We're back from three wonderful days of scuba diving at Sipadan Island. When I was first planning this trip, I looked at going to Sipadan, but I was put off by the high prices of staying on the island. The Filipino guerilla/pirate gang Abu Sayyaf, however, by kidnapping a bunch of divers there last April, put people off the idea of going to Sipadan, and as a result prices have gone down dramatically. After shopping around Semporna, we found an even cheaper alternative, staying at a simple homestay in a fishing village on a neighbouring island and commuting over to Sipadan every day to dive. It still wasn't cheap, at 700 Malaysian ringgit (about 190 US dollars) for three days of diving, transport, food and accomodation, but we were doing three dives a day. With the standard SE Asia price for diving being around 20 dollars per dive it was in line with prices elsewhere in the region.
We were joined by an American actuary named Bob, who has been travelling for the last two years on the proceeds of his severance pay after being axed in mid-career. The three of us and our divemaster, Rosni, spent an hour speeding out to Mabul, the island on which we were actually staying. It's a tiny speck of sand, but it still boasts two expensive resorts on it, along with a fishing village and, offshore, a former oil-drilling rig converted into a super-expensive diving resort catering to Japanese clients. As well, comfortingly, there's a Malaysian army base, in case Abu Sayyaf were tempted to come back for more hostages. We dumped our luggage at our comfortable little homestay and then hit the waters for a refresher dive in the waters just offshore.
I first learned to dive in 1992, and had about 45 dives under my belt, but I hadn't dived in over two years. Joanne hadn't dived in the same length of time, ever since getting her PADI certificate, while Bob had only gotten certified a few months earlier. I was worried that I would have forgotten what I was doing, but it all came back to me quite naturally. I had forgotten what an exhilirating feeling it is to float underwater, neutrally buoyant, rising slightly when my lungs are full and then exhaling to sink again slowly, watching the underwater world drift in front of my mask. .The fish life was rich, even if the offshore coral reef was pretty damaged, probably by dynamite fishing. We saw black-tip reef sharks, lionfish and dozens of small, colourful fish. It was wonderful to be back in this underwater world after such a long absence, and the dive seemed to fly by in a dream.
After this, it was time for the main attraction. Sipadan is a tiny island, smaller even than Mabul; you can walk around it in about 7 minutes. ; It rises out of deep ocean, with 600 metres of water surrounding it on all sides. This means that lots of deep ocean species like barracuda and sharks and manta rays come to visit. As well, at places the drop-off is more or less vertical, making swimming over the edge of the reef a vertigo-inducing experience as the bottom falls away into the inky depths.
The island is known as one of the top dive spots in SE Asia, famous for four main attractions: turtles, sharks, manta rays and schools of barracudas. We saw dozens of marine turtles, both green turtles and hawksbills, swimming with an easy grace or resting on ledges in the reef. There are other spots in Sabah and in Peninsular Malaysia that are known as turtle egg-laying spots, but I doubt that there are nearly as many turtles to be seen there as there are off Sipadan. As for sharks, we didn't see any hammerheads, but we saw lots of black-tip reef sharks, a white-tip and even a big, gentle leopard shark. I was keen to see hammerheads, but Joanne was quite relieved that we didn't come across any. No manta rays made an appearance, but after several dives spent searching for the huge school of barracuda that patrols around the island in the mornings, we struck it lucky on the final morning. There must have been about a thousand barracuda all moving together, giving the impression that they were one enormous organism, their streamlined bodies cutting through the currents effortlessly as we battled to hold in place to watch them.It was an impressive sight, making us feel like thesmall and insignificant observers that we were.
In addition to the main attractions, there were dozens of smaller creatures to look at and, in Joanne's case, to take photos of with a rented underwater camera. Ferocious-looking lionfish and scorpionfish, bloated pufferfish, huge and ugly bumpheads (giant parrotfish) swimming in an endless line, reclusive moray eels, lobsters, rock cod, colourful anemone-fish, delicate nudibranchs and even the first aggressive triggerfish that I have ever seen; it charged us repeatedly as Rosni frantically signalled us to swim out of its territory. One of our first purchases back in KK will have to be a field guide to the reef fish of Malaysia, as there were so many that we couldn't keep track of them.
In the evenings, worn out by the rigours of diving, we would watch the sun go down as we nursed beers at one of the resorts. It was difficult to tear ourselves away from our tropical paradise after our three days were up, but it has rekindled our love affair with the underwater world. Our next snorkelling and diving will have to wait for the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia in a month's time, but we can hardly wait.