Diving at Sipadan

We finished our 4 day diving trip at Sipadan exhausted and overwhelmed with the amount of sea life we saw. Sipadan is a world famous diving site located on the eastern end of Sabah, Borneo. A number of islands are great for diving, although Sipadan Island itself has the main draw: Green Turtles, White Tipped and Grey Reef Sharks, and schools of Chevron Barracuda. Demand is so high to dive at Sipadan that the Malaysian government limits the number of divers with a permit system.

We were able to secure some permits for 2 days of diving with the dive resort Seaventures located just off island of Mabul. The neat thing about Seaventures is that it is housed on a converted oil rig, with a house reef just below. In fact when you're not doing your day dives at the nearby islands, you have unlimited diving (free air) in the House Rig Reef. Included with the package are gourmet meals which which we took perhaps too much advantage of.


The great thing about the nearby dive sites is the variety each one has to offer, so going to a new site promises different species to spot and observe. The House reef had a number of Moray Eels, Alligator Fish, Lion Fish, a GIANT clam, and so many other lifeforms that we've only begun to learn the names of.


Rash sporting her hot new dive hood!

Our first dive at the Island of Mabul netted us our first turtle spotting! Although by the end of the trip we saw so many turtles we couldn't keep count, it never got old watching them glide around gracefully. Turtles would swim right past us or let you approach them as they lay in their coral bed.

Our 2 days at Sipadan were great, although by that time we began to feel the effects of another food related sickness. We spotted plenty of sharks swimming below and above us, or sometimes just resting on the sand, loads of turtles, schools of bumphead fish (very large fish with a bump on their head), schools of jack fish, and an enormous swarm of barracuda. The schools would swim around us and swirl over and under. Unfortunately we don't have and underwater camera so we can't share too many pictures of all the fish we saw. We did however get some footage of us swimming with turtles and barracuda and sharks on another divers camera and perhaps we can borrow some pics as well when we put together a slideshow.

A bit of drama did occur on the Seaventure rig though. We got dropped off at Mabul island which is about 800 m away from the rig while some other divers went for a sunset dive. We waited and waited at the designated pick up spot and watched the sunset without a boat coming to pick us up. Then in the distance we see the dive boat going back to the rig, without us! We had no way of contacting the rig but were luckily able to ask a local boatman to give us a ride to the rig. Upon our return, the boatman and guide were very unprofessional and unapologetic about the fact that they left us on the island. We were a little miffed by that, but didn't let it ruin our experience.



On our final day of diving we were able to find a Frog Fish, which is a fish that crawls along very slowly and looks like a piece of coral so it can be very hard to spot. It can only be described as ugly, or maybe pretty in an ugly way.


Here's an example frog fish for those of you wondering. Source: Wikipedia
We had a great time diving at Sipadan, only now it feels like we've seen it all! Or maybe we're just pretty dived out after 10 dives in 4 days.