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Published: July 22nd 2009
0.00539 Under the Sea It is estimated that the surface of the earth is covered by approximately 70%!w(MISSING)ater. The deepest part of any ocean, the Mariana Trench, plummets over 11 km below sea level while the average depth of all oceans is around the 4 km mark. With stats like those it is easy to understand that we humans have been thought to have only explored 1%!o(MISSING)f all our world has to offer; most of this being on land. The other 99%!o(MISSING)f the world we have yet to chart and discover remains submerged. Making our way to Malaysian Borneo we would not have guessed that we would be visiting arguably one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring places on the face of this earth, above or below water - but that is just what we encountered when we reached the small island of Sipadan!
There are 3 main reasons why tourists make the short trip over to the island of Borneo: for Sipadan's world class SCUBA diving, to conquer the peak of Mt. Kinabalu (SE Asia's highest peak) and to see the many different species of monkeys that the rainforest houses, including the nasally
Duuuuude.....
This was the final turtle we saw on Sipadan and it was massive. He wassleeping in less than 10 feet of water and he couldn't have cared less about our presenceendowed probiscus monkey and the ginger “man of the forest” orangutans. Our first stop on this tropical playground was the former.
Palau Sipadan. The very name rustles up butterflies in the stomachs of in-the-know divers. All along our travels we have heard about this fairy tale like place and it was all we could do to not think about just how great it may be so as not to be let down. We opted to go with a dive outfitter called SeaVentures based on a tip from a divemaster (DM) that we dove with previously along our travels. He told us that for about $4-500 CDN we would get 3d/2n of diving on Sipadan, but the kicker was that our accommodations would give us a change from the normal routine of living in a plain old guest house. Instead, after your dives for the day you retire to living on an old abandoned oil rig! Let us tell you, it was a cool as it sounds! How many people ever get a chance to stay at a hotel pitted in the middle of the ocean with nothing else around? After doing a little research and learning that diving on
Sipadan was going to cost us more than we have been used to paying regardless of which company we went with, we opted for the experience with some flare. In the past few years Palau Sipadan has become a world-heritage site, and they have done a pretty good job at ensuring it stays protected by limiting the number of divers to only 120 per day. Knowing this, we made sure to book about a week in advance as we've heard that it can be difficult to secure your permits to dive Sipadan if you leave it to the last minute. After talking with other people that dove in this area, if you don't end up with a permit to dive on Sipadan at least one of your days diving, your experience will be the difference between seeing a few turtles and blandly coloured reefs and possibly being spoiled for diving anywhere else in the world for the rest of your life. It really is that good.
Sleeping Under the Stars We left Singapore after spending a quick night here after flying from Auckland, only to head back to the airport to fly over to Borneo. After our
flight arrived in Kota Kinabalu (Malaysian Borneo's largest city), we had about 6 hours to kill until we could catch our night bus to Semporna, the hopping off point for SCUBA diving Mecca. We've learned by now that although you may not always get the most sleep, night buses are a great way to save on the budget as a lot of the time you get your transport and a nights rest all rolled up in one and you save yourself a night's accommodation. If everything went according to plan, we would arrive in Semporna just in time for breakfast before being jettied out to the rig and starting our dives. What we should have realized by now is that rarely do things go according to plan in SE Asia. Our night bus was supposed to take 10 hours, landing us around 6 am. Instead our maniac of a driver managed to transport us there so we arrived at the rather unfavourable time of 3:30am. What do you do in a sleepy town at 3 am when nobody is around? Well, don't ask us because we still haven't figured this out. Why buses consistently opt against leaving later at night
and arriving at a more logical hour for the morning is beyond us, but so far there are only a few buses that we've taken along the way that have grasped this concept. What this means for us is that we arrive in the middle of the night and less than a few hours sleep with nobody around and no businesses or guesthouses open. After doing our usual routine of wandering around looking lost and waiting for someone to rush over an offer some advice, a ride or a place to stay, we realized that that was not going to happen this time. Now along our travels thus far, we have often joked about being unemployed and homeless, but this is the first time that we have actually felt it. We were finally approached by a night watchman from an upscale resort that we clearly didn't have the budget to stay at and were told that nobody would take us in at this hour but that we were more than welcome to pull up a step on the stairs to the 3 star hotel and try and catch a few zzz's until day break. Oh, how nice of him! He
even offered to make sure no stray dogs or pickpockets wondered over and bothered us. How could we refuse such an offer? Another traveler who was with us on the overnighter also diving the next day, found the prime spot in the back of a pick up for the rest of the evening. Feeling the sleep deprivation kicking in, we decided this looked like our best option and hunkered down for some shut eye. Chalk this up on the “things we've never done before and hope we never do again” board.
