Trip report! Sipadan Mabul resort, Sabah, Malaysia
At the end of October 07 I was suffering from “Post Galapagos Blues”, a curious ailment brought on by the fairly certain feeling that diving would never be exciting again after the thrills of diving with hundreds of hammerheads in fast currents and the majesty of seeing whale-sharks the size of juggernauts cruising beneath you during your Suunto stop. The only certain cure for post holiday blues is definitely to book another holiday and so when Phil suggested that he would love to return to Sipadan (having been there 10 years ago) it didn’t take much persuasion to get me on the net searching for flights and accommodation.
Sipadan is on all those lists of the best places in the world to dive but apart from that I knew nothing about it and after a bit of reading I discovered that the island of Sipadan sits off the north east coast of Borneo in a region of Malaysia called Sabah. To reduce ecological impact it’s no longer permitted to stay on Sipadan and hence divers usually stay on the two adjacent islands of Kapilai and Mabul. Kapilai is hardly an island at all, it’s a sand bank with some water bungalows on, Mabul is a proper island and about half of it is SMART, the Sipadan Mabul Resort, the other half being populated by locals.
It’s quite a long way away! Our flights were with Emirates so we flew Manchester to Dubai, Dubai to Kuala Lumpor, Kuala Lumpor to Kota Kinabalu, Kota Kinabalu to Tawau. This took about a day and a half. We then stayed overnight in Tawau before being transferred by air-conditioned minibus to Semporna Jetty and collected by one of the SMART boats.
The resort itself is very casual and friendly, great food and very focussed on diving. Within an hour of arriving you find yourself on a boat on the way to doing a checkout /weight check dive. I didn’t take my camera as things were a bit rushed (and that’s how cameras get drowned) and consequently on the check out dive on the house reef we saw lots of frog fish, leaf fish and a large variety of nudibranchs! The second dive that day was equally good and we topped off the day with a third night dive off the jetty. The package includes 3 dives a day and you can do night dives off the jetty for free. There are staff there to assist you in and out and provide limited surface cover with a boat on standby. You can also book a boat night dive for additional cost but we never bothered with this as the jetty night dive had plenty to offer.
Over the next 11 days we dived our socks off (I logged 34 and phil logged 36). SMART organise the diving so that you go over to Sipadan, which is about 35 minutes by fast boat, and do two dives with an hour surface interval and tea break in between. There is a limit to the number of boats and divers that can be there at any one time so your slot is either 05:30… 09:00… or 13:00.
The third dive of the day (or the first if you are on the 13:00 slot) will be one of the many sites around Mabul or Kapilai , both excellent venues for some of the best muck diving in the world.
I won’t retype my entire log here but instead chose a few dives to record.
8.2.08 Sipadan – Baracuda point
Massive and stunning wall which seemed to go down to infinity. We must have seen about 20 turtles, all of whom let us take their portraits. There were a lot of small sharks (whitetips) on a flattened out area known as “the runway”
9.2.08 Kapilai Magic garden
A small reef off Kapilai marked by a shotline, lots of amazing machro subjects, just a shame that our group consisted of 8 photographers! We tagged along at the back of the group as queueing up to take photographs is quite frankly boring. We did see some stunning subjects though, including a flambouyant Cuttle fish, which I caught feeding and a blue ribbon eel.
And of course a liberal sprinkling of nudibranchs
10.2.08 Sipadan Baracuda point
We departed at 05:30 and rolled off the boat just after 6am as the sun rose. My late friend Chris was born in Malaysia so Liz had given us some of his ashes to scatter in the sea off Sipadan.
We sprinkled them off a steep wall covered in fans which went down to about 1200m, as they drifted away a little shark swam straight through them. We smiled and nodded at each other as we both understood that the sharks were welcoming him home.
The top of this reef was covered with a huge variety of beautiful corals and a shoal of napoleon wrasse paraded past.
10.2.08 Kapilai Gurnard Ground
Murky dive on a sandy bottom next to reef, we found a tiny ghost pipe fish on a sunken fishing boat towards the end of the dive.
At the end of the dive phils lovely kent tooling reel was dropped by someone “helping” so a search and recovery dive was immediately implemented successfully.
10.2.08 Mabul Jetty night dive
On this occasion we seems to see lots of fish sleeping, in holes in rocks, inside tubes and structures , just lying on the coral and just about everywhere.
The fishies that were playing out were the coral shrimp fish. I have never seen these before and they look like bits of broken weed.
11.2.08 Hanging gardens Sipadan
Stunning wall dive with loads of life, vertigo views down to deep deep deep, Beautiful corals everywhere. So many turtles!
11.02.08 Drop off Sipadan
The classic Sipadan dive, it’s just a few metres from the beach and a vertical wall with lots of cavernous inlets. It is here that you find the entrance to the turtle tomb caves, which I was set to explore further in the cavern and intro cave courses which I had booked. So a quick mooch inside the cavern entrance and then a slow steady drift. Massive shoal of jacks at the safety stop which were there most days.
12.02.08 South point Sipadan
Another classic Sipadan dive, you start to take it all for granted after a while, stunning wall, shed loads of huge and fearless turtles who don’t give way to you or just stay snoozing on their beds in the rock. We stalked 3 sharks on this dive.
12.02.08 Paradise Mabul
A lovely relaxed dive with just three divers and Amir our guide, we found lots of Machro life and some cleaner shrimps, which gave phil a quick tooth clean
13.02.08 Platform Mabul
This was the third time we had attempted to dive this site and on previous attempts the current was deemed too fast. The site consists of a drilling platform (which is now converted into a hotel of sorts) and the sandy bottom below it.
This is wher we spotted pygmy sea horses, of two different types, some pink spotted and some yellow spotted. They are tiny, only a few mm long and so well camouflaged against the coral on which they live
Can you see it?
Can you see it now?
On this dive we then saw three giant frog fish who almost lined up to invite us to take pictures. They are such comical creatures, so improbable looking.
On the 14th I started my cavern and intro cave course which lasted until our final diving day, I might write a little about that on a separate post.
17.02.08 Mandarin Valley Kapilai
Our very last dive of the trip and having dived this site before Phil and I dropped in together before the guide and the rest of the boat. Immediately we came across a a ghost pipe fish which co-operated beautifully and enabled us to get the best photos of the trip
We returned exhausted but delighted
Jules
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