Sipadan
I am misleading you with the title here. Sipadan is just one of the many islands reached from the town of Semporna.
Semporna is a town in the East of Sabah, which, even though it is on the island of Borneo, is a Malaysian province. It is also a total dump. Stray dogs, open drains, hostile locals who let you know that you are an outsider, and the place stinks!
Fortunately, Semporna has one redeeming feature. It is the gateway to dive sites that are consistently ranked among the top 5 in the world. These sites surround the Islands of Sipadan, Mabul, Kapalai and others, offering everything a diver could want. There is life here to suit every palette, from the biggest fish in the sea, the Whale Shark, through to the flamboyant mating ritual of the Mandarin Fish, there is a subject here for every lens, from fisheye to Macro.
Then there are the turtles. They seem to be everywhere, soo many of them that you no longer bother even trying to count how many you saw on each dive.
Beautiful hard and soft corals, walls, drop offs, sea fans, seahorses, frogfish, the list goes on and on. It is hard to find a superlative that has not been used to describe this place.
Sipadan is the big name here, and for good reason. On one snorkeling session, I counted 7 turtles in view at the same time, and lost count of how many I saw on the actual dive. They were everywhere, resting, swimming, eating, fighting, it was fantastic. Plenty of whitetip sharks about as well. There was plenty of coral, every surface was coated. Although, unfortunately, there were also signs of dynamite fishing, which blighted the region for years.
Mabul is a fantastic island for macro life. We had frogfish, from 2 inches to over a foot long, Ghost Pipefish, loads of Leafy Scorpionfish, dozens of Crocodilefish and many others. It really was macro heaven.
Bohayan is what many people picture a tropical island to be. White sand beaches, clear, blue water, palm trees, it has the lot. Nice diving as well, not the huge amounts of fish as at Sipadan or the macro of Mabul, but there was coral absolutely everywhere, I have never seen so much hard coral in my entire life, anywhere.
The Military are on every island, for the protection of the islands, and the tourists. A few years back a group of tourists were kidnapped and held for a year. This has never happened since, and the army on the island of Bohayan were very keen to show us the baby turtles they were rearing, ready for release back into the wild. Their main job is to prevent the destructive practice of dynamite fishing, and also to protect the nesting sites of the turtles, so large areas of the islands are out of bounds.
We were diving and snorkeling with Scuba Junkie, a good operation. Very busy, but the staff are great, boats are fast, and kit is in good condition, although we had our own.