Kapalai Dive CenterKapalai

The dive centre at Kapalai Island Resort is under Malaysian management. They offer daily dive trips as well as PADI dive courses and equipment hire.

The shop offers usually three boat dives per day at reefs around Sipadan, Kapalai and Mabul. With fast speed boats it is only 20 minutes to Sipadan and Mabul and not more than 10 minutes to Kapalai reefs. The dives are guided by Malaysian dive guides with excellent local knowledge. You can dive at the house reef off the jetty at any time.

The divie areas visited are Sipadan, Mabul and Kapalai. You will get a huge variety of dives from critters to pelagics.

Sipadan is the tip of an underwater mountain, which reaches straight up from the depth of the Celebes Sea. On these dive sites you find superbly covered drops, great biodiversity and regular sightings of large fish. No dive is complete without a turtle and a white tip reef shark. Special attractions are a school of barracudas and humphead parrot fish. Because of the exposed nature of the site, encounters with hammerhead sharks and other large sharks are possible.

Sipadan has 11 marked dive sites. All dives are wall dives. It is however possible to dive shallow at the southern and eastern part of the island. Sipadan is very small, so most dive sites are so close that you enter at one site and exit at the next site. Please refer to Malaysia diving on our website for description of some dive sites.

Due to the tremendous popularity of the Sipadan drop off, the Malaysian government was forced to introduce a permit system to safeguard the fragile underwater environment and limit the number of divers to 120 per day on this particular site. As a consequence, each dive center must compete for a total of 120 permits per day to dive the Sipadan reef walls. These permits are allocated only 24 hours prior to each new dive day.

As a result, agents and operators alike are unable to guarantee the number of dives at Sipadan Island to be allocated to any resort guest for the duration of their stay. Getting one of these permits seems to be based on luck as much as on the general booking situation in the region (an argument to schedule travel into the off-season), and we have indeed not noticed certain resorts being favoured over others. Resort managements do what they can to keep this system as fair as possible, and to give everyone a chance to visit the Sipadan dive sites at least once in a 3-4 night period. To make the most of this precious opportunity, day boats often schedule 4 dives per day in rather quick succession for those carrying the Sipadan permit.

Diving around Mabul and Kapalai is totally different from diving around Sipadan. These dive sites are much shallower and may appear less spectacular at first glance. But only in close proximity of the elusive Sipadan wall would they be considered second choice. Focusing onto a smaller scale is quickly rewarded here with fascinating encounters of the weird and wonderful critter world of the Indo-Pacifc at its very best.

The sites around Mabul and Kapalai are treasure troves for all kinds of macro rarities. Ghost pipefish, anglerfish, leafy scorpion fish, mandarin fish, ribbon eels, sea horses, plenty of different nudibranchs and other curious sea creature are often seen here.