Scuba Diving at Kapalai Island

Actually, Kapalai Island isn’t really an island per se. It is more like a sandbank of the Ligitan Reefs out in the sea. And the sandbank is only visible during low tide. It was an island long long time ago, but erosion from the sea has pretty much washed it away. Don’t let the description put you off. The location is really beautiful and has some of my favourite dive spots here. It is also the place I visited when I was still a rookie diver and still not very good with my buoyancy – more of this later.

The sandy bottom and sparse coral heads is home to an amazing array of small, shamelessly colourful creatures and great for divers who are avid underwater photographers. Often, many of these creatures have yet to be identified as a species. Who knows? Maybe one could be named after you.

Kapalai Island Dive Sites
Kapalai Island Dive Sites

Some popular dive sites include:

  • Black Ray Channel
  • Blue Spotted Garden
  • Cleaning Station
  • Coral Garden
  • East Point
  • Eel Garden
  • Flambo Reef
  • Frontier Reef
  • Great Wall
  • Gurnard Ground
  • Kapalai Rock
  • Ken's Reef
  • Kets Goby Land
  • Little Okinawa
  • Lobster Rock
  • Lonely Reef
  • Lost World
  • Mandarin Garden
  • Mandarin Valley
  • Mantis Ground
  • Mid Reef
  • Nudi Branchia
  • Relep One
  • Siu Siu Point
  • Stingray City
  • Sweetlips Table
  • Twin Peak
  • Twin Reef

Diving in Kapalai, you will likely encounter a lot of macroworld subjects such as banded pipefishes, blue ribbon and yellow ribbon morays, blue spotted stingrays, butterfly fish, cleaning shrimps, clown anemone fishes, crocodile fishes,groupers, humpback shrimps, lambis truncata seashells, mandarin dragonets, mantis shrimps, spotted boxfishes, squirrel and trumpet fishes, various species of nudibranchs, paperfishes, triggerfishes, crab eyed gobies, gold specs jawfish, razor fishes, porcupine fishes, and rarer subjects as blue ring octopus, frogfish and ghostpipe fish.

Remember I mentioned about not being good with my buoyancy? It happened on my first dive of my first visit to Kapalai Island. It was also the first time I went on a diving vacation after being recently certified as a PADI Open Water Diver. We were at Mandarin Valley. The highpght towards the end of the dive was seeing a pair of beautiful Mandarin dragonets doing the mating dance.

By this time, my tank was already light and pulling me up to the surface. Dumping all the air from my buoyancy compensator device (BCD) didn’t help. So here I was, standing upside down, finning frantically downwards, just trying to stay in position while all my then girlfriend (now wife) and another good friend were comfortably above the reef looking at the mating dance. I wonder if the they were more amused by the mating dance or my futile attempts at staying underwater.

After a while, exhaustion took over and I gave up finning. So I floated to the surface and just have to be content with seeing the small Mandarin fishes doing the dance from 18 meters above. Needless to say, I had to pve this down for a very very long time.

You may be thinking – hold on! How can a certified diver still not be able to dive properly? It was my fault. I’ve just gotten a new dive suit but neglected to test it’s buoyancy with a near empty tank before going on the dives. So, to all new divers out there, this is what you should do especially if you have just acquired new gear!

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