Diving Sipadan

[Paultan]

Hi just joined the forum.

We stopped off at Sipadan last year on the way back from a wedding in England. Absolutely brilliant!! We stayed at Sipadn Water Village, Mabul Island, http://www.swvresort.com/. They were amazing, and the diving was superb. Saw plenty of turtles, barracuda, jack fish, white tip reef sharks, and the star of the show bumphead parrot fish.

It took a while to get to the resort 2 hour internal flight from KL to Tawau, then 1 hour bus ride, then 45 minutes by boat. Sipadan is a marine reserve, and only allows a maximum of 150 divers per day. We were told to expect at most 2 days during our 7 day stay, but actually managed to have 4 days diving.

When we were back in KL, heading home, a taxi driver told us that until recently the area was atrisk of prirates from the Phillipines. This has all but stopped now, due to the large contingent of Malaysian Navy hin the area. We didn't feel threatened at all while we were there.

Paul

[Ali Perkins]

Thanks for the trip report Paul!

Can you explain how the diving works? As in... you were able to dive 4 days out of 7. I'm curious about this odd-sounding concept of being at a dive resort and not being able to dive.

[Paultan]

Sorry should have been a tad clearer. They hand out 150 diver permits per day, since the demand is more than this it is usual to expect an average of 2 days diving at Sipadan marine reserve. There are plenty of other dive sites other than Sipadan which we also dived. In summary we were there for 8 days and managed to get in 4 days diving at Sipadan the other days we were diving at sites outside the marine reserve, which were good as well.

[Ali Perkins]

Oh cool... I understand. Were the other dive sites as good as Sipadan?

I just went to the Cocos Islands off Costa Rica. My understanding is they only allow 60 diver permits per day. I believe there are only 3 liveaboard boats (~20 divers each) that visit so that works. Of course at Cocos there is nowhere else to dive!