About 10 minutes boat ride from Sipadan Island and 5 minutes Mabul Island is a beautiful water village resort. It's built on wooden stilts by a small sand bank known as the Ligitan reefs. Divers stay here to have access to Sipadan island, but there is a marine wonderland literally underneath their feet.

Stingrays, squid, lionfish and trumpet fish can be seen from the bungalow balconies. However to see the real wonders requires donning scuba gear and getting wet. Currents are mild at Kapalai and visibility is usually better than at neighbouring Mabul Island. With a maximum depth of 20m the dive sites here are suitable for beginner divers but will probably appeal more to more experienced muck diving enthusiasts.

Divers staying at a Mabul Island resort will get a chance to dive Kapalai reefs during their stay and vise versa. The dive sites at Kapalai and Mabul are very similar.

One of the most popular dives is just off the resort jetty. It's so easy just to jump off the jetty onto the reef and divers staying at Kapalai resort can do as many dives here as they wish. It's also a good spot for night dives and also for snorkellers.

On the reef here it's possible to see leaf fish, scorpionfish, lionfish and ghost pipefish. Seahorse can also be found along with many nudibranchs. One of the highlights of the jetty is to dive it at dusk and watch for mating mandarin fish. These beautiful little fish are normally hidden down in the coral rubble but get frisky as the sun goes down and rise of the bottom to mate in mid water before darting pack down to their shelters, a truly awesome spectacle to witness.

Other Kapalai dive site are:

Mandarin Valley
Cleaning Station
Ray Channel
Flambo Reef
Goby Land
Lost World
Kapalai Rock

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