To spend my life underwater...

Sipadan Water Village - Mabul Island
Sabah, Malaysia
Jan 29 – Feb 2 2006

Last minute arrangements saw me head off to Sipadan for a couple days away over the holiday period in KL. It turned out to be a pleasant time away from the stuff that I found myself going through. The diving was good and offered the only time I could get to be at peace and not have anything on my mind but the present. It's been 5 years since I was last at SWV and it had been an awesome time then, so it was also a walk down memory lane as well when I was topside. Underwater, everything was different... every bit of thought on land disappeared and all I found myself thinking about was the present environment... how's my air, buoyancy alright, cool... a turtle, hmm... a reef shark... boring... whaleshark... fucking awesome! Next thing I'd know, it was time to head back to land and the flood of all sorts of thoughts come rushing back.... *sigh* to spend my life underwater...

Ho-hum… let’s get started!
Dive 1 – 29 Jan 2006
Check out dive @ Paradise 1 – Mabul
Right, so we arrived around lunch and the place hasn't changed a bit all these years. Got our room sorted out and headed out to the dive centre. 1st dive's merely a checkout dive and the dive guide would check our basic mask & regulator clearing skills, then take a short dive around the house reef. Whoopeedoo...

Mate, damn it!
Dive 2 – 29 Jan 2006
Sunset dive @ Paradise 2 – Mabul
Signed on for the sunset dive to go look for mating mandarinfishes. Found tons of them, but they weren't mating. Hung around freezing our asses off, waiting and waiting and waiting... until we got fed up and gave up. I guess the mandarinfishes just weren't horny enough that day...

WTF happened to the viz?
Dive 3 – 30 Jan 2006
Barracuda Point – Sipadan
Damn, up by 6am... some holiday. I don't even wake up this early on a working day. At least we're heading out to Sipadan. Then it struck us, Sipadan was really an oceanic island and that means strong currents! Well, the current shifted and we ended finning against it. And with currents, come plankton... that absolutely sends the visibility to shit. At least we came across the tornado swirls of Chevron Barracudas. Not bad then... objective met on our first Sipadan dive.

Whale shark, baby!
Dive 4 – 30 Jan 2006
Barracuda Point – Sipadan
After the break, we'd decided to check out the schooling Barracudas again, but made the dive master promise not to take us against the currents this time. Unfortunately, they weren't there any longer, but lo and behold... every diver's dream... a baby Whale Shark was swimming around... and it came right at me! Simply awesome.

Drift, macro, drift, macro, drift … hey, where’s everybody?!
Dive 5 – 30 Jan 2006
Ribbon Valley 2 – Mabul
Having done the day's quota of Sipadan dive, it's off for a bit of macro diving. Macro marine life may not be as jawdropping, but can be just as interesting. Having matured as a diver, I guess I'm now a lot more open to macro life than just the big pelagics all the time. Besides, I've got a camera now... which gave new challenges... like keeping up with the rest of the flight. I guess I took too long on a particular subject and by the time I looked up, the rest of the flight had drifted off, leaving only me and my buddy within visual distance. After drifting on for a bit, we decided to start our safety stop and ascent... with still way lot of air... oh well... next time, pay attention.

Self Dive, Self dive...
Dive6 – 30 Jan 2006
Self dive @ Paradise 2 – Mabul
After 3 boat dives, the rest of the afternoon would be for self dives. This one wasn't that big a deal now that we've seen the whale shark and barracuda schools. Nevertheless, there were still the turtles, school of slimline barracudas and many, many smaller macro subjects.

Fucking worms… getaway!
Dive 7 – 30 Jan 2006
Night dive @ Paradise 2 – Mabul
Deciding to max out our first full diving day, we hit the night dive as our final one for the day. Night dives present us with a different variety of marine life. Not quite the pelagics or reef fishes, it was time for the juvenile cuttlefish, banded boxer shrimps, sponge crabs and squat shrimps to come out and play. Unfortunately, our lights seemed to attract these worms that swarmed around our torches... urgh, unpleasant & annoying.

Shark!
Dive 8 – 31 Jan 2006
Turtle Patch – Sipadan

A new day and a new dive site. Turtle patch is a wall dive that leads to either coral garden or South Point. Although it's not as densely populated by turtles, it does feature fast swimming pelagics at depth. With that in mind, I followed the flight deep. The reward... fast swimming tunas, a lone giant barracuda followed by a huge grey tip reef shark. The tradeoff though was that I was a little too deep to enjoy anything more than a mere glimpse of the flight of devil rays up near the surface... Generally another good dive... until this idiot of a diver decided the rest of the dive was boring enough to go through the pictures in the camera and making the stupidest decision to delete what seemed like an empty photo... duh! it was the picture of the grey tip, you idiot! Note to self... next time sort out the pictures on land, no matter how bored you get underwater!

