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Pulau Sipadan, Sabah
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pulau_Sipadan#/media/File:Simpadan_Island_Semporna.jpg
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Pulau Sipadan is a tiny island in the Celebes Sea. It is located to the east of the town of Tawau, and to the south of Semporna. This tiny islet measures a mere 12 hectares in size. Like an emerald in a torquoise sea, it attracts ardent divers from all over the world.
Pulau Sipadan holds the distinction of being Malaysia's only oceanic island. It is the tip of an extinct volcanic that rose from the seabed 600 meters (2000 feet) below. Living corals grew on the volcanic cone to form the island over thousands of years. Sipadan is at the heart of the richest habitat for marine life in the world, counting over three thousand species of fish and hundreds of types of corals within its ecosystem.
Just thirty feet from the shoreline of Sipadan, the bottom drops away two thousand feet to the seabed below. This vertical seawall presents the most enchanting diving experience. It is one of those few places on earth where divers can make rare encounters, such as coming across schools of hawksbill turtles, barracudas, even hammerhead sharks and whale sharks. For that reason, the late Jacques Cousteau, the world-famous oceanographer, called Sipadan "an untouched piece of art".
Getting there
You should use Semporna as your gateway to Sipadan. From Semporna, get in touch with the tour operators at the Semporna Ocean Tourism Centre which is located on stilts over the water at Jalan Kastam.A trip to Pulau Sipadan is not something that money can easily buy. To protect the fragile ecosystem, the Malaysian government removed all resort structures on Sipadan since 31 December 2004. From then onwards, divers can only make day trips to Sipadan from the 12 neighouring resorts in the nearby islands. To protect the ecology, the government has limited the number of visitors to Sipadan to just 120 persons per day, spread among the twelve resorts. Hence there is no guarantee that you can get to visit Sipadan, regardless your length of stay. The chances get slimmer if you are going to be at those resorts for less than a week, and if you are not a diver. Be forewarned that accommodation at the neighbouring resorts are also exorbitantly expensive. Bear this in mind to avoid disappointment.
Having said that, to get to Sipadan, you first go to Semporna. From there, contact a tour operator for a package to Sipadan. Alternatively, you can make arrangement to stay at Mabul, which is a journey of 30 minutes by speed boat and 90 mins by normal boat from Semporna, and try your luck to get to Sipadan from Mabul.
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Hello and thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy and my hobby is in describing places so that I can share the information with the general public. My website has become the go to site for a lot of people including students, teachers, journalists, etc. whenever they seek information on places, particularly those in Malaysia and Singapore. I have been doing this since 5 January 2003, for over twenty years already. You can read about me at Discover Timothy. By now I have compiled information on thousands of places, mostly in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and I continue to add more almost every day. My goal is to describe every street in every town in Malaysia and Singapore.
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