We provide daily dive trips and dive courses around Mabul, Sipadan and Semporna area.
Looking for tips and tricks about diving, marine life or what to do in Borneo? Follow us on our blog for weekly updates from the team!
Every dive company has a beginning. Ours started in Semporna in 2004 with one small dive centre, a love for the ocean and a simple idea: great diving should feel welcoming.
There were no multiple locations or beachfront resort at the beginning. There was a team that wanted to share the underwater world of Sabah without losing the relaxed, personal atmosphere that brings divers together. People arrived as guests, spent their days diving, and often left feeling like part of something larger.
More than two decades later, a great deal has changed. Scuba Junkie has grown across Borneo and Indonesia, thousands of divers have joined us underwater, and conservation has become part of daily life at our locations. Yet the feeling behind the company remains remarkably familiar.
This is the story of how a small dive centre in Semporna found a home on Mabul and grew into the Scuba Junkie family we know today.
Semporna has long been the gateway to some of Sabah’s most extraordinary diving. From here, boats travel towards islands and reefs that divers dream about long before they finally see them for themselves.
Scuba Junkie began here in 2004. In those early days, the focus was straightforward: provide safe, high-quality diving with experienced people who genuinely enjoyed sharing it.
That combination mattered. Dive travel can be intimidating, especially when someone is visiting a new country, joining a boat alone or taking their first course. The team wanted the experience to feel organised without becoming impersonal. Serious attention could be given to safety and training while the atmosphere remained friendly, relaxed and fun.
That balance became part of Scuba Junkie’s identity. The diving was the reason people came, but the people were often the reason they returned.
As Scuba Junkie grew, Mabul became the natural next chapter.
The island sits close to Sipadan, but it is far more than a convenient base for reaching a famous dive destination. Mabul has its own rhythm, community and underwater character. Turtles move across the reefs, schooling fish gather around artificial structures, and some of the ocean’s strangest small creatures hide across sandy slopes and coral gardens.
Building a home here allowed the Scuba Junkie experience to become more complete. Today, Mabul Beach Resort brings the accommodation, restaurant, dive centre, jetty, training areas and house reef together in one beachfront setting. Guests can wake beside the water, walk to breakfast and begin their dive day without a morning commute.
It also created a place where people could stay long enough to become part of island life. Dive buddies became friends. Guests got to know the boat, restaurant, resort and dive teams. Instructors watched nervous beginners become confident divers, then sometimes welcomed them back years later for professional training.
Mabul was no longer simply somewhere the boats visited. It became home.
Part of what makes this home so special is the variety surrounding it.
Sipadan offers the kind of diving that can make a diver forget to check anything except the blue. Reef sharks cruise past the walls, turtles appear with wonderful regularity, and schools of fish can seem to take over the entire view. The walls themselves drop hundreds of metres into deep water, giving every dive a sense of scale.
Around Mabul, the pace changes. Divers slow down and search carefully for frogfish, ghost pipefish, nudibranchs, octopus and other small animals that have perfected the art of not being seen. Kapalai brings more of the macro life that underwater photographers and curious divers love, often hidden around sandy areas and structures covered in marine growth.
Then there is Si Amil, which refuses to fit neatly into one category. Rare macro life can be found on the reef, while eagle rays or schooling devil rays may pass through the blue.
Together, Sipadan, Mabul, Kapalai and Si Amil give divers something that is increasingly difficult to find in one trip: genuine variety. Big encounters and tiny discoveries. Dramatic walls and patient searches. Famous sites and unexpected favourites.
Over the years, the Scuba Junkie name travelled beyond Semporna and Mabul. New destinations followed across Sabah and Indonesia, including Kota Kinabalu, Nusa Penida, Komodo, Sangalaki and liveaboard adventures through some of the region’s most remarkable seas.
Each place has its own marine life, landscape and personality. A day diving from Kota Kinabalu feels very different from a week in Komodo or a trip built around Sangalaki’s manta rays. What connects them is not an attempt to make every location identical. It is a shared way of welcoming people.
The phrase “Scuba Junkie family” is not only about the size of the company. It describes the relationships that form around the dive centre, on the boats and during the quiet moments between dives. It includes the guides who remember what you hoped to see, the crew who make a difficult entry feel easy, the instructors who help you through the skill that worried you, and the guests who arrive alone but rarely feel alone for long.
