Sipadan – Captain Sim's Photography Journey

SIPADAN
An Untouched Piece of Art

by Captain Sim Yong Wah A.M.N.

Act One: The First Dive — 1983

The Fisherman’s Tale
It began, as so many things do in this part of the world, with a story told over coffee in a kopitiam.

In 1983, a fisherman in Tawau mentioned, almost in passing, that there was an island to the south — a place called Sipadan — where the sea was unlike anything he had seen. He spoke of a giant octopus. Of fish so thick in the water you could barely see through them. Of turtles that came ashore in numbers that darkened the beach.

I was young, brave, and I had a camera, and I decided to go and see for myself.

There were no resorts on Sipadan in 1983. No dive operators, no boats running daily trips, no names on the dive sites. The island was a green thumbprint on the Celebes Sea, rising from water so deep that the continental shelf fell away almost at the shoreline. I hired a 30-foot fishing boat which would be my diving and living quarters for three days, and arrived to find a place that seemed to exist outside of time.

I entered the water with two other ladies — my men friends had chickened out with the threat of pirates raging in these waters.

Sandra Wong freedives the pristine reef flat, Sipadan, 1983. One of only two lady companions brave enough to enter the water that day — the other men in the group had declined, wary of pirate activity in these waters. This is the sole surviving image from the expedition; the remainder were lost when fungus destroyed the original slide film.

What I found beneath the surface was, quite simply, the most extraordinary marine environment I had ever seen. The wall dropped away beneath me into an infinite blue, and on that wall — every centimetre of it — life pressed outward in impossible profusion. Gorgonian fans the size of small trees. Coral gardens that made the reef systems I had photographed elsewhere seem impoverished by comparison. And the fish — the fisherman had not exaggerated. Schools of bigeye trevally that turned the water silver. Bumphead parrotfish moving in slow, deliberate herds, their foreheads crashing against coral in a sound you felt as much as heard. Hawksbill turtles that regarded me with the mild curiosity of creatures for whom a million years of ocean had removed all urgency.

I did not have words for it then. I had a camera, and I used it. Mind you, this was the time when cameras used film — 36 shots each roll, and no way to know if you got it right.

I knew, in the way that photographers sometimes know, that I had found something that the world had not yet seen.

A couple who lived on Sipadan in a small attap hut collect turtle eggs on the beach at night, mid-1980s. Each evening they probed the sand with a metal rod, locating nests by feel. The eggs were bagged and sent by boat to market in Semporna each morning. The turtles that Cousteau would later film nesting on this same beach were, at this time, being harvested nightly.

The Shadow Beneath the Surface

I returned to Sipadan several times in the years that followed my first dive. The reef remained as breathtaking as I remembered — if anything, each return deepened my understanding of just how exceptional it was. But the island above the waterline told a darker story.

On the beach each evening, a fisherman laid a longline — roughly a hundred baited hooks stretched far out into the waters that held some of the finest shark populations in the Celebes Sea. By morning he hauled the line in. The catch was overwhelmingly sharks. On the rocks at the water’s edge he would work through them methodically, cutting the fins and setting them aside for market. The carcasses — some of them substantial animals — were left where they fell. I felt physically sick watching it.
At night, the couple who lived in the small attap hut on the island were at work on the beach with a metal rod, probing the sand for turtle nests. When the rod found resistance, they dug. The eggs — dozens per nest, sometimes more — went into a net bag. By morning they were on a boat to Semporna, bound for the market.

This was Sipadan in the mid-1980s. Below the surface, one of the great undiscovered reefs on earth. Above it, an unregulated harvest that no one was watching and no one was stopping.

I photographed what I saw. I did not know then whether anyone would ever care.

A fisherman fins sharks on the beach at Sipadan during one of the author’s subsequent visits in the mid-1980s. Each evening a longline of roughly a hundred baited hooks was set offshore. By morning the catch — overwhelmingly sharks — was brought ashore. The fins were cut and the carcasses abandoned on the sand.

The scale of the nightly shark catch at Sipadan, mid-1980s. The fins, destined for market, were separated and boxed for transport to Semporna. The rest was left to rot on the beach. There was no regulation, no oversight, and no one to say otherwise.

The Word Gets Out

When I returned from that first dive, I brought back something more than photographs.
My flight home to Kuala Lumpur transited through Kota Kinabalu, and I stopped to return the dive equipment I had borrowed from Borneo Divers. Ron Holland asked me, as one diver asks another, how Sipadan had been.

