Diving from Semporna

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Ross:

We arrived at Tawau Airport in the southeast corner of Sabah at about 6pm. We'd arranged a transfer to Semporna through the Scuba Junkies dive centre but, much to my dismay, there was no grinning chauffeur at the Arrivals exit waving our names on a board. Sure enough however, a big jovial local by the name of Abdul arrived shortly afterwards and escorted us to his pick-up truck for the hour and a half journey north. Although night had just fallen, we could make out endless miles of palm oil plantations along the route, every so often passing one of the processing plants. Palm oil is one of Malaysia's biggest industries and a lot of native jungle has been sacrificed in preference for neatly aligned rows of palm trees, both in Borneo and Peninsular Malaysia.

We were eventually dropped in Semporna at the dock, where the Scuba Junkies office is located. There's a Scuba Junkies bar/restaurant opposite and a Scuba Junkies backpacker's hostel adjacent. The company had been recommended to us by my dive instructor from Koh Lanta, Rohan, who spends his summers in Semporna. After a brief chat with the guys in the office to let them know of our intentions to get out on one of the dive boats the day after, we checked into our double en-suite room and headed out for a nasi goreng, kari and chips.

I woke up in the night to the sound of dripping, only to discover that the air-con unit was discharging water onto Polly's head. So, after pulling the bed away from the wall and moving to the dry end we finally got back off to sleep.

The next morning, after voicing our annoyances regarding the faulty air-con to the hotel staff, we turned up at the office to get kitted out with scuba gear. The dive company run several boats a day to various islands. The vessels are covered speedboats with twin outboards that hold about 10 divers and enough spare tanks for 3 dives. They take about 45 mins to get out to the dive sites. We had been allocated places on the speedboat to Sibuan for that day, with our Swedish divemaster, Albin, and so settled in for the smooth ride to the island.

Sibuan, to the northeast of Semporna, is a picture-postcard desert island, albeit occupied by a small village of sea gypsies and an even smaller military establishment to ward off attacks by Filipino terrorists. After dropping a couple of snorkellers off at the beach we headed out for our first dive with Albin, and Brady from Toronto, to a site called The Drop Off, descending first to a little over 30m. We saw numerous batfish, bannerfish, some harlequin sweetlips and a whole variety of weird and wonderful nudibranches (think multicoloured slugs with a little tree on their back) before finally ascending to our safety stop at 5m, just under an hour later. The second dive that morning at Left Shoulder gave us the opportunity to see some green turtles (being cleaned by remora), a lone great barracuda, trumpet fish and crocodile fish. We then had lunch of chicken, noodles and rice back on the beach before our final dive at Hawksbill Highway. The third dive was slightly shallower and shorter due to the extended dive times of the first two dives, but we still saw a couple of hawksbill turtles, titan triggerfish, sand lizardfish and a cuttlefish laying eggs in the coral, which apparently is quite a rare sight and got Albin rather excited. We tried to find the multicoloured mandarin fish amongst the anemones but they weren't coming out to play.

At the end of the day we were both generally impressed by the quality of marine life, reef and visibility at Sibuan, and stunned by the beauty of the island itself. My mask had been giving me grief for most of the day (oddly Scuba Junkies only stock one model) but luckily I arranged to borrow a spare off one of the staff for the following day.

We had planned to have the day off on the Friday, what with it being the 13th and in anticipation of our dives on the Saturday at Sipadan however, after enjoying ourselves so much at Sibuan, and since Polly's ear infection had not caused her havoc when trying to equalise, we decided to put our names down for a further three dives at Mabul the next day. After a hearty dinner in the SJ bar we crashed out, well prepared for any air-con eventualities as the hotel had not yet managed to get a maintenance guy in.

Having already sorted out our gear, we were allowed an extra half hour in bed on Friday morning, before getting up for our inclusive full English and sauntering in to the office for about 8am. After loading gear onto the boat we headed out to Mabul, to the south of Semporna. Scuba Junkies have accommodation on Mabul, so after dropping off a couple of guests we headed to adjacent island, Kapalai, for our first dive at the House Reef site, an artificial reef made up of a three sunken vessels and some old timber frame huts anchored to the sea bed. The artificial reef certainly attracts it's fair share of marine life and we were lucky to see banded pipefish, stingrays, a giant moray eel, durban dancing shrimps and white banded cleaner shrimps, as well as the resident giant grouper. Polly managed to conserve her air and stay down much longer with Albin, and was treated to a very close encounter with a very large barracuda. Dive 2 was back on Mabul at the Eel Garden site. A strong current meant that we spent most of the dive drifting along the reef wall, ending up some 500m from our drop-in point. Unfortunately, divemaster Albin had forgotten his inflatable marker buoy and so it took a great deal of waving of fins and shouting to finally get the attention of the boat once we'd surfaced. The sea bed off the reef is literally a lawn of garden eels with their inquisitive heads sticking up from holes in the sand, swaying in unison with the current. We saw different varieties of triggerfish, schools of yellow-back fusiliers, more turtles, stingrays and crocodilefish, as well as a seal-faced pufferfish. Lunch back on dry land (at SJ's Mabul longhouse dining area) was a similar affair as yesterday's of chicken, rice, noodles with stir-fry veg. The last dive of the day at Froggies dive site was off the end of Mabul pier, with two wrecks, a steel hull and a fibreglass diveboat, at 15m with about 8m visibility. Friday night was party night at SJ's bar, with a very talented local band, a few games of pool with the local hustlers, and a bit of strutting on the dance floor.

