Most people go to Mabul to dive Sipadan, that great pelagic sea mount made famous by Jacques Cousteau, home to the turtle tomb, thousands of live turtles and millions of schooling pelagics.
The island of Mabul is a 20 minute boat ride from Sipadan. Closer to the mainland, it houses a military base, large sea gypsy village and a few dive resorts. Uniquely, the undawater setting here is different from that of Sipadan. Mabul is recognized as one of the world's best muck-diving sites, with one of the riches seas in exotic small marine life. Here you will see an intriguing array of reefs and more unusual creatures like mimic octopus, mandarin fish, snake eels, juvenile batfish, frog fish and razor fish.
Sipadan is no discovery, it's been around for a while now, but the real discovery is the diving around Mabul itself, home to the world's best "muck diving". "Muck diving" is an expression that was coined in Papua New Guinea to describe the diving to be had under a liveboard boat while it is on safe anchor for the night. Usually a protected inlet somewhere, the water underneath the boat is shallow and the bottom is either silt, sand, dead coral or clumps of dirty coral on a silty bottom. The visibility is almost always limited.
Mabul is the esteemed spot for macro photographers who came here to take in the bizarre sea life. Mabul is a definate magical macro site!
For non-divers, couples and newly-weds - Pulau Mabul of Semporna, Sabah is one of the top 'honeymoon destination' in Malaysia.
ATTRACTIONS
Mabul, Crocodile Avenue: Flat sandy area from 5m to 20m. Remains of some palmtrees. Some divers hate this dive site, I love it. It is a sandy area, so there are empty stretches of sand with oases of life. Our diveguide found some seahorses there every time. The absolute record were 8 seahorses found by Ben. Then there are sand eels, double-ended pipefish, crocodilefish, special tube anemones, ghostpipefish (Harlekin- and Seagrass-), cowfish etc. I even saw some turtles, humpback parrotfish, barracudas, mackerels and a small eagle ray there. Night dives are also very good here. We found lots of sepias, cuttlefish and special nudibranchs (for example the Spanish Dancer, Asteronotus c.) and lots of crabs. One of the highlights was a small boxer crab, that Alex found on some rubble.
Mabul, Seaventure Platform: Flat sandy area on about 17m. Some coral blocks, pillars of concrete, piles of metal rods. This is a old oil platform that has been converted into a hotel owned by Seaventures Dive Resort. It stands on huge pillars. You dive underneath in 17m of water (Deco after more than 60min dive!). An amazing dive site! There are several piles of metal rods, look close, and there are always several frogfish (yellow to red, black and gray) sitting on them. Inside the largest pile there is a huge moray eel. His head must have a diameter of about 15cm! I couldn't make out the tail, but it must be several meter long. Then we also found: ghostpipefish (Harlekin and seagrass), waspfish, nudibranchs (Halgerda, Cromodoris etc.), stonefish, flying gunard and close to the pillars always lots of batfish and flutefish.
Mabul, Lobster Wall: Wall, some small caverns. Lot's of hydroids. The place is not that nice to look at, but it is again a place for many nudibranchs, anemones, shrimps and in a small cave I even found a babycowfish. Great nightdives.
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