dives, dive gear rental, and dive repair services to thousands of locals and international tourists. It was first founded as Poni Dive Club in 2008 and has since gone on to exhibit at over 10 dive shows around the world every year promoting the dive sites of Brunei to the rest of the world. Please click here for more info.
Poni Adventures is our adventure teambuilding division offering watersports, fun family days, obstacle courses, and experiential learning for small to large groups of up to 2000 people. It also organizes outbound adventure trips, summer camps, and corporate retreats locally and international. Clients include BSP, BMC, BGC, Total, Petronas, BIBD, SCB, Baiduri, Huawei, DHL, MPRT, MinDef and many more. This division has been organizing events since 2012 with its official launch coming in late 2020.
Poni Foundation is our non-profit arm with a strong focus on marine conservation, local empowerment, and civic engagement with its official launch coming in late 2020. Initiatives include marine conservation school outreach programs, coral propagation programs, local empowerment through increased opportunities for training, internship, and education, and increasing the profiles of Brunei and its citizens in the global arena.
Poni Tec is Brunei’s technical diving pioneer promoting tech diving to locals and Brunei’s technical wrecks to international tech diving communities. Offering training in mixed gases, decompression diving, open circuit & closed circuit rebreathers, Poni Tec has consulted on various deepwater expeditions in Brunei and has been diving the technical wrecks of Brunei since 2014 with its soft launch in 2018. Please click here for more info.
Our Team In brief
Mohd Tahsin Wong bin Abdullah @ Wong Thye Sing
CEO & Founder
Thye has over 18 years of dive experience covering all forms of diving from recreational, technical, rebreather, scientific, & media to commercial diving in Brunei waters. He regularly consults the government and corporate clients on special projects like river search & recovery and body recovery jobs. With over 4,000 dives, his extensive knowledge of the local waters and the marine industry has been one of the critical factors behind the success of Poni Marine.
Poni Divers, a pioneer in Brunei’s recreational diving industry, was established by Thye in 2009. He quickly moved on to UW inspection jobs and UW vessel services by 2012 due to a strong demand in the field. He later went on to the UK and Australia for further training in commercial diving and started offering more specialized services to the marine & coastal construction industry in Brunei. In 2019, Thye established Poni Marine with a focus on marine engineering, diving, maritime and media services. Thye has the following diving related qualifications:
Thye Sing Wong
CEO & Founder
- HSE Scuba Part IV #AND/WTS/1015
- ADAS Part 2 Diver #11614
- ASSET Scuba Technician #T1289
- IANTD Advanced Recreational Trimix Instructor #8521
- PADI IDC Staff Instructor #211524
- IANTD Normoxic Trimix Technical Diver #140792
- BSAC Instructor #A834854
- RAID Instructor #47472
- IART JJ-CCR Level 1 #GE04249
- ASSET Cylinder Testing Technician #CT1289
- Ocean Quest Coral Propagation Instructor #000334
- IANTD Trimix Blender
- Northern Diver Service Technician
- PADI Scientific Diving Techniques Instructor
- PADI Basic Archaeological Diver Instructor
- PADI Media Diver Instructor
- PADI Underwater Filmmaker Instructor
Anna Zarina Dato Hj Abdul Aziz
Business Development Director
Anna is a King’s College graduate with over 10 years work experience in London in Business Development working on development projects and management contracts & acquisitions in Europe & North America. She also has extensive experience working with SMEs in Brunei with a focus on strategic planning and concept development. She also is Chartered Institute of Management Accountants qualified.
Anna Aziz
Business Development Director
Dr. David Lane
Marine Biologist
Dr David Lane is the local expert on Brunei’s marine life having spent 15 years in Brunei as an Associate Professor at the Department of Biology, University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD) teaching Aquatic Biology, Coral Reef Ecology, and Integrated Coastal Management. During his time there, he also consulted extensively on Marine, Freshwater and Wetland environments (particularly Benthic Faunal Analyses, Coral and Mangrove Assessments & Monitoring, & Coastal Forest Surveys) and also the Terrestrial Environment in relation to Bat Biodiversity & Biodiversity Conservation. His consultancy experience covers over 30 contracts in the UK, Middle East, and the Southeast Asian region and has been a member of several International Marine Biodiversity Expeditions in the Indo-Pacific. He is currently a Research Associate at the LKC Natural History Museum in Singapore.
In recent years, he’s had a major role in preparing large scale EIAs & EMMPs for major projects in Brunei at developments in Pulau Muara Besar, offshore oil field explorations (pipeline route & drilling) & Brunei-Temburong Bridge, Rasau, Belait, Danau developments, coordinating multi-member Consultancy teams for the Brunei government, local oil & gas companies, and engineering clients. During his days at UBD, he started working closely with Poni as our team provided boat & diving services for UBD Biodiversity Research and was a member of the pioneering Poni Exploratory Expedition to Louisa Reef, Spratly Islands in 2014.
