Fantastic Diving at Sipadan

The sea scape at Sipadan is lovely. Wall dives mean great visibility of 30m or more (no silt to cloud the water), even in rainy weather. Hanging Garden was a magnificent wall of brightly coloured corals of all shapes and sizes, with turtles sleeping in the crevices. Lovelier than the most intricate and ornate cathedral.

Lionfish
Quite common but always thrilling to watch and think about how majestically poisonous they are.

Mandarin Fish

We were fortunate enough to witness these tiny creatures (no bigger than 2cm) engaging in carnal pleasures amidst the grey coral rubble of Kapalai's house reef. Cheek to cheek, the happy couple rose slowly together and quick as a flash, released their embrace and darted apart. It must have afforded them great pleasure as they repeated this over and over (and over!) again!

White-tip Reef Shark
We saw so many sharks that we no longer got excited!
Normally, the dive guide clinks his tank with a metal rod to attract our attention when something interesting is up ahead. The Pavlovian diver's reaction is an increased heart rate followed by rapid finning ahead to have a closer look. In Sipadan, it reached a point where after we raced forward to look and saw it was yet another shark, we thought "Chey! It's just a shark!"(In most of the other places we've been to, if you see ONE shark during your entire trip, everyone hears about it!)

Bumphead Parrot Fish
They are amazing to watch in a grotesque sort of way. As their name suggests, they look like they've just developed a baluku from swimming into a wall. Their parrot-like beaks are for snapping off coral bits. We saw a large school of these huge 4 foot long creatures.

Chevron Barracuda
Being encircled by a school of thousands of barracuda is not something you'll forget easily. You feel hopelessly outnumbered for one, by a silver battalion with mean faces, and you know better than to aggravate them. It is an awesome experience.

Stonefish
If it looks like a stone, acts like a stone but is vaguely shaped like a fish - don't touch it!

Frogfish
These are really hard to spot - because they could easily pass off for bits of coral. They are absolutely cute. They have 4 legs, and if you prod them, they waddle away placidly!


Nudibranch: the cutest slug in the world
I love these cute little self-absorbed sea slugs that come in bright combinations of every colour. But in Sipadan where you have too many huge pelagic creatures to gape at, nudibranches are more often than not overlooked.

Turtle
I never thought of turtles as cute until I saw them asleep in rock crevices, or holding onto corals. After a particularly turtle-filled dive, the first thing Panliang said when we ascended to the water surface, his regulator barely out of his mouth, was - "The turtle's so cute! He looks like Darcy!" At that moment, I could not have loved him more.