Kapalai Island, Sabah

A few minutes by boat from the island of Sipadan and Mabul but a full world away from it lays the exhilarating Sipadan-Kapalai Dive Resort, sitting on its sturdy stilts on the shallow sandbanks of the Ligitan Reefs. Planned and built in full style as an airy, comfortable, sunny water village with no land in sught, it boasts a mile-long sandbank of powdery white sand where one can suntan at complete leisure while gazing out to the miles of brilliant turquoise stretching into the horizon offering the purest image of natural serenity.

Dive spots are extremely close and can be reached in just a few minutes by speedboat and some of them, actually, just by swimming from the dive center pier. For those who are ready to venture more and aside from the tiny marvels of the macro life of Kapalai can, in just a few minutes, dive in Sipadan (where big fish and turtles abound) or in Mabul (where silky and muddy bottoms offer different and equally pleasant experience and opportunities to the lovers of "muck diving").

If you've never tried macro diving before, then you're in for a treat - what a place to start! Shore diving at Kapalai is free of charge, as is the wonderful snorkeling, where you can watch the spectacularly colourful mating mandarin fish, right under the resort jetty. It's easy to fall in love with macro diving when it's this simple! 

With a combination of sun and water in a unique and serene setting, Kapalai is an ideal destination for diver and non-diver alike seeking a great holiday experience!

 Kapalai is similar to Mabul, but there is no actual island, only a large sandbank. The most well known dive site here is Manadrin valley, but several of the other dives sites are well worth a visit.

 

The attraction at Kapalai Island are Kapalai Mandarin Valley and Kapalai Ray Channel.

Kapalai, Mandarin Valley: Slope to about 20m. Hard corals, then sand. Small underwater mound. This dive site has its name from a dragonet that can be found there and that has a beautiful color like the clothes of the Chinese mandarins. It lives during the day under the spines of sea urchins. Also very interesting were the that I found there. Go out to the small underwater mound - there were several leaf fish there last time. Leaf fish can shed their skin and in such a way adjust to the surrounding reef. I saw one, where some yellow ascidians were growing on his skin right over the eye. There is also a mushroom coral (Heliofungia a.) on the sand with some white anemone pipefish (Siokunichthys n.) living inside.

Kapalai, Ray Channel: This is a sandy channel with the reef on one side. The special fish, you find here and nowhere else in Mabul is the dragonfish (Pegasus). This small animal lives in pairs on sand and feeds on invertebrates. Actually, I have spent half an hour at just one coral block here. There are some leaffish here, a spiny devilfish lives close by, and there is a small baby-anglerfish here. I observed, how it changed from gray to red in only 4 days.