Once a Scuba Junkie, always a Scuba Junkie. It sounds playful, but after seeing guests return in a new country, at a new certification level or with friends they met on an earlier trip, it also feels true.
Sharing the ocean creates a responsibility to protect it.
On Mabul, that responsibility is put into action through Scuba Junkie SEAS. The conservation team works across turtle protection and rehabilitation, coral restoration, marine-debris removal, shark research and environmental education. Guests may see parts of this work during their stay, but much of it continues quietly throughout the year.
Turtle nests are monitored and protected. Injured turtles may be cared for through rehabilitation work. Coral nurseries and artificial reefs support restoration and research. Clean-ups remove rubbish from beaches and the sea, while outreach programmes involve local young people, schools, guests and the wider community.
The resort also works to reduce its own impact through measures including solar power, recycling, rainwater repurposing and a seafood-free restaurant. None of these actions means the work is finished. Conservation is not a badge a dive company earns once. It is a continuing process of learning, improving and showing up for the place that makes the entire experience possible.
For Scuba Junkie, the ocean is not only where we work. It is the reason the work exists.
The Scuba Junkie story is also written through thousands of individual diving stories.
For one person, it begins with the strange sound of their first breath underwater. For another, it is the moment they complete their Open Water course or finally feel comfortable after time away from diving. Some arrive hoping to see a shark. Others are happiest spending an hour searching for a creature smaller than their thumb.
And for some divers, a holiday becomes the beginning of a new direction.
As a PADI 5 Star IDC Centre, Scuba Junkie Mabul offers training from beginner experiences through Divemaster and Instructor-level education. Professional candidates do more than collect another certification. They learn how to look after other divers, communicate clearly, demonstrate skills, solve problems and become someone a future student can trust.
That progression captures something important about the company. A person can arrive having never worn a mask and regulator, then return years later ready to guide, teach or build a life around the ocean. The team gets to be part of the journey at every stage.
It would be easy to tell the Scuba Junkie story through dates, locations and numbers. Those details show how much the company has grown, but they do not fully explain why people feel connected to it.
The real story lives in smaller moments.
It is an early morning briefing on the jetty. A turtle appearing beside a new diver. A guide pointing repeatedly at a perfectly camouflaged frogfish while the whole group sees absolutely nothing. A candidate practising the same skill until it finally feels natural. A conservation team releasing hatchlings towards the sea. A table of strangers laughing together over dinner after a day underwater.
Scuba Junkie began with a love of diving and a belief that people should feel welcome while experiencing it. From Semporna to Mabul and far beyond, that remains the heart of the story.
The locations may keep growing. The next chapters may take us to new reefs, new communities and new conservation challenges. But the purpose stays the same: share the ocean, take care of it, and make people feel at home along the way.
Scuba Junkie began in Semporna, Sabah, in 2004. It started as a small dive centre offering access to the world-class diving around the Semporna region.
Scuba Junkie Sipadan is based at Mabul Beach Resort on Mabul Island. Guests stay and dive from Mabul, with packages offering access to destinations that can include Sipadan, Mabul, Kapalai and Si Amil. There is no accommodation for visitors on Sipadan itself.
Yes. Scuba Junkie Mabul is a PADI 5 Star IDC Centre offering beginner experiences, recreational certifications, continuing education and professional courses. The team can help guests choose an option that matches their certification and experience.
Scuba Junkie SEAS is the conservation organisation based on Mabul. Its work includes sea-turtle conservation, coral restoration, marine-debris removal, shark research and environmental education involving guests and local communities.
Yes. Professional training includes the PADI Divemaster course and Instructor Development Course. These programmes combine knowledge development, practical skills and real experience in a working dive environment.
Contact the booking team with your travel dates, certification level, number of logged dives and the kind of diving you hope to experience. They can explain suitable packages, transfers and course options.
Maybe your chapter starts with a first dive. Maybe it begins with Sipadan, a tiny frogfish on Mabul or the decision to become a dive professional.
Wherever you are in your diving journey, there is space for you in the story.
Contact sipadan@scubajunkie.com or WhatsApp +60 19-640 0116 to start planning your time on Mabul.