I told him everything. The wall. The turtles. The bumphead parrotfish and the schools of trevally so dense they turned the water silver. I told him it was unlike anything I had dived in Malaysian waters, and that he should start running trips there immediately.
Ron took my advice.

A few months later he called to tell me that Borneo Divers was making its first trip to Sipadan. Those early expeditions were exactly that — expeditions. Guests lived aboard a slow barge anchored off the island, and the kitchen and dining area was a tent pitched on the beach. There were no facilities, no permanent structures, nothing between the divers and the raw, unhurried wildness of the place. A year or two later, simple A-frame huts appeared on the beach — a modest concession to comfort that felt, at the time, almost luxurious.

But the diving needed no improvement. It was exactly what I had told Ron it would be.

The author aboard M.62 Semporna Berjaya at the Semporna docks, mid-1980s. This slow barge was the vessel that carried Borneo Divers’ first guests to Sipadan — a journey that began with a conversation and a borrowed set of dive equipment.

The interior of M.62 Semporna Berjaya, the slow barge that served as dive station and floating home for Borneo Divers’ early Sipadan expeditions, mid-1980s. Tanks lined both sides, provisions were stacked wherever space allowed, and comfort was not part of the arrangement. For the divers who made the journey, none of that mattered.

The beach at Sipadan, mid-1980s — white sand, twisted driftwood, and almost complete solitude. The island that the world had not yet discovered.

Ron Holland — dive operator, divemaster, and self-appointed after-dinner entertainer — holds court in the beach tent that served as dining room for Borneo Divers’ early Sipadan expeditions, mid-1980s. It was Holland who took the author’s advice and brought the first paying guests to Sipadan — launching what would become one of the most celebrated dive destinations on earth.

My most constant companion on those dives was my wife, Mimi Wong — divemaster, camera carrier, decompression timekeeper, and my most accomplished underwater model. On dives when I carried three cameras, she carried two. She watched my back so I could watch the reef.
Word travelled the way it always does among divers — urgently, incompletely, like a secret too good to keep. Sipadan’s name began to move through the diving community in whispers. And then, in 1988, a ship appeared in Semporna harbour that would turn those whispers into something the whole world could hear.

Act Two: The Calypso Comes to Semporna — 1988

In 1988, my brother Dennis Sim was on the docks in Semporna when a vessel unlike any other appeared in the harbour. It was the Calypso — Jacques Cousteau’s famous research and film ship. The crew came ashore, and somehow Dennis found himself aboard, in conversation with the captain, who was looking for somewhere exceptional to dive in these waters.

Dennis told them about Sipadan.

Cousteau himself was not aboard — he was in Paris at the time. But the crew went to Sipadan, dived it, and the first footage and photographs were transmitted back to France. When Cousteau saw them, his response was immediate and unequivocal: he had not seen anything like this in thirty years. He was coming to Sipadan himself.

The rest, as they say, is history. Cousteau’s documentary — Borneo: The Ghost of the Sea Turtle (1989) — introduced Sipadan to the world. His words became legend: he declared that he had seen other places like Sipadan forty-five years before, but no more — and that they had found an untouched piece of art. Divers descended on Sipadan from every corner of the globe. The quiet, pristine reef that I had first entered in 1983 would never be quiet in the same way again.

What almost no published account records is how that chain of events actually began — with a fisherman’s tale of a giant octopus, and a dive photographer from Kuala Lumpur who decided to go and see for himself.

Act Three: The World Arrives

The World Arrives

Cousteau’s documentary changed everything. Within months of its broadcast, Sipadan’s name was circulating in dive shops from Tokyo to Toronto, in the pages of Skin Diver magazine, in the itineraries of most dive tour operators. The island that had no resort in 1983, no electricity, no fresh water, and no name recognition beyond the fishing communities of the Semporna archipelago, was suddenly on every serious diver’s bucket list.

Resorts appeared almost overnight. First one, then several, each staking a claim on that tiny, fragile strip of sand — an island barely large enough to walk around in fifteen minutes. Generators ran day and night. Dive boats queued at the famous sites. At Barracuda Point, where I had once hovered alone in the blue, watching the tornado of jacks reform around me in silence, there were now cameras everywhere, bubbles rising in columns, fins stirring the sand.

The reef itself, miraculously, held. Sipadan’s walls and the life they harboured proved more resilient than anyone had a right to expect. But the pressure was visible, and it was growing.

