Sipadan | Meet Malaysia
3. The Diving
Although Sipadan is famous for big animals, your dive trip will mostly consist of critter diving. Oh, the irony!
If you’re staying for 6 nights, you’re only guaranteed 3 days at Sipadan — maybe an extra day, if you’re lucky. That’s the standard for not only Borneo Divers but all resorts approved to dive Sipadan. Furthermore, you’re only allowed 2 dives per day at Sipadan, which means your afternoon and evening dives will be elsewhere.
Most of the time, you’ll be diving at the neighboring islands of Mabul and Kapalai, which are slightly bigger than Sipadan and much shallower.
The house reefs are very sandy, so much of the coral grows on artificial wrecks that litter the coastline.
My check dive is at the Borneo Divers house reef, known as Paradise 2.
In my opinion, the best diving at Mabul is right here: in the sandy house reefs just offshore of the dive resorts, no deeper than 40 – 50 feet. The visibility isn’t so good, but you don’t need it because you’re mostly looking at things that are only a couple feet from your mask — the little creatures hiding in plain sight.
I was not prepared for the awesomeness of the critter diving. Here at Mabul and Kapalai, the biodiversity of the Coral Triangle is on full display, the Dazzle Meter dialed up to 11.
You don’t see it until you see it: the decorator crab hiding in the anemone, the ghost pipefish posing as a feather star, the frogfish camouflaged as coral. Scott keeps pointing at things and it always takes me a moment to figure out exactly what he’s trying to show me.
Huh?
What am I supposed to be looking at?
Oh, wow! Check that out!
It’s an “Easter egg hunt” as my dad likes to say.
It’s not all critters, though. In a moment of good fortune, we stumble upon a school of great barracuda at one of the Mabul house reefs. You typically only find these at Sipadan so everyone including the guides are shocked.
A school of yellowtail snappers at Stingray City.
Eventually the islands drop down to 70 – 80 feet, creating some beautiful sloping reefs with the highest density of coral.
A pair of green sea turtles at Stingray City.
One of these sloping reefs is a dive site called Stingray City. Of all the dive sites I visit, this one feels the most like Classic Southeast Asia with blue-spotted stingrays and schools of snapper, the comfort foods of Southeast Asian diving.
Keep swimming across the channel and you’ll hit the “second reef.” There’s not much in the way of coral, but this is the place to go if you love nudibranchs and invertebrates.
My favorite dive site is the aptly-named Eel Garden. We drop down to 70 feet and check out a suburb of garden eels before cruising up the slope to search for other critters; we find about 5 different species of eel. I’ve gone diving at Sipadan, by this point, but it feels so nice to end my trip with a great macro dive.
Even if Sipadan didn’t exist, Mabul and Kapalai would still make a worthwhile dive trip for those who appreciate critter diving, and especially for underwater photographers.
My video lights are just strong enough to draw the attention of a curious cuttlefish, but unfortunately I don’t have the strobe lights or macro lens to capture great close-ups.
But I do my best.
Borneo Divers prefers not to schedule Sipadan on the first day of diving. They want you to dive Mabul and Kapalai first so they can feel out your diving skills and build anticipation for Sipadan.
I like that strategy.
The critter diving is a whole lot of fun and lets you soak in the Coral Triangle’s biodiversity before you go looking for bigger animals at Sipadan. It’s the perfect appetizer for the main course.