The main purpose of our visit to Semporna was to dive at the world-renowned Sipadan island. Visitors to Sipadan are limited to 120 on a permit basis and we'd luckily had the foresight to book our permits well in advance. Sipadan is an isolated oceanic island, a pinnacle rising 600m from the sea bed, about a mile off the continental shelf. Oceanic currents create an upwelling of nutrients as they hit the pinnacle wall, resulting in a large number of pelagics, such as rays and sharks. All accommodation on Sipadan has now been removed by the government as a result of it's ecological status and an isolated problem in 2000 when Filipino terrorists took 21 tourists hostage. On arrival, we had to sign in with the military post on the island before being allowed to dive. Our first dive at Turtle Patch was again with Albin, and a couple from Sweden. Immediately we spotted small white tip reef sharks (<2m) off the wall, as well as tuna, hawksbill and green turtles, and plenty of other weird and wonderfully-colourful species. Compared to the previous two days, it was like jumping into a giant aquarium, with noticeably more marine life above, below and all around us. We'd decided to hire an underwater camera for the day so I started snapping away as much as possible. The downside of underwater photography is that you spend a lot of time trying to maintain perfect buoyancy in the water, thus using up a lot more air than normal, so after 45 minutes I was running low on air, whilst Polly disappeared off for another 15 minutes. After a dragged-out surface interval, the second dive was at South Point, with Polly in control of the camera. Within minutes we were descending into a small school of grey reef sharks, one of which must've been about 2.5m long and extremely stocky, coming in close and eyeing us all up before casually gliding on by. Albin then took us out from the wall at about 27m depth for some blue water action, swimming out to sea over the 600m drop-off until the wall was out of view. With no references to distance or direction, it was very eery and strangely claustrophobic, especially knowing that large sharks were in the water, and with only each other and a few inquisitive red-toothed triggerfish for company. It was quite a relief to head back to the wall and eventually see it looming in the distance. There were plenty of white tip reef sharks about, as well as napoleon wrasse, sweetlips and blue-fin trevally. The visibility was well in excess of 30m, much the same for all the dives that day. After a long lunch back on the island we headed out for our final dive of the trip, a drift dive in very strong currents at Barracuda Point. After floating by on the current, we spent fifteen minutes or so holding onto pieces of rock on the reef, watching a large school of great barracuda and giant trevally circling in the channel in front of us, whilst white tips cruised around the edge.
The current was so strong it took too much effort to swim against it so, careful to avoid the down currents at the edge of the channel we continued along the reef with the flow, spotting small sharks and turtles resting in sandy spots between the corals, finally ascending in a state of disbelief at the variety of stuff we'd witnessed.

Once back on shore, I had to skip the 6.30pm debrief and logbook session to fetch some bus tickets for our onward journey to Sandakan, but my trusty secretary took comprehensive notes on my behalf. Our last night in Semporna was relatively uneventful, relaxing after a truly wonderful day underwater, before getting up early the following morning for the 7.45am bus departure.

There are numerous dive operators in Semporna, but Scuba Junkies seems to be the most popular, mainly due to price. The centre is run by a young crowd and at times (especially in the office at 8am) it seems a bit like organised chaos, but everyone is very passionate about diving and seems genuinely willing to help with any problems that may arise. The diving from Semporna is outstanding and we'd recommend it to anyone, although we can't really comment on the quality of diver training. Semporna itself is a bit of a hole and there's not much to do for non-divers, so book in advance (especially for Sipadan) and don't bother having a dry day, even if it means tagging along for the boat ride and a bit of sunbathing/snorkelling. A word of warning however - don't go to Sipadan expecting to see whalesharks, manta rays and schools of hammerheads. Whalesharks do seem to be sighted on a weekly basis but of the staff we talked to, most had not seen any hammerheads or manta rays at all, even those who had been working there for over a year. They do exist but the likelihood of spotting them is very, very slim.

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Photos

Arriving at Sibuan Island
With the Philipines on the horizon

Seaventures dive rig off Mabul
Where our friends Rich & Josie stayed

Show us yer teeth...
A moray eel posing for the camera

Waiting for Polly
Off Sipadan

Clown anemonefish
aka Nemo