Divers prepare to enter the water off Sipadan, 1989 — the year Cousteau’s documentary aired. The simple A-frame huts of the early Borneo Divers camp are visible on the beach behind. Word had begun to spread, but Sipadan was still relatively undiscovered. Within months, that would change forever.

The Borneo Divers dive centre on Sipadan, 1989 — bamboo walls, a sand floor, tanks lined up under the shade of the trees. Simple, functional, and entirely in keeping with an island that had not yet decided what it wanted to become.

Pulau Sipadan Resort, 1992. By the early 1990s, Sipadan had its own named resort with a proper deck, signage, and a steady stream of international divers. The island that had no infrastructure a decade earlier was now a destination. The world that Cousteau had summoned had arrived.

It was around this time that I made a decision to retire from diving, for two reasons. Firstly I was overwhelmed with other diving traffic while underwater — I am never used to this. Diving for me has always been like exploring the wilderness, the unknown, experiencing the environment with only me and my diving buddies. I think I had seen enough of the underwater world. Secondly, I realised that I had ignored the topside all this while, so I decided to spend time from henceforth exploring the land above the waterline.

Mimi on the Wall

Through all the years of diving Sipadan, my most constant companion was my wife, Mimi Wong. She was divemaster, camera carrier, and timekeeper — on dives when I carried three cameras, she carried two, watching my back and calling time on my decompression. She was also my most accomplished underwater model; comfortable at any depth, instinctively aware of the frame, and effortlessly graceful in front of the lens. Sipadan was always a family affair.

Mimi Wong on Sipadan’s wall amid black coral trees, 1992. As both divemaster and model, Mimi brought a rare combination of composure and spatial awareness to every dive.

Mimi Wong on the wall, Sipadan, 1992. On dives where the author carried three cameras, Mimi carried two — watching his back so he could watch the reef.

Mimi Wong amid a cascade of soft coral on Sipadan’s wall, 1992. As both model and divemaster, Mimi brought an instinctive composure to every dive — qualities that made her the ideal subject for the author’s underwater work.

Mimi and our divemaster encounter a turtle skeleton on the floor of Turtle Cavern, Sipadan, 1992. The cave system beneath the island holds the remains of turtles that entered but could not find their way out — one of Sipadan’s most sobering and unforgettable dives. It was this cavern that gave Cousteau’s 1989 documentary its name: Borneo: The Ghost of the Sea Turtle.

Mimi Wong framed by a coral arch on Sipadan’s wall, 1997 — longnose and racoon butterflyfish hovering above as if posing for the camera. This image, made on film with a single strobe, stands as one of the finest underwater portraits from forty years of diving Sipadan.

Mimi Wong beneath a cascade of crimson soft coral on Sipadan’s wall. Forty years of diving together, and she never once looked uncomfortable in front of a camera at depth.

The Reckoning

By the late 1990s, it was clear that Sipadan was being loved to the edge of ruin. The resorts multiplied until there were half a dozen operations crowding the island’s narrow beach. Waste disposal was rudimentary at best. The water table was compromised. Boat anchors, however unintentionally, found coral. And the sheer volume of divers — hundreds per day at peak season — was beginning to leave its mark on the most visited sites.

Sipadan from the water, 1994. A decade after the author first arrived on a fishing boat to find an empty beach and an untouched reef, the island’s narrow strip of sand was crowded with resort buildings, jetties, and dive boats from one end to the other. This photograph is the reason the 2004 closure order was not a surprise — it was an inevitability.

The dive centre compound on Sipadan, 1997. Rinse tanks, gear racks, showers, and a crowd of international divers preparing for another day on the reef. The island that once held one attap hut and a couple living quietly off turtle eggs was now processing hundreds of divers a day.

The Sabah State government had watched Sipadan’s transformation from obscurity to global icon with a mixture of pride and mounting alarm. Here was one of the country’s greatest natural treasures, and it was being consumed by the very admiration it had earned.

The decision, when it finally came, was bold and — to the resort operators who had built their livelihoods on the island — brutal. In 2004, the Sabah Statement government ordered all resort infrastructure removed from Sipadan. Every building, every generator, every jetty. The island was to be returned, as much as possible, to itself. Divers could still come, but under a strict permit system — a ceiling of 120 divers per day, allocated by lottery among the operators now based on the larger islands of the archipelago. Mabul and Kapalai absorbed the accommodation. Sipadan itself would be left to the turtles and the fish.

The operators protested. Compensation was disputed. Legal challenges wound through the courts. But the order held.

