Mabul



Mabul Island (Pulau Mabul in Malay) is a small island off the south-east coast of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo. The island is known as one of the best muck diving (viewing exotic and/or small organisms in the sediment at the bottom of the ocean) destinations in the world.

Understand
The island is covered in palm trees and fringed with fine beaches. It is a famous diving spot for divers, both international and local alike, and is well known as the macro diving paradise.

It is located near Pulau Sipadan.

Get in
Make your way to Semporna, then take a boat from there. The journey takes about 30 minutes by speed boat, 1½ hours by slow boat. Resorts and lodges provide boat transfers for their guests. Visitors can also come in on day tours by joining a dive trip organized by one of the dive operators in Semporna.

You can also easily get a boat at the public jetty in Semporna for RM 75 (Feb 2020) one way per person (60 rm with a good bargaining which is still expensive for a short 45 minutes boat ride, but everything is overpriced 5 times in Mabul, specially accommodation!)

Get around
Mabul is small enough to be explored entirely on foot. There are no roads or cars. Boats take visitors to various diving and snorkeling sites around the island.

See
Mabul possesses beautiful sandy beaches lined with coconut palm trees. However, the indiscriminate throwing of litter by the local fishermen does much to detract from this beauty, particularly on the island's west side.

Do
Scuba diving - While its famous neighbour Sipadan is a home to large pelagic species, Mabul is the place to find the smaller macro species. Scorpionfishes, frogfishes, nudibranchs, crocodilefishes, various crustaceans and many other interesting and rare forms of marine life can be found here. Most dive sites are quite shallow - 12-18 m - with a maximum depth of around 30 m in a few places. Visibility is around 5-8 m at the real muck sites like Froggy Lair, Paradise Reef, and Seaventure Platform, reaching around 15 m at the seaward site Lobster Wall. Turtles can also be seen in places, although by far not as many as at Sipadan.

Most of the dive shops, if not all of them, are operated by the home stay and resorts. They don't like divers to live but dive with other operators. They also may not allow you to dive with them if you're not staying with them.

Snorkeling - A few sites close to shore are suitable for snorkeling, primarily around Paradise Reef anr Lobster Wall.

In front of Borneo Divers, you can swim just from the beach and for free to see good corals and many fish and even turtles if you're lucky. Unfortunately there are also lots of plastic bags floating in the water. Beware of the boats, too.

Buy
Besides small shops in resorts and lodges there are no shops on the island.

Eat
Resorts and lodges provide their guests all meals. Very much overpriced for what you really get, like everything in Mabul, while the local people are so poor. It's a shame. Far better value to eat in one of the few small restaurants own by the local inhabitants, like Mabul Café Papa & Mama in the center of the real village, just at the rear of Scuba Jeff resort: big plate of fried rice with chicken RM 5 or huge hamburgers RM 3 to RM 5, noodles, soup, drinks, all at very reasonable prices and with good quality (Feb 2020). Also small barbecue stands in the village selling at lunch and dinner time grilled tuna: RM 3 per slice, enough for one person.

Drink
Resorts and lodges provide drinks to their guests. Other than that there are no choices on Mabul.

Sleep
There are several resorts in the island, all overpriced and very expensive for Malaysia (even for the dorms) as there are no local guest houses but only big resorts. It's a kind of rip off but you don't have other choice if you want to stay on Mabul.

Go next
Take a boat back to Semporna.