Sipadan & Mabul

Two weeks after our live aboard in Thailand we’re back in the water at Sipadan & Mabul. Sipadan attracts divers from around the world with its large schools of barracuda and turtles to the rare chance to see a whale shark. While we didn’t see any whale sharks, we did get to swim with thousands of barracudas as they circled into a tornado above us. We had seen large schools of fish before, but none as massive as the ones in Sipadan.

Sipadan is a turtle breeding sanctuary so naturally there were turtles galore. The most we saw on a single dive was perhaps 10 whereas other divers had seen 40 to 50. Additionally there were numerous white tip reef sharks lounging in the sand waiting for their pictures to be taken.

We only spent one day in Sipadan searching for large pelagic animals and the other days scouring the reefs for little odd creatures. We found numerous nudibranchs, leaf scorpionfish, ornate ghost pipe fish, and many frog fish (the orange fish below). We saw 7 different frog fish on a single dive.

Although we saw several cool creatures, none top the pygmy seahorse. It’s like a “Where’s Waldo” puzzle underwater as we searched a massive sea fan for a creature smaller than our finger nail. It’s amazing how well they have adapted their camouflage to match the fan.

Mandarin fish were one of those creatures we’ve seen in fish stores, but hadn’t found in the ocean until this trip and we didn’t just find one but 8 in a single fan. There are amazing to watch as they swim into and out of the corals not really minding our presence.

It will be hard to top this part of Malaysia, but our next stop in the Philippines should offer just as unique creatures as we found here in Mabul.