Voted on almost all the top 10 lists of diving spots and it is in my top 3.
Sipadan is a tiny island about 30 minutes from Mabul or 1 hour 20 minutes from Semporna on the eastern coast of Malaysian Borneo. It is a protected area and it’s not allowed to stay overnight.
If you enter the water next to the jetty it is ancle deep, one more step and it is knee deep, one more step it is chest deep and one more step and it drops to approx 600 meters…
It is some pretty amazing diving. Most of the dive sites has a sloping reef to 5-10 m and then the wall starts. It is really cool to hover just where the drop-off begins.
Sipadan is a turtle nesting area so obviously you see a lot of turtles, mainly green turtles and hawksbill turtles and they are NOT afraid of you! Sometimes they bump into you if you don’t get out of their way…
There are also a lot of sharks around mainly white tips and grey reef sharks but recently they have seen more and more hammerheads even on a few shallow dives. Unfortunately I have not seen a hammerhead. YET!!!!!!!!
One of the main attractions though is the famous Barracuda Point. When you are lucky you meet the barracudas, sometimes approx 2000 sometimes just a few hundred but no matter what it is still amazing. Sometimes when there is no current they do the tornado and twice I have been in the middle of that. Undescribable!!! When the current is strong they like to hang around in the channel so you grab a rock and hang on for dear life with your mask vibrating and your arms tiring and just watch the barracudas. Also cool:-)
There are some cool nudibranchs as well but who wants to look for tiny stuff when you have turtles, sharks, schools of bumphead parrotfish, jack fish and barracudas, an occational ray and nesting (read attacking) triggerfish and so much more…