Dr. David Lane
Marine Biologist
Jimmy Choo
CCR & Military Diving Trainer
Jimmy Choo started his diving career in Singapore’s Naval Diving Unit back in 1990 and was later selected to train with the US Navy SEALs, one of the toughest special Forces units in the world. During his service, he was called upon for one of the largest UW search & recovery operations in 1997, the Silkair Flight 185. Jimmy is a Instructor Trainer in the Naval Diving Unit training both the Naval divers and the Special Forces diving team and is a certified trainer for LAR V-VI CCBA, FROGS CCBA, Amphora CCBA, Submatix CCR, Instructor Trainer in FROGMAN School, Dive Team Operator on the Special Warfare Group and a Member of Diving Expert Panel with training as a Combat Medic Level 2, Underwater Medic, and a Boat Operator. Jimmy runs our military dive training program.
Being an avid learner, Jimmy has also worked his way up to become a Technical Diving Instructor Trainer for SSI, PSAI, RAID, IANTD, and is a Instructor for TDI, GUE, Megalodon CCR, Poseidon CCR with a strong interest in wreck penetration. Jimmy believes that “Diving isn’t a course or a lesson. It’s more than that: Diving is a method, a philosophy, a way of life” and chooses now to mainly teach GUE due to its holistic approach towards diving safety. Jimmy ran the first GUE course in Brunei in August 2018.
Jimmy Choo
CCR & Military Diving Trainer
Major (R) Pg Hj Rudy Halyamin
Senior Military Liaison
Major Rudy’s accoladed career in the Royal Brunei Armed Forces (RBAF) started back in 1992. He went on to various officer trainings overseas in the TRADOC Armed Forces of the Philippines, Malaysian Army Combat Training Centre (PULADA) in Johor, Royal Armoured Corps, British Army in UK, Land Headquarters Training Center (Jungle Warfare) Canungra in Australia, & Singapore Armed Forces Provost Unit. During the super typhoon ‘Haiyan’ or ‘Yolanda’ Disaster Relief Operation (DRO), he acted as the representative of the RBAF DRO team deployed to South Philippines to assist with the Humanitarian team. He has been awarded the Meritorious Service Medal (PJK) and Long Excellent Service Medal (PKL).
Major Rudy has been a passionate diver and one of the earliest supporters of the Poni organization since its first days as a Poni Dive Club Founding Committee Member back in 2010 where he often served as a valuable source of guidelines for our services to the Brunei government & military. Since his retirement from RBAF, he is now an integral link for our government & military clients.
Major (R) Pg Hj Rudy Halyamin
Senior Military Liaison
The Team
At Poni Marine, we believe in developing and hiring the best. Over the years, we have succeeded in building a great team with a strong focus on clients’ needs and safety. With 40 staff on the team, the Poni Marine team has consistently met the customer’s requirements on every job. United by our core values, the team brings integrity, mutual respect, professionalism, and disciple to every job, every day.
Poni Marine Ops Team
Affiliated Experts
Alex Santos
Commercial & Public Safety Diving Trainer
Alex Santos is the Founder and CEO of Philtech & UW Contractors in the Philippines. He and his Philtech team dive in harsh conditions & odd environments, conducting deep recovery work for valuable objects & victims of drowning and run UW repair & maintenance works for power plants & large corporations. His extensive experience in victim recovery is called upon regularly for shipping accidents & aircraft crashes at sea where he has received several awards from the government for leading recovery operations during maritime disasters. He also conducts search & recovery training for divers from the Philippine Coast Guard’s Special Operations Group and other countries. He enjoys teaching technical diving and is a IANTD Cave Instructor, Trimix and Technical Wreck Instructor Trainer. Alex leads our public safety dive training.
Alex is a regular speaker on public safety diving at many dive shows globally and credited in the industry as the one who invoked the growth of technical diving in Asia. Alex is a practitioner of hyperbaric chamber therapy & also a strong advocate for oxygen in-water recompression (IWR). His IWR methods are being taught in the Philippines and have been used successfully. A member of the Filipino Cave Divers, who study, explore and preserve underwater caves, his true passion is cave diving. Alex led the body recovery survey dive on the recent maritime incident here in Brunei / Malaysia waters with the Poni team.
Alex Santos
Commercial & Public Safety Diving Trainer
Jessica Berry, FSA, FRGS, ACIfA
Maritime Archaeologist
Jessica Berry is the Founder and CEO of MAST (Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust), UK. She is an author & maritime archaeologist MA (Hons) MA ACIfA. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries & a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She is a former journalist with UK broadsheets. After completing her Masters at Flinders University in Australia, she worked internationally as a maritime archaeologist, first in Australia as Assistant Curator at the Western Australian Maritime Museum before working for Wessex Archaeology as a Project Supervisor & then at the Association for the Development of Maritime Archaeological Research (Adramar) in Rennes, France. Jessica manages our archaeological dive training program.
She was part of the project team excavating the Swash Channel wreck since 2010, a 17th century Dutch armed merchantman off Poole in Dorset. She is the archaeological advisor for the 1685 Coronation wreck in Cornwall. She is an HSE Scuba and HSE SSDE, a PADI Open Water Instructor & an SSI Instructor & holds a commercially endorsed Advanced Powerboat licence. Poni Marine offers the introductory archaeological diving course, PADI Basic Archaeological Diver (BAD) that is created by MAST.