Tornado, tornado, wherefore art thou…
Dive 9 – 31 Jan 2006
Barracuda Point – Sipadan

Anyone who goes to Sipadan undoubtedly wants to see big stuff... the tornado swirls of schooling Trevally Jacks, Chevron Barracudas and humphead parrotfishes. So off we went to Barracuda Point again... and again, they weren't there...

Clean my digs…
Dive 10 – 31 Jan 2006
SMART House Reef – Mabul

The old house reef has been changed to the SMART House reef, with intentionally sunken structures. This has attracted some resident giant Groupers and a school of Trevally Jacks. Being Mabul, naturally there were lots of macro life as well, with a cleaner station housing white banded cleaner shrimps, banded boxer shrimps, Ghost pipefishe, etc...

Lost!
Dive 11 – 31 Jan 2006
Self dive @ Paradise 2 - Mabul
Having done Paradise 2 on our previous self dive, the intention this time was to check out Paradise 1. The plan was to fin out to the artificial reef before heading west towards the house reef at Paradise 2. That was the plan of course... until we saw this baby puffer... after that all orientation was lost and the current started pushing us somewhere. When I noticed the stilts of the dive centre, I'd realised the current was pushing us in the wrong direction and motioned to my buddy to reverse direction. Not only did he not understand my signals, he got all enthralled by the schooling Jacks that he let the current continue drifting him off. Having lost sight of him, I knelt by the sand next to the dive centre and waited. Giving up after a couple of minutes, I resurfaced, but he wasn't on the surface either. That's when the boatman motioned that there were bubbles coming from further west of my position. So, back down I went in search of my lost buddy. After several minutes and still no sight underwater in that direction, I surfaced again. At least this time the fella finally decided to surface but was well off course and a lot closer towards land than planned at all!

We’ve sprung a leak, captain!
Dive 12 – 1 Feb 2006
Turtle Patch to South Point – Sipadan
On our final day, we planned 3 Sipadan boat dives. The intent was once again to sight the tornado swirls, but this time at South Point. With the currents there being too strong and sweeping out into the blue, the decision was made to descent at Turtle Patch and head to South Point. No tornado swirls again, but sighted the devil rays again. At South Point, we focused on the little stuff and that's when disaster struck... my camera's underwater housing leaked and shorted the Ixus 750. Bugger! Nothing like a flooded camera to screw up the rest of the trip... at least we'd taken a shitload amount of photos. At the end as we were preparing for our safety stop, I was re-acquainted with Leopold the leopard shark. After so many years, he's probably Leopold the fifth or something like that.

Devils again???
Dive 13 – 1 Feb 2006
Barracuda Point - Sipadan
Determined to find the schools of Barracudas, we hit Barracuda Point again. Sighting only a small school of them, the next best thing was swimming with the turtles and sighting the devil rays again.

Turtles, turtles, turtles… wait a minute… it’s HAMMER time!
Dive 14 – 1 Feb 2006
Hanging Gardens – Sipadan
Being an afternoon dive in Sipadan, we took the opportunity to check out Hanging Gardens. With the sun on the this side of the island, it made it ideal to visit and play with the turtles. There were a shitload of them too. Somehow, I have a fascination for turtles... they seem to be so ungainly yet graceful, laid back and non-chalant. If anything describes them best, they'd be the ultimate laid back beach bums of the marine life. Highlight of the dive was as we were doing our safety stop, we sighted a school of Hammerhead sharks!

All good things come to an end…
Dive 15 – 1 Feb 2006
Self dive @ Paradise 2 – Mabul
Our final dive of the trip was another self dive. This time, we were determined not to lose sight of each other. As usual, our sightings include schools of fusiliers, schools of slimline barracudas and of course... turtles! And thus came the end of our Sipadan trip... and back to reality...

All in all, I'd expected this to be an average Sipadan trip and would have simply been just another dive as I'd seen everything that can be seen at Sipadan... or so I thought... So, there is a god and things worked out ok as usual... cos the Whale Shark came to visit! =)

More pix at Yahoo Photos.