Sipadan: A scuba

BY HARIHARAN VISWANATHAN

My second diving trip since getting a diving certification took me to Sipadan, Malaysia’s only oceanic island, which is considered to be among the best diving destinations in the world. It is located in the Celebes Sea in Sabah (Malaysian Borneo).

In an effort to preserve its waters and ecosystem, diving in Sipadan has been restricted to approximately 150-odd divers a day and the access to the island itself is only limited to the beach area. There are no resorts in the island and the visitors arrive in boats at an army outpost at the beach.

Sipadan is particularly famous for the ‘Drop Off’ which is a rock face wall just metres from the beach. A vertical drop from here is more than 650 metres down, and the dramatic change in colour of the water at this point from turquoise green to dark blue is breathtaking, making Sipadan one of the best shore diving experiences in the world.

The dive sites at Sipadan Island I dived at were Turtle Patch, Coral Garden, Barracuda Point, South Point and, of course, the Drop Off. Although April to September is the best time of the year to dive in Sipadan, the visibility was not the greatest. However, the sheer excitement of experiencing diving along the wall for the first time was simply unfathomable.

The best dive for me was the Drop Off which I did on my third and final day at Sipadan. We descended into the water to a depth of about 25+ metres and moved towards the ‘Turtle Cave’. This is a huge cave under the island which has the skeletons of turtles that had died after entering the caves, unable to find their way out.

The Turtle Cave is a speciality dive, which is only for advanced divers. It requires 2 air tanks as compared to the normal single tank and lasts for about 75 minutes. Though we didn’t do the Turtle Cave dive, we did venture a few metres into the entrance of the cave. Looking up we saw the awesome sight of a huge school of jacks circling on the roof of the cave. However, this can be a claustrophobic experience for some as one of our group members discovered.

Sipadan is also popular for big fish such as white tip and grey reef sharks, barracuda, gian trevally, napoleons and circling jacks. Although there have been the occasional sightings of hammerheads, they are usually found at greater depths.

As we continued on the dive with the wall on our right, we saw a couple of reef sharks, more turtles resting on the rocks, some swimming to the surface

In an effort to preserve its waters and ecosystem, diving in Sipadan has been restricted to approximately 150-odd divers a day and the access to the island itself is only limited to the beach area