Read through my blog and realised I had written nothing about Sipadan! Sipadan is an island off the coast of Borneo which for you geology/ geography geeks out there is not situated on the continental shelf so therefore rises 650m above the ocean floor.
It is one of the top dive sites in the world and although I have hardly done enough diving to make that judgement myself, it is awesome. We dropped in at South Point practically on top of turtles, which pop their head up above sea level quite frequently. The fish that you can see infrequently at other places are in abundance, swimming in schools right in front of your face, and there are sharks. Not just the odd shark that you might spot elsewhere but everywhere you look! I managed to swim within half a metre of one to take a photo, and at the end of a dive hovered directly above an enormous turtle (bigger than me) until it got annoyed with me taking photos and swam off.
The second dive was at Barracuda point which is world renowned, similar diving but more of a current. You swim along the wall and then head up a channel which has quite a current.
The third dive was White Tip, and we very lucky to see around 20m below us a school of juvenile grey sharks.
The island itself is beautiful and has been conserved well. Tourists are no longer allowed to stay on it and you are only allowed on a small fraction of the island. The army have a small base on it due to kidnappings by Muslim extremists in the past, it is quite disconcerting to see machine guns pointed out at you when you step onto the island!
No Comments/Trackbacks for this post yet...