Sipadan Island

Sipadan Island on the map

View of the Island

Map of Sipadan Island dan divesite

You can go to Sipadan Island via Tawau. Once you reached the airport you need to take a boat from Semporna, another small town about 1 hour from Tawau airport.

Many tourist visited this Island for diving. It is one of the most beautiful diving spot in the world. Presently, the island is in the care of Wildlife Department, which has stationed several park rangers to oversee the state of nature of the island. To protect the world unique flora & fauna on the island as well as the underwater world the Malaysian Government has decided that from 2005 no more overnight facilities shall be on Sipadan itself. This means that all dive operators on Sipadan have to move; diving Sipadan will be conducted from other destinations, such as Mabul and Kapalai. It is likely that Sipadan will be designated a marine reserve under Sabah Parks, and there are plans for a World Heritage Site listing.

Sipadan is the only oceanic island in Malaysia, rising 2,000 feet or 600m from the seabed. It is located in the Celebes Sea east of the major town of Tawau and off the coast of East Malaysia on the Island of Borneo. It was formed by living corals growing on top of an extinct volcanic cone that took thousands of years to develop. Sipadan is located at the heart of the Indo-Pacific basin, the centre of one of the richest marine habitats in the world. More than 3,000 species of fish and hundreds of coral species have been classified in this ecosystem.

Normally rare diving scenes are frequently seen in the waters around Sipadan: schools of greenback turtles and hawksbill turtles nesting and mating, schools of barracuda & big-eye trevally in tornado-like formations, pelagic species such as manta rays, eagle rays, scalloped hammerhead sharks and whale sharks.

A mysterious turtle tomb lies underneath the column of the island, formed by an underwater limestone cave with a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers that contain many skeletal remains of turtles that have become lost and drown before finding the surface

Source : Wikipedia

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