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Pulau Sipadan
The cream of Malaysian diving, and among the best in the world, Sipadan is Malaysia's only volcanic island. Made famous by renowned French oceanographer, Jacques Cousteau in his documentary 'Ghosts of the Sea Turtle', Sipadan is a favourite nesting site for Green Turtles and the occasional Hawksbill. The waters around the island usually teem with turtles so accustomed to divers that they ignore them; however Sipadan offers much more than just turtles having almost everything that exists in the Indo-Pacific.
The coral and marine life is prolific with large areas of staghorn, table, plate, lettuce and boulder corals, encrusting corals, bubble corals and mushroom corals. Lying among the stony corals are large soft corals, vase and barrel sponges and true giant clams. Whitetip and gray reef sharks thrive and there is a menagerie of reef inhabitants including porcupine fish, pufferfish, triggerfish, unicorn fish, Moorish idols and giant moray eels. Leaf fish and crocodile fish can often be seen here too. Gorgonian sea fans and black corals protrude from the steep drop offs and an encounter with a huge bumphead parrotfish is likely as is the spectacular sight of a living wall of hundreds of schooling barracuda. Sipadan has one of the top beach dives in the world, as five metres of sand in knee-high water suddenly gives way to a precipitous drop and cave-diving enthusiasts can explore the caverns that Cousteau did more than 40 years ago.
Pulau Mabul
Mabul is located some 25 minutes north of Sipadan. In contrast to the steep drop offs, coral reefs and pelagic species of Sipadan, Mabul is renowned internationally for a very different reason. A muck diver's paradise, Mabul is great for macro life with every hole in the sand and coral rubble inhabited by ghost pipefish, frogfish, devil scorpionfish, stonefish, crocodile fish, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, cowfish and nudibranchs. Macro photographers will find great opportunities to capture some rare species that inhabit the sandy bottom of Mabul's marine environment.
Pulau Kapalai
Like Sipadan and Mabul, Kapalai is part of the Semporna Marine Park island group. Located around 20 minutes from Sipadan, Kapalai is another macro diving destination with all the species found at Mabul including blue-ringed octopuses, dragonets, mating mandarin fish, jawfish and cuttlefish. Other sites around Kapalai are likely to reveal humphead (Napoleon) wrasse, blue spotted ribbontail rays and bumphead parrotfish.
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