Second trip report of the night! This was a short trip over Deepavali long weekend. 2nd time to Sipadan, this time with Scuba Junkie.
Photos: Sipadan (Oct 2022)
From Singapore I took a taxi (~1 hour drive + 30min to clear immigration) across the Malaysian border to Johor Bahru, and from there it was a short 2.5 hour flight to Tawau. From Tawau a car arranged by Scuba Junkie picked me up and drove me to my hotel in Semporna in ~an hour. Semporna was cleaner than what I remember from my first trip back in 2019, but still A LOT of trash in the waters... I stayed at Grace Hotel for a night before going across the street to Scuba Junkie and getting on the 8am boat to Mabul. Hotel was fine, seafood street still sold all kinds of live seafood (but horrible conditions i.e. lobsters in water bottles stacked in a tiny tank...) - a bit jarring to see. I normally love seafood but it felt wrong to support that type of practice.
Scuba Junkie sold a 4 day package with 3 days at Sipadan and only 1 day at Mabul, at 25% off for 2022 travel. My last trip in 2019 the 4 day package was 3 days at Mabul and only 1 day guaranteed at Sipadan, what a change from pre-COVID times. When I booked my trip in the summer it was still 120 permits per day and 3 dives per day. In late Sept the local dive group chat blew up with news that effective Oct 1, only 2 dives per day will be allowed, and permits will double from 120 to 240. The SG divers were in consensus that at 2 dives per day, with the hassle of how long it takes to get there (full 24 hours), and not being able to dive Sipadan every day, the value proposition is just not there vs flying direct to Bali, Philippines, Thailand, etc. I actually did ask to cancel my trip and move the deposit to a Borneo trip with their sister operation River Junkies, but Scuba Junkies managed to convince the park authorities to honour the terms of the original booking and let anyone who booked before Oct 1 still dive 3x a day, so I went.
Before I went I saw the news here about the ghost net, and the damage is apparent. I'm not sure how much of it is from the ghost net alone and how much is from before, but there was a lot of coral rubble at the sites that were pristine in 2019 - South Point in particular had huge stretches of dead coral, and I remember it was one of the most beautiful sites back in 2019. It's really sad seeing the turtles sit on just mountains of dead coral. We found a piece of the ghost net on one dive and the guide spent 5 minutes or so trying to cut it free, but still broke up big pieces of coral... I remember quite a few sharks in 2019, this time there was only a couple. The turtles and small anthias are still there, as are the big schools of barracuda and jacks, but overall it felt definitively less fishy - maybe even 50%? less - than what I remember from 2019. My husband still tells people his favourite dive site is Sipadan, luckily he did not go this time and see the damage.
Scuba Junkie dives the same 2 sites every day - Barracuda Point for the barracudas, and South Point for the jacks - and I think the other dive centers do the same as well. They do this because every day there are new guests who have never been to Sipadan before, and oftentimes they only have 1 day here so it's a must that everyone see the two highlights. So across my 3 days / 9 dives in Sipadan I actually only saw 4 dive sites. Scuba Junkie had 4 boats going out to Sipadan every day, each one 6 divers plus 2 guides, that's a lot of divers on the same two sites day after day. I struggle to see how the new rule change will benefit the reef and allow it to recover, but of course it brings in more $$$.
(side note - discovered on this trip I don't actually need any weights w my 3mm wetsuit! buoyancy has come a long way since the last time I was here)
3 days is a good amount of time to spend at Sipadan. The first day we saw both the school of jacks and a mid-sized barracuda tornado, they stuck around for a little bit but not too long. A good start. The second day we had bad weather with big swells, choppy waters, and no luck with either schools. First dive at South Point was at 30m in the blue, 45min of swimming against the current, with absolutely nothing to see. (And no nitrox offered, I almost went into deco despite staying 3-5m above the guide the entire time). Afterwards the guide told us he was looking for hammerheads. Second and third dives we went back to Barracuda Point (again to 30m both times...) because two of the guests only had permits for one day and the guide really wanted to find the barracudas for them, but again we saw nothing. The third day was a complete 180 and the best day by a lot, saw the giant tornado of barracudas on the first dive and they stuck with us for almost the whole dive. We saw the big school of jacks again on the second dive, and at one point I lost sight of the group as they swarmed around me and it's literally 360 degrees of jacks. I'm not great a video but took a few, it's really very cool to experience. And to top it off there was even a big school of bumphead parrotfish on our last dive that came pretty close, which was a first. It's really luck of the draw and it's a long way to come if you only have one chance... One thing is you absolutely have to be clear with the dive guides what you want to do, i.e. marathon-style cardio swim or easy relaxed diving. You are assigned to different boats and different guides every day, and some are very fast and will lead you to swim against the current for the entire dive in search of the schools! Different guides will dive the same sites very differently.
