Sipadan Island
Sipadan is located approximately one hours boat ride to the east of the peninsula of Semporna, in the Island of Borneo. Sipadan is one of the top 10 dives sites in the world simply because it is the centre of the Indo-Pacific basin, thus having the most diverse and abundant marine life!
Here, there are thousands of species of fishes, plus hundreds of species of corals; untouched for millions of years.
Dive Sites
a)’Drop-Off’;
b)’Barracuda Point’;
‘Drop Off’
This dive is basically a vertical drop of 700 metres into the abyss, with sharks and turtles passing each other just a few metres below. Divers suit up a few metres from the sea. Divers can opt for a deep dive with a gradual ascent, a horizontal exploration at medium depth or a relaxing observation of reef life.
The Drop Off site is the only site at Sipadan for night dives, and also able to explore directly from the beach.
At a depth of 20 metres, there is a wide cavern, namely “Turtle Tomb”. It is filled with skeletons of turtles, which have drowned after failing to find their way out.
Marine life here includes the firefish, rare moray eels, anemones, gorgonians, gobies, squids, large turtles, whitetip reef sharks, barracuda, trevallies, batfish, false stonefish, scorpionfish, and parrotfish.
‘Barracuda Point’
This dive begins along a spectacular, nearly vertical wall adorned with large decoration of gorgonians. As divers reach 40 metres, they will see small groups of grey reef sharks, and scalloped hammerhead sharks.
This site probably requires the most experience of all those in Sipadan.
Marine life here includes the turtles, bumphead parrotfish, numerous reef sharks, barracudas, large soft corals, clownfishes, turkeyfishes, butterfly fishes, and lobsters.
This will be continued….