Sipadan - Mabul, Borneo liveaboard trip report, August 2005 by Stefano (Azotomix)

The Journey

After a long wait from the date my partner and I booked the trip the time had come to leave. Departure was from Milan via Munich then to Kuala Lumpur and then finally to Sipadan and Mabul. Sipadan is situated in the Celebes Sea in Malaysia.

We flew for the first time in business class. I was lucky enough to have plenty of miles to spend with Lufthansa to allow myself this “luxury”. This is really a great way to fly which I am not used to! You have good service, food and most importantly a very comfortable seat to have a really nice night of sleep. After having spent a night
in Kuala Lumpur, the very next day we were to fly to Tawau. Once in Tawau a bus brought us to Semporna port (about one hour drive) where the M/V Celebes Explorer should have been waiting. Unfortunately the boat was not there and was already in Mabul with other guests that had arrived before us, so we took a speed boat to meet them there. Fortunately this last part of the journey was only 40 minutes and we reached our final destination safe and sound!

Disregarding the stopover in Kuala Lumpur the total journey, between flights, taxi, bus, waiting hours and speed boat was approximately 30 hours. This is a long time to travel but considering the week which we had, I would do it again tomorrow even though we have some complaints about the boat.

The boat

M/V Celebes Explorer

We were to stay on the M/V Celebes Explorer. This boat has the following features:

• 8 Guest rooms with private ensuite and air-conditioning (2 units of queen-bed cabin & 6 units of double/twin bed).
• cabin with single bed on upper level & queen bed on lower level).
• Sofa Lounge with TV, Audio System and cozy Mini Bar counter.
• Great tasty Buffet Meals.
• Sun Deck for relaxation.
• Dive Centre with convenience of showers and equipment storage.
• Overall length of 29 metres (99 feet).

If you are interested in reading more about this, click here.

The M/V Celebes Explorer is supposed to be a luxurious live aboard cruise but unfortunately the pictures you see on the companies website do not give the real
shape of the boat. It is only a 4 year old boat but it looks much older than it is. The common part (the lounge and small bar were okay but most of the cabins (fortunately not ours), smelt damp due to the humidity and had damp areas. The shower in the cabin did not have a curtain and when you were taking a shower all of the bathroom got
really wet. The washbasin and toilet were not really clean and under the WC there were strong marks of rust. In our closet the hooks were missing and if we did not ask for a change of towel they would not have done it a single time. I would not call the M/V Celebes Explorer a luxurious liveaboard cruise but a 2 Star floating Hotel.

The diving service (they do everything except the diving for you), the staff and the food however were excellent. There was not a single guest who ever said anything against it. We all loved it and you know how difficult it is to feed an Italian which most of the time would like to eat his “pasta” when outside Italy.

The Diving

From 1 January 2005 no more overnight stays are allowed at Sipadan Island. All the existing resorts which operated at Sipadan were demolished. Only a couple of bungalows remain for the soldiers whose job is to look after the island and stop people staying overnight. These soldiers may also be for the tourist protection due to some incidences in recent years. At Sipadan you can only dive from 6AM to 6PM. This rule
applies whether you are resort based or liveaboard based. Every day we had to leave and spend the night somewhere else and could not anchor at Sipadan Island itself.

There were 15 divers booked onto the boat so the group was divided in two. One group was made up of Italians and the other international (1 US, 1 German, 4 girls from Japan, my partner and I). We were the first group and this meant we were always the first into the water every day. We were also lucky, having the more flexible guide allowing us to dive as deep as we wanted and not being too restrictive with the dive time. The dive time average was about one hour and sometimes a bit more. If the current was not too strong or did not change direction during the dive most of the time we all ended the dive together in the same spot. If not there was no problem, when surfacing the assisting boat was there to pick us up.

We supposed to visit Sipadan Island, Mabul Island, Kapalai Island, Si-Amil Island and Bohayen Island but at the end we did every day dive at Sipadan, two dives at Si-Amil (1 sunset dive and 1 night dive) and Mabul (just night dives). We stayed every night except one at Mabul. This schedule for diving is not abnormal this liveaboard tends to stay at Sipadan, mostly because this is where the best diving is located. For this reason I will not write in detail what we did on every single day and every single dive as they were all fairly similar.

Despite the advantage of being on a liveaboard we still did not manage to be the first into the water at Sipadan. We always arrived there when two or three boats were already diving. In the afternoon however we were often the only ones because the smaller boats were leaving between 1pm and 2pm.

