Ahh, Sipadan… the place where scuba dreams come true.

After a full day of diving around Mabul and Kapalai, I’m ready to take on Sipadan. We’re expecting to see giant schools of barracuda and dozens of sharks.

Since Sipadan is a popular dive site, the number of visitors is restricted to 120 per day. Each diving company or resort gets a limited number of permits (7 seems to be the magic number, based on the places I called), and Uncle Chan’s is the only one with a single spare permit during my stay. I am grateful to have gotten it.

The permits run about $13 USD, but companies tend to price their Sipadan trips significantly higher — for example, I pay $80 USD for three tank dives in Mabul & Kapalai, but $206 USD for the same number of tank dives on Sipadan. It’s a premium location and dive shops mark up their trips as such.

But it’s worth it. So, so worth it. We dock on Sipadan to sign in with our permits:

No one lives on the island and it is well-protected.

Our three dives for the day are:

• Midreef
• Barracuda Point
• a drift dive from Drop Off to Turtle Cave to Barracuda Point

This is the first time I take my GoPro with me on a dive. It’s an older model and the images are not nearly as crisp as I’d like, but I’ve also brought my Canon D20 for a higher quality of images (referral links; for more about the gear I use, check out this page).

Even though the focus is weak, I dig the fisheye effect of the GoPro and it’s ability to share the whole scene in one shot.

I find giant clams to be exotic and mysterious.

There’s good macro life here, like this little nudibranch:

Shark!! I have footage of this one passing right by me (video at the bottom of this post). It’s my first time in such close proximity without a six-inch wall of plexiglass between me and the shark. It’s thrilling and before the day is through I will have chased — yes, CHASED — several sharks in Sipadan.

Our first dive at Midreef is great, but I’m most excited for our second dive at Barracuda Point. We rest near the main dock for our surface interval (the time spent above water between dives) and lounge in this clear water:

Dive #2… barracudas, I’m coming for you!

This first school is actually jack fish. We’ll encounter the barracudas next.

The sheer number of fish is mind blowing.

Okay, now for the barracudas. These guys are long and mean-looking, but we swim right next to them and they pay us no attention.

SHARK again. I get so excited every time I spot one.

Just call me shark paparazzi… I swim up next to them with my camera(s), they get annoyed and swim away. At least they don’t bite my hand off?

Near the end of this second dive, I get down to 10 bars of oxygen. We start with 200 and we’re supposed to begin our ascent / safety stop shortly after hitting 50 bars, so with less than 10 bars left I’m cutting it close. But I want to enjoy every last breath I can get underwater.

First time seeing a starfish like this:

We surface for another break (and lunch) before starting dive #3.

This is Turtle Cave.

Forgive me a moment as I comment on the photo below left: I think it’s obnoxious when couples hold hands while scuba diving. There’s too much to see and do to be tethered to another person, even if it’s your significant other. I have underwater ADD so I swim up to everything to take photos (perhaps this is why I go through my air tank so quickly on that second dive). Holding hands while scuba diving would be a deal breaker.

These white creatures are WORMS.

I see you, shark… I’m coming after you! (Please don’t eat me.)

Our final dive ends with one more school of jack fish.

I leave you with a video of my Sipadan diving experience. It’s almost seven minutes long, much lengthier than the videos I normally post here. But this is a remarkable dive site and I can’t cut it down any more than that. It’s a combination of footage from my GoPro and Canon D20, hence the difference in quality.

Highlights include:

• 1:25 — first shark sighting
• 2:10 — giant school of jack fish
• 2:55 — giant school of barracuda
• 3:50 — just call me Erica the shark chaser
• 6:00 — one more shark and another giant school of jack fish

Do you think I’m crazy for chasing sharks? How cool are those giant schools of barracuda and jack fish?