We “awoke” at sunrise to a few early birds checking out of the 3-star hotel, probably wishing they opted for that 4th star after having to step over the scruffy looking backpackers curled up on the steps trying to shield themselves from the mosquitoes. Having parted with our shame much earlier that night, we picked up our bags and grabbed some breaky. Knowing that somewhere on the horizon lay some of the best diving we may ever know, we decided that pure adrenaline would overcome lack of sleep and we would go ahead with diving starting that day. We met up as arranged with the shuttle to the
Green on blue
It looks like it's flying as it glides slowly by boat and within minutes we were whisked away en route to the rig.
The Rig When I think oil rig, visions of ominous black, greasy steely man-platform humbly placed in the middle of vast open blue come to my mind. What we were greeted with instead after about a 45 minute boat ride was a tacky yet happy looking orange/red/yellow monstrosity placed very near the island of Mabul (another popular dive site in the area most noted for its macro-life). Especially after our previous night's experience we were probably even more excited than the average person is who arrives here to call this home for the next few nights. A short 10 or 15 meter lift ride to the top of the platform and we were greeted with all the staff welcoming us with a fresh glass of OJ. Nice touch. It was perfectly fine with us that our schedule didn't even allow our sleep-deprived bodies to argue with still being awake, aa we dropped our bags off in our private, double room, got fitted for our equipment and were riding the lift back down to the water for our first dive. No matter which outfitter you
Batter's up
These are batfish and they can get as big as 2-3 feet tall! go with, the first dive in this area is never on Sipadan so the DM's can determine your skill level before going over. After all, you wouldn't want to take someone who can't properly control their buoyancy over protected corals and risk damaging the area. It's good to see responsible maintenance of a world heritage site over here for once!
Once underwater, I finally understood where the industrial ambiance that I expected on top of the rig had gone....it has been recycled below to make artificial reefs and to attract new marine life. Although we were both praying that this was not the view that we were hoping lay ahead of us on Sipadan, I must say that a pile of toilets all gathered together sprouting new corals or an old boat full of steel doo-hickies for fish to swim in and out of is a unique change from your traditional diving. As for the marine life, this was also our first encounter with crocodile fish, very aptly named for it's reptilian-like appearance. After saying a quick hello to the rig's resident 2 meter giant moray named Elvis, we surfaced and went up for some lunch.
After lunch
we headed 5 minutes by boat to a site titled “Paradise” just off Mabul island. Although we did see a lot of macro marine life such as beautiful nudibranch's, multicoloured mandarin fish and even a mean looking snake eel, again we felt this particular site was just moderate compared to some of the diving that we have done thus far and became slightly nervous since this certainly fell below our expectations of what Sipadan diving was all about. Back on the rig we received confirmation that we had been approved to dive Sipadan the next day (getting a permit seems to be based on a lottery system that nobody ever knows the end result to until the last minute no matter how long before you applied) and we were assured that neither of these first 2 sites we saw the first day would even compare to what we may encounter on the next day's dive. With that encouraging news in mind, we optimistically decided to rent an underwater camera for Sipadan.
We spent that evening on the rig being serenaded by our DM-cum-live entertainment rock band while we gorged ourselves on awesome buffet style Malay food. Shortly after this
we decided that it might be nice to lay down in a real bed for a change and we were out before our heads hit the pillow.
Sip-a-dan-doo-da! A 5:45 am start to the day is a small price to pay for world class diving. In fact, despite having concerns about missing our hit-or-miss alarm clock I managed to wake up much before the alarm in anticipation of the day. Sipadan is actually about an hour boat ride from the rig or 2 hours from mainland shores so they try and get an early start to the day to be the first boat on the island.
Approaching the Island, it's hard to believe that this tiny plot of land rests on the pinnacle of a 600m tall underwater volcano and houses some of the most spectacular reefs on this side of the hemisphere. It was so unassuming. You could walk around the island in 20 minutes or less. I also couldn't help but notice how seriously they take conservation on this island. Just behind the counter for registering diviers sits a machine gun bunker aiming out at the water. Apparently Filipino pirates kidnapped 20+ tourists here in
2000 so they have since beefed up security! Intimidating none the less even if it was for our protection.