When the last resort came down and the generators fell silent for the first time in nearly two decades, something remarkable happened. The beach, churned and compacted by years of foot traffic and construction, began its slow recovery. The turtle population, which had shown signs of stress, stabilised. The coral, spared the worst of the anchor damage, continued to do what coral has always done — grow, slowly, millimetre by millimetre, in the direction of light.

My Return

I was lured back to diving after more than ten years of absence by a long-time diving buddy, with a promise to dive Raja Ampat — promised that I would not regret it. And that is another story to tell. I returned to Sipadan in 2022, and this visit felt different. In the early morning light, the island looked as it perhaps always should have — uncluttered, unhurried, the tree line unbroken by rooftops and radio masts.

Below the surface, the magic remained. It had never really left. The bumphead parrotfish still arrived at dawn in their ancient procession, unhurried and enormous, grazing the reef with that sound like slow percussion. The hawksbill turtles still moved through the water with the calm authority of creatures who have been doing this for a hundred million years, regarding divers with an equanimity bordering on indifference. The barracuda still formed their impossible silver vortex at the point that bears their name.

A green turtle rises from the sandy bottom, Sipadan, 2022. The turtles that once had their eggs harvested nightly now move through protected waters with the same unhurried authority they have carried for a hundred million years.

A diver faces a sweeping school of bigeye trevally over pristine staghorn coral, Sipadan, 2022. The reef that survived decades of pressure has returned to something close to what the author first encountered in 1983.

A massive ball of bigeye trevally presses against the surface while a green turtle cruises the mid-water below, Sipadan, 2022. Multiple photographers work the scene — a layered image of abundance restored.

Sipadan had survived its fame. Not unchanged — nothing survives that unchanged — but intact in the ways that matter most. The wall still dropped away beneath you into water so blue it seemed invented. The life it supported still took the breath away.

I thought of 1983. The fisherman’s story. The moment I slipped beneath the surface for the first time and understood, without needing words for it, that I had found something extraordinary.

Cousteau had thirty years of ocean behind him when he called Sipadan a piece of untouched art. I had been a young and brave photographer with a camera, a tank, and a tip from a fisherman.

We had both been right.

The Inheritance

The last three years have given me the finest images of my experience at Sipadan. I did not expect that. After four decades of diving these waters, I thought I knew what to expect — and Sipadan surprised me still. The marine life has returned with a vigour that borders on the miraculous. The bumphead parrotfish herds are larger. The barracuda tornadoes tighter and more numerous. The turtles, unhurried as ever, move through water that feels cleaner, more alive, more itself than at any point since the resort years. Whatever the 2004 closure cost in disruption and bitterness, the reef has rendered its verdict: it was the right decision.

A day’s diving at Sipadan costs RM889 per person today – Sipadan Park fees. It is not a casual outing. The permit system means planning, waiting, the particular anticipation of something rationed and therefore precious. Divers who come now come with intention. Perhaps that, too, is part of the recovery.

But none of that is what I think about when I close my eyes and remember the last dive I want to tell you about.

On 18 May 2026 — forty-three years after a fisherman in a kedai kopi told me about a giant octopus on an island to the south — I descended into Sipadan’s blue alongside my son, Jet Sim.

I had waited thirty years for Jet to take up diving. Thirty years of hoping that what had shaped my life might one day call to him too. Three years ago, it did. And on 18 May 2026, we dived Sipadan together.

When I took this photograph in my mind I was thinking simply as a father, not a photographer, watching my son drop headfirst into the heart of a thousand jacks, the school parting around him and closing again like water around a stone, the reef stretching away below into the blue immensity that I first entered alone, with a rented tank and a borrowed hope, in 1983.

Cousteau called Sipadan a piece of untouched art. I have spent forty-three years trying to photograph what he meant.

Jet Sim is engulfed by a swirling tornado of bigeye trevally (Caranx sexfasciatus) at Sipadan, Sabah — one of the island’s signature spectacles that draws divers from around the world.

Jet Sim descends headfirst into the heart of a thousand bigeye trevally, Sipadan, 18 May 2026. Forty-three years after his father first entered these waters alone.

But the finest thing Sipadan ever gave me was not an image.

It was the countless dives with my wife Mimi. And now with my son Jet. In waters I have loved longer than Jet has been alive.

What people talk 2 Comments

07/06/2026 Author Wong Ck

Thanks Capt Sim for sharing. I enjoyed the article and pictures.

05/07/2026 Author Captain Sim

Hi Wong,
Thank you for your compliments.