Jessica Berry
Maritime Archaeologist
Our Facilities
Poni Marine Base is the engineering workshop for our operations located at Jalan Serasa with storage facilities and speedboat & trailer work areas with dedicated workstations for our wide range of services.
Poni Terminal is the boat departure point and jetty access for our commercial work with storage facilities, briefing area, showers, toilets, boat launch ramp access, and boat & car parking facilities. It is conveniently located at the Marine Port Authority Brunei Darussalam (MPABD) beside the Serasa Ferry Terminal with 24-hour security & access and a wharf with access for heavy machinery loading.
Poni KB is our Kuala Belait operations center on the West end of Brunei, at Jalan Maulana, with beach access, storage facilities, briefing areas, showers, toilets, swimming pool, boat & car parking facilities, guest room accommodations, and a marine engineering workshop. Our training activities and watersports activities are conducted there.
Poni Muara is our headquarters administrative & marketing office at Muara Town above the Bureau Veritas Brunei office with meeting & conference rooms available.
Poni Serasa is our Muara operations center at the Serasa and showroom for recreational diving & watersports activities for bookings & enquiries. Our training activities and retail sales are conducted there. Facilities include classroom, briefing areas, showers, storage facilities, boat & car parking facilities, jetty access and a private beach space.
Poni Homestay is our homestay accommodations for our diving guests and project teams with 11 rooms and a capacity of up to 22 guests, common room, game room, shared kitchen, outdoor garden with fresh produce, WiFi, breakfast, cable TV, and air-conditioning.
Poni Bali is our operations branch in Bali offering recreational diving services for the tourist sector. It also offers underwater media services and scientific diving services for local projects in the area and has storage facilities, homestay accommodations, briefing area, showers, toilets, and classrooms.
Affiliates & Partners
Partners
Training
Membership
HSE & Accreditations
Poni Marine’s Integrated Management Systems (IMS) is in development in line with its certified ISO 9001:2015 accreditation and other certifications (ISO 45001, In-Water Survey Procedures) in development. Other external accreditations are in development to demonstrate our ability to consistently provide products & services that meet customer & regulatory requirements and to demonstrate continuous improvement in our systems prior to our official launch mid 2020.
In 2018, we were also awarded the prestigious COMMAC (Commercial Ministry of Defense (UK) Approved Center) rating from the UK MOD after passing their rigorous audit of our diving equipment, filling station, dive operations, safety & emergency protocol, documentation administration, management checks, maintenance, training, health & safety management, and supervision practices.
Health & Safety
At Poni Marine, our Health and Safety Program is comprised of three main components: policy & procedure, field safety, and employee development. Each of the components plays a critical role in the overall health & safety of our employees and the success of the Health & Safety Program. In addition to the training our divers receive from accredited training centers, Poni Marine also conducts its own in-house training program that fosters their continued knowledge of unique situations where independent thinking will be critical. Our commercial diving procedures, toolbox safety briefings, job safety analysis and safe work practices requires documentation for dive plan, job hazards analysis, daily dive log forms, local emergency plan, evacuation plan, pre-dive briefing, equipment maintenance records, diver physicals, for every job to proceed safely.
Boats & Equipment
Our boats are Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) Marine Department SMR approved for inshore surveys and are inspected regularly prior to BSP inshore surveys while other boats are BSP SMR standards compliant. Our boat captains have their BSP HSE induction e-Kawal certifications and first aid certifications and in-house emergency response training. Our filling stations are air tested every 3 months in Singapore and annually in the UK according to the BS EN12021:2014 standard to meet the JSP319 requirement (PSA HSE DVIS No.9). Our dive equipment and tanks are maintained, visually inspected and tested to UK ASSET (Association of Scuba Service Engineers & Technicians) standards by in-house ASSET scuba technicians. Our gauges are calibrated to SAMM MS ISO/IEC 17025: 2017 annually.
Standards
Our commercial, scientific, media, and archaeological diving operations are conducted in accordance with the HSE UK Approved Code of Practice (ACOP) for Commercial Diving Projects Inland/Inshore, Media Diving Projects, and Scientific & Archaeological Diving Projects: The Diving at Work Regulations 1997.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Poni Marine has as its CSR goals to:
- Promote marine safety through education & awareness campaigns to reduce maritime accidents
- Highlight marine conservation issues to the general public through volunteer & outreach programs
- Promote an interest in diving and maritime careers by making training accessible & affordable
School Talks
Poni holds regular school talks to promote diving careers, marine conservation, and diving in Brunei. Schools include Sayyidina Ali Secondary School, Meragang Sixth Form Center, Jerudong International School, International School of Brunei and many more.
Marine Conservation Programs
Poni launched a 2-year long coral propagation program in Brunei in partnership with a local NGO, SCOT with corporate sponsorship from HSBC in 2014 and is launching another program in 2020 to further promote coral conservation with volunteers from the public. To be involved or to sponsor, please contact us.
Subsidized Training Program
Poni run subsidized training programs for youths to promote and inspire careers in diving. To be involved or to sponsor, please contact us.
