Uncle Chang - your uncle in the scuba diving business

Leaving Semporna on a boat felt good and as we approached our destination of Mabul Island it looked like a peaceful sanctuary. Uncle Chang is a local chap who started a dive business on the island and now runs a budget lodge at the same time. We checked into our room and set off into the village and realised that we were slap bang in the middle of it. To my absolute shock and disgust we soon discovered that the island was very similar to Semporna, full of locals who couldn't care less about their environment. Waves of garbage lapping the shores which doesn't really make sense considering the people live entirely on the resources of the ocean.

The purpose of our visit was not to investigate the infrastructure and morality of the place but rather to dive at an island called Sipadan, located around half an hour away. Sipadan once boasted an exclusive lodge but now has no overnight accommodation whatsoever. This is apparently to limit the environmental impact but I also heard a tale of a couple of divers that were kidnapped by a gang of Filipino pirates a few years ago.

What makes the island such a special dive site is the fact that it is located in a very deep section of the Celebes Sea, wildly rich in marine life. The shallow waters of the beach suddenly drop away to a depth of around 600m. Our 2nd dive was at a spot called 'drop off' (the location of the island's most dramatic drop off) which turned out to be a fantastic dive along the wall at a depth of around 25m's. During our 2 dives and 1 snorkel we saw many turtles, a couple of white tip reef sharks, a scorpionfish, barracuda and a school of around 1000 big eye trevally with 3 giant trevally cruising alongside. It was really fortunate that there weren't any large sharks in the area because they would definitely have eaten an Austrian chap that was in our group. He had just qualified the day before and had no idea what he was doing. If there was a specific method for attracting predators in the ocean he had managed to perfect it, staying vertical throughout his dive with a blood nose and a look of absolute terror on his face. I still have no idea how he survived. During our 2nd dive we were about 27m down and he was flapping above us. All of a sudden he vanished into the depths below and 5 minutes later floated upside down to join us again. The funniest thing was that when he got onto the boat he asked everybody if they had heard the music. I wonder if it was a fat lady he'd heard singing.