[Jules]

10.2.08 Sipadan Baracuda point
We departed at 05:30 and rolled off the boat just after 6am as the sun rose. My late friend Chris was born in Malaysia so Liz had given us some of his ashes to scatter in the sea off Sipadan. We sprinkled them off a steep wall covered in fans which went down to about 1200m, as they drifted away a little shark swam straight through them. We smiled and nodded at each other as we both understood that the sharks were welcoming him home.

The top of this reef was covered with a huge variety of beautiful corals and a shoal of napoleon wrasse paraded past.

10.2.08 Kapilai Gurnard Ground
Murky dive on a sandy bottom next to reef, we found a tiny ghost pipe fish on a sunken fishing boat towards the end of the dive









At the end of the dive phils lovely kent tooling reel was dropped by someone “helping” so a search and recovery dive was immediately implemented successfully.

10.2.08 Mabul Jetty night dive
On this occasion we seems to see lots of fish sleeping, in holes in rocks, inside tubes and structures , just lying on the coral and just about everywhere.


The fishies that were playing out were the coral shrimp fish. I have never seen these before and they look like bits of broken weed.



11.2.08 Hanging gardens Sipadan
Stunning wall dive with loads of life, vertigo views down to deep deep deep, Beautiful corals everywhere. So many turtles!


11.02.08 Drop off Sipadan
The classic Sipadan dive, it’s just a few metres from the beach and a vertical wall with lots of cavernous inlets. It is here that you find the entrance to the turtle tomb caves, which I was set to explore further in the cavern and intro cave courses which I had booked. So a quick mooch inside the cavern entrance and then a slow steady drift. Massive shoal of jacks at the safety stop which were there most days.




to be continued