Choose another map, showing:

• Borneo
• Philippines
• Malaysia
• South East Asia
• Asia
• Eurasia, Africa & Pacific
• The World

Other entries in Sempurna

Top 10 dive spots in the World, Sipidan!

In the morning I booked on the shuttle from the hostel to the long distance bus in Sandakan that would take me to Semporna where the dive companies are for Sipidan. There used to be lots of accommodation on Sipidan and dive operators, but since it was made into a marine park, all of the accommodation and dive companies were kicked off. The only people that are there now are the park wardens, checking dive permits and numbers and the army. Apparently pirates are a huge problem over here. They will hijack a ship, big container ships, sail it up to china to a dock and cut it up for scrap metal, worth millions of dollars.

All of the dive companies and hotels have moved to the town of Semporna which is a bit of a nothing town, or a near by island that is covered in hotels, resorts, and, some where that I have to stay in next time I come here, a converted oil rig. I saw it on the way out to the Island and thought that it was an odd place to have an oilrig, right next to a resort island, but it was a hotel.

The Island of Sipidan is located about 35km from Semporna and is voted as 1 of the top 10 dive sites in the world. Its a small island surrounded by a huge coral reef all the way around, shaped like an egg. On the flat part of the egg, the edge of the reef is only 5m from the edge of the jetty, where the wall drops of some 600m, vertically down, the rest of the area has a slight slope to it from the shallow waters until you hit the vertical drop off. Sipidan is noted for its huge variety of big marine animals. They were everywhere, so many that you lost count. In the three dives I did I counted at least 30 Green and Hawksbill Turtles, some reaching at least 1.5 to 2m in length, 15+ White Tip reef sharks, unlike Black Tip Reef Sharks that have a large black part to there dorsal fin, White Tips only have a small part to it, very difficult to see. Most of the Sharks and Turtles were laying on the sea floor asleep, a few were swimming about, and a couple of the Turtle were making quick trips to the surface for another breath of air. Among the other fish that we saw, was one Barracuda, very rare to see one on its own, Blue Finned Tuna, a shoal of a round 2-3000 Jacks and a Napoleon Wrasse, about twice the size of me. 2m long and twice the mass. Amazing. We stopped off at the entrance to the Turtle Tomb cave, lots of Turtles stray into here and can't find there way out, and end up drowning, there are lots of warning signs up every where to warn people of the dangers of going in. Some people from our boat had descended in there before we started our dive, and we had to wait a long time for them to come up again. A series of very small tunnels that you have to twist and turn between to get to the exit, which you can only get out through, by turning on your side and squeeze through. The tunnels are so narrow, that if you meet a fish coming in the opposite direction, you have to push it back the way it came in.

We finished our last dive and it was time to head back to Semporna. I had a bus to catch that evening to head back to KK for my flight back to JB and then into Singapore. 

Add to del.icio.us Add to reddit

Photos / videos of "Top 10 dive spots in the World, Sipidan!":