The Drop Off The first site we dove was called the “Drop Off.” This is quite an appropriate name as the reef abruptly drops 600 meters below you to the bottom of the sea within the first few meters. It is quite an intimidating sight to know you are peering 600m down to the bottom of the sea and out to the open ocean into an abyss and your mind can't help but wonder what lies out just beyond your visability. It's a great feeling when the first few kicks along a site already starts to live up to its reputation. Giant fan corals splayed out with beautiful reds and purples, green and horn bill turtles floating gently on the currents and small white tip reefs sharks sleeping just meters below you. What more can you ask for? We surfaced after nearly an hour and the adrenaline was pumping. I think most of us were thinking the same thing: its a shame we couldn't stay down longer.
Barracuda Point After a short breakfast break and
reaching our minimal required surface interval time, we hurried back to the boat for dive site number two, “Barracuda Point.” Now we've dove sites before with misleading names like shark point and sting ray alley so we didn't get our hopes up too high. However once again within the first few kicks I had already encountered a white tip reef shark and a giant sea turtle. Quite the promising start. If they were looking to rename this site it could be called “Sore Neck Point” as our heads were on a constant swivel. Might I recommend some kind of sound device to anyone going to dive this site as you will need something to alert your dive buddy of the many sharks you're currently looking at while they're being distracted by a family of turtles going the other way. We lost count at the number of shark sightings mid way through the dive. The best part of this dive however ocurred about ¾ of the way through when we found ourselves in a half pipe like formation with super strong currents and a dark cloud quickly approaching us. As it got closer you began to make out that it was
a large school of shiny silver fish with chevron like bands striped down the sides. Welcome to the reason this site got its name. Immediately we all found ourselves part of the swarm of giant barracuda. Left, right, above and below us, we were encapsulated by 1-2 meter long fish with an attitude and an underbite. Then the formation changed and the barracuda began to form one of their famous tornado formations. Shortly after we surfaced once again the only disappointment we felt that it was over so quickly. What a way to end a dive.
Our third dive this day was off “Coral Garden” however, due to strong currents the viability had gotten worse and we found ourselves constantly changing direction just to save air and avoid fighting currents unnecessarily. By this point we were all still reeling from the last site and we knew it would be quite hard to top so we weren't too worried about what we saw. We did manage to get a few more snaps of sharks and turtles among some other great marine life before once again surfacing and heading back to the rig. Wanting to make the most of our camera
rental for the day, we decided that we would go for a short dive under the rig to see if we could capture some snaps of a few stone fish, crocodile fish and maybe even of Elvis if we were lucky. The strong currents that we felt on the 3rd dive over at Sipadan were also below us at the rig which made for somewhat cloudy vis, but we still managed to see almost everything we were looking for. Elvis however, had apparently left the rig.
Later that evening we received confirmation once again that we had been approved for yet another day of diving off Sipadan! If it was at all possible we should have bought a lotto ticket with this kind of luck! Although we didn't really have the budget to rent a camera for a second day, we did manage to steal some snaps from another couple who had their own camera there for the day. Lucky for us as the first thing we encountered on our first dive was a school of 50 to 100 large (each weighing approximately 50-100kg) bumphead parrot fish that could easily be bigger than me and may have also
Cuttlefish
As it flaps by, it shimmer's iredescent been able to rip off my arm if I got too close to their beak-like jaws. It was quite a site to see these big fellas dart over top a reef and nearly collide with our group of 10 just on the other side. It was literally like watching a stampede underwater! AMAZING! Once again, it was quite the start for the day. We had a similar day of spotting sharks and turtles among some of the other normal fish sightings, but we managed to cap the day off with a sighting of the biggest turtle we had spotted yet in only about 3 meters of water! Tres cool!
We once again completed our 3 dives and then said goodbye to Sipadan and made our way back to the rig. After another great lunch and saying our goodbyes we were now on our way to our next activity. How did 9 dives go by so quickly? We stayed that night in Semporna and after speaking with other divers we affirmed that our splurge to stay on the rig with SeaVentures was the right decision as the town of Semporna leaves a lot to be desired. It was quite hard
Is it a rock?
Nope, it's a stone fish and it has quite the camouflage to believe that this town is the gateway to one of the most beautiful places above or below the water and we couldn't wait to get out of there now that we were no longer diving. Luckily we were on our way to one of the other main things that tourists come to this island to do: monkey and bird spotting in the rainforest jungle!
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