Wendy's Nature Stroll: Sipadan-Mabul: Where the Big Fish Are

Unfortunately, it takes me forever to update my blog and months had passed before I'm writing about this diving trip in Malaysia. Therefore, I will write about my experience in one post and try to remember as much as I possibly can with the help of my logbook. Here we go!

My mom and I arrived at the island resort some time in the early afternoon. The buildings were beautifully built with wood and were very resort-like, opposite of Sorido Bay. Not that I'm saying Sorido Bay wasn't beautiful. It was beautiful in a different, more organic way, which I like a lot more. Anyway, we stayed in a water bungalow so we didn't have to walk far for food or diving. :)

Here's a picture of what the resort looks like (photo courtesy of Google Images [I only took underwater pictures during this trip]):

After arrival, checking in, and putting the luggage away, we did our check-up dive at the house reef with Jen, a master diver. I waddled down the stairs with my equipment (thank God for warm water diving--so much lighter than diving in cold water!). And then submerged. Ah...what a feeling. Gliding underwater makes you feel so free. That was until my dive comp started beeping. I knew my tank was full of air because I checked before going down. So what could it possibly be?

The moment I looked down at my dive comp's monitor I wanted to cry. It was flashing all sorts of weird patterns like it was convulsing before death. And, surely enough, the display started to fade until I was staring at the blank face of my dead dive computer. I also knew that it was because of a leak. Before coming on this trip, I had changed the battery myself and probably did not seal the back plate properly. I was so angry and worried at that point on. But we were only in a house reef so we continued diving until done.

Diving the house reef gave me a different experience (apart from diving without any dive comp). It was basically an artificial city underwater. The resort had built wooden structures and some other monuments with different materials and placed them around the dock. It was old enough that corals were starting to grow on the wood and there were groups of fish around.

What the artificial reef looks like.

A group of fishy!

The majority of our days during the trip was dedicated to diving at Sipadan, a protected island that allows only 120 divers per day. It is deemed one of the best dive sites in the world. Sipadan is famous for its big fish, schools of fish, and sea turtles, which definitely provides a different kind of experience. But personally, I enjoy searching for and looking at small organisms on coral reefs better than seeing big fish. With that aside, it becomes instantly apparent why Sipadan became a protected site once you drop down into the depth of its water. There weren't much of a reef left, only the abundant skeletal remains of corals all over the ocean floor. I referred to this as the "coral graveyard" in my logbook. Nevertheless, the fish that thrived there are nothing less than amazing.

Some cool looking starfish.

A couple of bright blue nudibranch.
Unfortunately, there weren't that many nudibranch around.

A family of fish. The small ones were so cute!

Can you spot the white frogfish?

And this is a HUGE black frogfish.
It was bigger than my whole hand!

Here's a short video of the black frogfish swimming. Isn't it just cool and weird at the same time? It sneaked right up on me while I was diving, too.

Asian turtle gliding!!!

And I just love this picture.
The turtle came sooo close to me! I guess it was just curious.

I also snuck up to a sleeping turtle. Hehehe.

Underwater hermit.

And there's my mom. Hahaha.
I think we were surfacing at this point.

There were also sleeping sharks.
This one looked particularly mean.

Swimming through a ginormous group of jackfish wasn't too bad either.
Seriously, they were so dense that I couldn't see the other divers, top or bottom.
I had to keep an eye on the depth gauge to make sure that I wasn't going any deeper or surfacing.

And guess what? I found a pygmy seahorse! I was so excited!
They haven't seen a pygmy around this area for a while.
Sorido Bay trained me well. :))

But this was probably one of the most badass moments there.
To be among the school of huge barracudas.
Yes, it's the fish that killed Nemo's mom and kins.

I also had a video of barracudas swimming around us, but blogger couldn't upload the file for some reason. Error while uploading. Oh well. But I assure you it was super badass. ;)

However, the coolest dive of this trip was, hands down, the Turtle Tomb dive at Sipadan. As the name suggests, it is like the graveyard of sea turtles. The Turtle Tomb is basically an underwater cave with, technically, only one entrance and exit. It is completely dark and full of silt. Patrick, the guide and a very knowledgeable diver, had to make sure that our balance and control is good enough because kicking up silt and panicking could potentially lead to a dangerous scenario, especially when the dive includes a 20 meters long narrow tunnel that could only fit one person, fully geared, at a time. Did I already mention that it was pitch black? Yep, pitch black, in narrow space, underwater. But, of course, we used our dive lights. But that could only provide so much comfort.

Anyway, there are three parts to the Turtle Tomb. There is the antechamber, or the entrance to the cave, where the mouth/exit could still be seen. Then there is the 20 meters long narrow tunnel connecting the antechamber with the inner cave where the skeletal remains of sea turtles are. We started diving down using a spare tank that was clipped onto our BC to save on air from our own tank for the actual cave dive. Once we got to the mouth of the tunnel, we unclipped our spare tank and started using our own tank. We followed a reference line through the tunnel until we emerged into the inner cave. Patrick set up a marker to the only entrance/exit of the inner cave by placing a light on a rock facing up into the ceiling so we can see it at all times.

What can I say about the inner cave except the fact that it was amazing and exciting?

Sadly, I didn't bring the camera. Mostly because I didn't want anything dangling around me in the dark ready to get snatched onto something I couldn't see and also because I wanted to concentrate on not kicking up silt. According to Patrick, the silt in the tunnel and cave is so fine that it takes several hours for the cloud to settle once touched. Now, you might say, then just wait. Hah! You see, limited air supply kind of makes that difficult.

The cave itself was big and deep enough to swim around comfortably. There was even an air pocket above us, possibly from a time before the cave was submerged and bubbles breathed out by divers. Still, the prospect of stale and carbon dioxide rich air is disgusting to me. We followed Patrick around to look at some of the skeletal remains and the "blue hole," this tiny opening to the outside any turtle or us divers couldn't possibly fit through. Also, according to two divers that toured the cave after us, there was a decomposing turtle carcass floating by some corner in the cave. Patrick said he saw it when he went with us but didn't point it out because he didn't want to freak us out... I wanted to see it!!!

Anyway, the whole dive took 87 minutes. The longest I've ever dove before! To be honest, I was hesitating whether or not I wanted to do the dive in the first place. Because, really, you're liable for your own life PLUS others in your group. I just wasn't sure if my buoyancy control was that great. What I ended up doing was keeping my legs high during the whole tunnel run and madly checking my perimeters once in the inner cave. I definitely do not regret going though. It's almost like one of the dive sites every diver should see before they die.

And before I end this blog post, I'd like to relay a funny/embarrassing story of mine. So... On the last day and last dive, I finally learned how to use the camera, per thanks to Patrick. Take a moment to quickly look through all the previous pictures in this post. Notice the blue scheme in all of them? Yep, I learned to adjust the aperture and whatnot. Last day, last dive. Sigh.

Here are the results: