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 destinations in the world.
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.
Make your way to Semporna, then take a boat from there. The journey takes about 30 minutes by speed boat, 1.5 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.
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.
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.
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.
Snorkeling - A few sites close to shore are suitable for snorkeling, primarily around Paradise Reef as well as Lobster Wall.
There are no restaurants, but resorts and lodges provide their guests all meals.
Resorts and lodges provide drinks to their guests. Other than that there are no choices on Mabul.
There are several resorts in the island.
![[^]](http://static.explorra.com/img/link.png "External link to: http://www.sipadan.com"){kind=small}
. A homestay and dive resort is which offers clean and basic accomodations on Mabul, diving and high instructor to student ratios. Price for homestay is 60 RM a night with all meals included and diving is 250 RM for 3 fun dives on Mabul. Offers budget accommodation. Rm70. RM80 per person per night including all meals. Air-conditioned chalets. An old accomodation barge (not an oil rig) that has been converted to a dive resort, just off the north shore of Mabul starts at US$394 per non-diver for 2D1N twin share. Very nice chalets on stilts above the water, but very pricey. starts at US$425 per person for 2D1N twin share.Besides small shops in resorts and lodges there are no shops on the island.
Take a boat back to Semporna.
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Ryan HollidayRobert Biuk-Aghai, Burmesedays and Vidimian
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