Have you ever had a 360° dive? For those of us not diving every day, they probably occur every 100 dives or so, if we’re lucky.
It was 2008, the dive started with a ripping speed boat to a tiny dot in the ocean...gradually, minute by minute, the dot became Sipadan and the 360° divespot was the “drop off”.
All dives at Sipadan are amazing...as a dive location, it’s consistently up there in the top 10. We had been diving here for two or three days when we dived the “drop off”.
As the name suggests, it’s a wall dive... but the “drop off” plummets to over 900m...with viz typically 30m +, you feel like your diving into the abyss.
Keeping the reef wall on our right, we set off, quickly encountering five black tip reef sharks patrolling the reef at about 25m. Looking up, someone pointed out the turtle flying over, but we were distracted by the enormous table corals all around. We soon encountered a shoal of Jacks which we were led through...they parted like a crowd making way for Royalty! The viz deteriorated and the current picked up; we were headed for Barracuda Point and it didn’t disappoint. Out of the now gloomy conditions, I thought I could see a Wreck appearing, but it was a 20m tall vortex of hundreds of Barracuda. I didn’t enter that crowd! The current switched direction, the Barracuda dispersed and we headed back towards the “drop off” entry point...all the while looking up, down, back, forward, out into the blue, back to the reef...we were all pointing out the shark, the turtle, the coral, the shoals of fish, to each other...it was almost too much to take in...and so the 360° dive was born.
Share your 360° dives with DiveNation...I haven’t had one since but I’m looking forward to hearing all about yours.
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