Day 267 August 2nd 2007, Would you like fish with that? - Semporna - Diving at Sipadan

It was a good job that we visited Sibuan and Mabul first as Sipadan just blows them away. On entering the water from the dive boat you are instantly surrounded by thousands of fish, there are large green sea turtle everywhere and its not long before you see reef sharks. The reason for all the large fish is that after the reefs shown in the picture above there is a 600m vertical drop off. Looking up at the surface from 30m on our first dive the wall looked ominous, with just blue below I was sticking pretty close to the wall. Below: part of the old resort, now abandoned after the government closed them all down to protect the reef.

The Island with the exception of one beach is now closed to the public, the old resort building are still here and the army seem to be using them now. The army presence is the result of an armed raid in 2000 by Philippine gunmen. There are now soldiers stationed on nearly all the islands.

Below: One of the guys from the dive boat and a monitor lizard he seemed to be on first name terms with.


Aside from the turtles swimming about you would come across them resting on shelves in the wall, some of the reef sharks were also taking naps. The photos below were taken by one of the other divers with us.


There were quite a few reef sharks, some sleeping while others would appear out of the blue and follow us along the wall. The third dive of the day was by far the best at Barracuda Point. Here there are large shoals of Barracuda perhaps several hundred fish. Aside from the main attraction there were shoals of Jack Fish, some Giant Travelley and thousands of reef fish. All in all incredible.

Highlights: Perhaps the most amazing dive we have ever done