Mabul macro is decent, but doesn't stack up to Anilao & Lembeh. The 3 day dives on arrival day were just ok, not that memorable, but there was one highlight which was finding a flamboyant cuttlefish on the house reef. But it's infinitely better than Hantu (SG's only local dive) - so perhaps best described as "not bad"? The one night dive I did was really good, there is only one site which is their house reef, you either go left or right, one is a sandy bottom, the other is a reef. I requested Legend who is their best spotter as a private guide and we covered both sides in one 100min dive (took a 15L tank for this one). Saw some cool critters like 2 sea robins, my first bumblebee shrimp (but it was too hidden inside a tire and I could't get a photo), a tiny octopus the size of a bobtail squid that I couldn't ID, all the usual suspects - pipefish, froggies, shrimps, crabs, and nudis.
The rooms at Scuba Junkie were huge and very nice. It's not really full service diving, you assemble/disassemble/clean your own gear, but they do change the tanks for you in between dives. I had to carry my own camera, and you need to get your own towels at the reception which is quite far from the dive shop. When you arrive on the morning boat around 9am you can't check into your room until 2pm. It's not very upscale but it is decently comfortable. Food is hit and miss - sometimes very tasty, other times very dry - and they have a no seafoods policy so it's 90% chicken. Wifi works well in the restaurant, sometimes ok in the dive shop, and doesn't reach any of the rooms.
I hope to see reports of the reef recovering, hopefully the damage is short-lived and the new rule change doesn't make the situation worse.
Photos: Sipadan (Oct 2022)
From Singapore I took a taxi (~1 hour drive + 30min to clear immigration) across the Malaysian border to Johor Bahru, and from there it was a short 2.5 hour flight to Tawau. From Tawau a car arranged by Scuba Junkie picked me up and drove me to my hotel in Semporna in ~an hour. Semporna was cleaner than what I remember from my first trip back in 2019, but still A LOT of trash in the waters... I stayed at Grace Hotel for a night before going across the street to Scuba Junkie and getting on the 8am boat to Mabul. Hotel was fine, seafood street still sold all kinds of live seafood (but horrible conditions i.e. lobsters in water bottles stacked in a tiny tank...) - a bit jarring to see. I normally love seafood but it felt wrong to support that type of practice.
Scuba Junkie sold a 4 day package with 3 days at Sipadan and only 1 day at Mabul, at 25% off for 2022 travel. My last trip in 2019 the 4 day package was 3 days at Mabul and only 1 day guaranteed at Sipadan, what a change from pre-COVID times. When I booked my trip in the summer it was still 120 permits per day and 3 dives per day. In late Sept the local dive group chat blew up with news that effective Oct 1, only 2 dives per day will be allowed, and permits will double from 120 to 240. The SG divers were in consensus that at 2 dives per day, with the hassle of how long it takes to get there (full 24 hours), and not being able to dive Sipadan every day, the value proposition is just not there vs flying direct to Bali, Philippines, Thailand, etc. I actually did ask to cancel my trip and move the deposit to a Borneo trip with their sister operation River Junkies, but Scuba Junkies managed to convince the park authorities to honour the terms of the original booking and let anyone who booked before Oct 1 still dive 3x a day, so I went.