First dive of the day was between 7 and 8am and usually had a brief deep stop dive to look for sharks (scalloped hammerhead sharks and black tip sharks) then when the computer was telling you that you were reaching the no deco time limit slowly and slowly we where ascending and dive on the reef. Luckily for me I was the only one that managed to see hammerhead sharks during the week. I was at 40 metres by myself shooting some images of some nice gorgonian fans and had to rejoin the
rest of the group, when at a certain point my eyes saw in the dark at 5 m lower, swimming against current, a shape of school of big fish. What a hell is that!! I just turned and started swimming as fast I could to reach them. Yes!!! There they were!!. 15 big hammerhead sharks passing by. Could not get closer than 5 metres from them as I would have gone a bit too deep and they were much too fast for me but I was happy enough with this unscheduled meeting in the depth of the sea.

For most of the first dives of the day we started at Barracuda point where beside looking for sharks you could also see a large school of Barracudas. It was a wonderful experience to be swimming in the middle of hundreds and hundreds of barracudas. Some of them bigger than 1 metre. They did not made the swirling cylinder around and above me to get the most wanted shot but each time I swam with them it was just a big wow!

A nice and a rich breakfast was waiting for us after the first dive.

The second dive of the day was between 10.00 – 10.30. It followed a similar dive plan as the first. The third dive of the day was after lunch. This dive was around the reef and meant we did not generally go that deep. The fourth dive was at Mabul island at night.

Due to the fact that some of the guests where leaving before the end of the week and had to do the last dive of the day within 1pm we had the opportunity to do three dives before noon on some days. On these days we did 5 dives and on another 6. We were more underwater than above and could not get really tanned but who cares about the tanning, we were there to dive!!! Further more being a couple of degrees above the equator it was very difficult to stay in sun. After 10 minutes you would just burn your self. We were diving so often that in between dives I had just the time to either eat, downloading the pictures and changing batteries to the camera and get a very short rest.

So what else did we see there? You can see great life in the area like the ten or
more white tip sharks either swimming near you or sleeping on the ground, leopard sharks and if you where going below 30 metres you could also see black tip sharks.

Have you ever seen a turtle? If not, Sipadan is for you. It is not unusual to see more than 20 turtles on each dive. Between April and September, the Green and Hawksbill turtles will gather there to mate and to nest on the white beaches. If you are lucky you can also see turtles mating underwater and large numbers of males attempting to pull the male from the back of the female. Another unique feature of Sipadan is Turtle Cavern. It is an underwater huge cave with a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers that is said (we did not see it) to contain many skeletal remains of turtles that became disoriented and then drowned.

Turtles mating

Turtle cave

This cave is not meant to be entered but we broke the rules and entered for about 30 metres until the large cavern ends and the tunnels start. If you don’t turn sometimes to see the exit it can become very very impressive and scary. The cave is just so huge and dark, that when you stay in the centre of it your light even do not light up the walls. Outside there are a number of signs that "suggest" you should not enter.

Unfortunately we did not see manta rays and whale sharks but we did see eagle rays,
giant trevally, huge schools of jacks gathering in thousands and forming spectacular tornado-like formations and schools of giant bump head parrot fish. Apart from the “big” fish you can also see exotic life reef fish such as unicorn fish, beautiful anemones and clown fish, lion fish, colourful crinoids, starfish , puffer fish, different colour leaf scorpionfish, ghost pipefish, bat fish, lobster, parrot fish, grouper, surgeon and damsel fish, pairs of fire goby, hawk fish, sweet lips, garden eels, mantis shrimp, beautiful angelfish and many pairs of butterfly fish.

There are also some very nice sponges, a big variety of hard and soft corals as well as some real beautiful and huge gorgonian fans. Along with that we had an encounter with a harlequin trigger fish and a large titan trigger fish. We were attacked by two of them simultaneously and used just about everything to fight them off. It was not until we were out of the area that they backed off. Some other divers had their fins bitten.

My partner and I where the only ones doing the night dives at Mabul. Visibility was not very good but the macro stuff you can find there is really cool. The species ranges from the Christmas tree, to the Bamboo shark, crocodile fish, very small squid, nudibranchs, frog fish, different kind of small crabs, juvenile bat and sweetlips fish. During a dusk dive we saw the famous mandarin fish.

Sipadan is very crowded above the water. During the morning you can find many high speed boats, most of them coming from the surrounding islands Mabul and Kapalai. Some days we counted up to 22 boats, but we never had a crowded dive under water. Most of the time it was just our group and nobody else.

So at the end of 6 days we had managed to dive 27 times. We left the boat on Sunday morning and had a full days walk around Semporna before taking the bus back to the airport.

Schooling Barracuda

Schooling Trevally

Clown Fish and Anenome

Bumphead Parrotfish

Great Corals

Nudibranch

Images from Sipadan

(c) 2005 Azotomix

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