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As some of you may know, I just recently returned from a dive trip to Mabul/Sipadan and just wanted to share some of the experiences and pictures from this incredible trip.
Mabul is an island off Borneo (East Malaysia) and still part of this landmass, while Sipadan is an atoll that rises thousands of feet from the sea floor. We stayed at the Sipadan/Mabul Resort on Mabul in a hut over the water. All the resorts on Sipadan were shut down earlier this year and the whole island is a military base now. You are only allowed on one small beach during your surface time between dives. The diving on Mabul and Sipadan are two different worlds. Mabul has great muck diving (lots of tiny critters, ghost pipefish, nudibranches, frogfishes the size of soccer balls, etc.) while Sipadan has huge schools of jacks, barracudas, humphead parrot fish and other pelagics. Depending on the dive location, Sipadan's shallow reef is either covered in big tables, colorful stags and every other stony coral you would hope for, or, fields of xenia, anthelia and soft corals I have never seen anywhere else before.
We left San Francisco at 1:40 in the morning for a 14 hour flight to Taipei (Taiwan). It helped to sleep a few hours on this flight, because we had another 10 hours to go. From Taipei we flew to Kota Kinabalu and from there another flight to Tawau. Once in Tawau we took a 1 1/2 hour bus ride to Semporna. There a boat from the resort picked us up for the last leg, a 1 hour boat ride. Once we arrived at the resort we were greeted by friendly smiling faces and some cool drinks (the friendly people stayed around during the duration of our stay...and so did the cool drinks
). By the time the introduction was finished, our luggage and dive gear was at the hut. We settled in and prepared our dive equipment for the first dive the next morning.
The diving was usually 2 dives in the morning at Sipadan (a 30 minute boat ride from Mabul) with a one hour surface interval on the beach. After the second dive, the boat took us back for lunch and another boat dive either in Mabul or Kapalai (a sand bank with some huts on stilts and some amazing muck diving) in the early afternoon. After that, we either dove one more time at the house reef or did a night dive. The house reef has several man made structures that are covered in soft coral. We saw 3 different frog fishes at our house reef (I'll share some pictures later).
For now, here are some pictures from the shallow part of Sipadan:
These are just some teaser pictures. I did more than 50 dives on this trip and took more than 1500 pictures. I'll try to post some of them in the next few weeks, so check back often and enjoy...
Mabul is an island off Borneo (East Malaysia) and still part of this landmass, while Sipadan is an atoll that rises thousands of feet from the sea floor. We stayed at the Sipadan/Mabul Resort on Mabul in a hut over the water. All the resorts on Sipadan were shut down earlier this year and the whole island is a military base now. You are only allowed on one small beach during your surface time between dives. The diving on Mabul and Sipadan are two different worlds. Mabul has great muck diving (lots of tiny critters, ghost pipefish, nudibranches, frogfishes the size of soccer balls, etc.) while Sipadan has huge schools of jacks, barracudas, humphead parrot fish and other pelagics. Depending on the dive location, Sipadan's shallow reef is either covered in big tables, colorful stags and every other stony coral you would hope for, or, fields of xenia, anthelia and soft corals I have never seen anywhere else before.
We left San Francisco at 1:40 in the morning for a 14 hour flight to Taipei (Taiwan). It helped to sleep a few hours on this flight, because we had another 10 hours to go. From Taipei we flew to Kota Kinabalu and from there another flight to Tawau. Once in Tawau we took a 1 1/2 hour bus ride to Semporna. There a boat from the resort picked us up for the last leg, a 1 hour boat ride. Once we arrived at the resort we were greeted by friendly smiling faces and some cool drinks (the friendly people stayed around during the duration of our stay...and so did the cool drinks
). By the time the introduction was finished, our luggage and dive gear was at the hut. We settled in and prepared our dive equipment for the first dive the next morning. The diving was usually 2 dives in the morning at Sipadan (a 30 minute boat ride from Mabul) with a one hour surface interval on the beach. After the second dive, the boat took us back for lunch and another boat dive either in Mabul or Kapalai (a sand bank with some huts on stilts and some amazing muck diving) in the early afternoon. After that, we either dove one more time at the house reef or did a night dive. The house reef has several man made structures that are covered in soft coral. We saw 3 different frog fishes at our house reef (I'll share some pictures later).
For now, here are some pictures from the shallow part of Sipadan:
These are just some teaser pictures. I did more than 50 dives on this trip and took more than 1500 pictures. I'll try to post some of them in the next few weeks, so check back often and enjoy...
But don't worry, there are many more pictures to come in the next few weeks..... :blue: 
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