Before I went I saw the news here about the ghost net, and the damage is apparent. I'm not sure how much of it is from the ghost net alone and how much is from before, but there was a lot of coral rubble at the sites that were pristine in 2019 - South Point in particular had huge stretches of dead coral, and I remember it was one of the most beautiful sites back in 2019. It's really sad seeing the turtles sit on just mountains of dead coral. We found a piece of the ghost net on one dive and the guide spent 5 minutes or so trying to cut it free, but still broke up big pieces of coral... I remember quite a few sharks in 2019, this time there was only a couple. The turtles and small anthias are still there, as are the big schools of barracuda and jacks, but overall it felt definitively less fishy - maybe even 50%? less - than what I remember from 2019. My husband still tells people his favourite dive site is Sipadan, luckily he did not go this time and see the damage.
Scuba Junkie dives the same 2 sites every day - Barracuda Point for the barracudas, and South Point for the jacks - and I think the other dive centers do the same as well. They do this because every day there are new guests who have never been to Sipadan before, and oftentimes they only have 1 day here so it's a must that everyone see the two highlights. So across my 3 days / 9 dives in Sipadan I actually only saw 4 dive sites. Scuba Junkie had 4 boats going out to Sipadan every day, each one 6 divers plus 2 guides, that's a lot of divers on the same two sites day after day. I struggle to see how the new rule change will benefit the reef and allow it to recover, but of course it brings in more $$$.
(side note - discovered on this trip I don't actually need any weights w my 3mm wetsuit! buoyancy has come a long way since the last time I was here)
3 days is a good amount of time to spend at Sipadan. The first day we saw both the school of jacks and a mid-sized barracuda tornado, they stuck around for a little bit but not too long. A good start. The second day we had bad weather with big swells, choppy waters, and no luck with either schools. First dive at South Point was at 30m in the blue, 45min of swimming against the current, with absolutely nothing to see. (And no nitrox offered, I almost went into deco despite staying 3-5m above the guide the entire time). Afterwards the guide told us he was looking for hammerheads. Second and third dives we went back to Barracuda Point (again to 30m both times...) because two of the guests only had permits for one day and the guide really wanted to find the barracudas for them, but again we saw nothing. The third day was a complete 180 and the best day by a lot, saw the giant tornado of barracudas on the first dive and they stuck with us for almost the whole dive. We saw the big school of jacks again on the second dive, and at one point I lost sight of the group as they swarmed around me and it's literally 360 degrees of jacks. I'm not great a video but took a few, it's really very cool to experience. And to top it off there was even a big school of bumphead parrotfish on our last dive that came pretty close, which was a first. It's really luck of the draw and it's a long way to come if you only have one chance... One thing is you absolutely have to be clear with the dive guides what you want to do, i.e. marathon-style cardio swim or easy relaxed diving. You are assigned to different boats and different guides every day, and some are very fast and will lead you to swim against the current for the entire dive in search of the schools! Different guides will dive the same sites very differently.
Mabul macro is decent, but doesn't stack up to Anilao & Lembeh. The 3 day dives on arrival day were just ok, not that memorable, but there was one highlight which was finding a flamboyant cuttlefish on the house reef. But it's infinitely better than Hantu (SG's only local dive) - so perhaps best described as "not bad"? The one night dive I did was really good, there is only one site which is their house reef, you either go left or right, one is a sandy bottom, the other is a reef. I requested Legend who is their best spotter as a private guide and we covered both sides in one 100min dive (took a 15L tank for this one). Saw some cool critters like 2 sea robins, my first bumblebee shrimp (but it was too hidden inside a tire and I could't get a photo), a tiny octopus the size of a bobtail squid that I couldn't ID, all the usual suspects - pipefish, froggies, shrimps, crabs, and nudis.
The rooms at Scuba Junkie were huge and very nice. It's not really full service diving, you assemble/disassemble/clean your own gear, but they do change the tanks for you in between dives. I had to carry my own camera, and you need to get your own towels at the reception which is quite far from the dive shop. When you arrive on the morning boat around 9am you can't check into your room until 2pm. It's not very upscale but it is decently comfortable. Food is hit and miss - sometimes very tasty, other times very dry - and they have a no seafoods policy so it's 90% chicken. Wifi works well in the restaurant, sometimes ok in the dive shop, and doesn't reach any of the rooms.
I hope to see reports of the reef recovering, hopefully the damage is short-lived and the new rule change doesn't make the situation worse.
