The main feature of the island, as seen from the air, is the 1000m runway. This is the no-nonsense way to travel to the resort, taking just one and a half hours by twin otter from Kota Kinabalu airport.

When I visited in June 1998 the resort was run by an Australian couple, Steve and Coralie Steward. Steve is a commercial diver who trained in Bovisand, Plymouth and who has dived all round the world; Coralie is a trained nurse who deals with all medical problems, including decompression and evacuation procedures.

The dive sites are located around the outside of the atoll so all dives are boat dives, including optional night dives, unless you want to dive around the jetty. I did try this once, following a boat dive, but the visibility was poor due to the weather conditions so there was not much to be found. I was told "it was a bad week".

The corals and sponges were in very good condition. I did not detect any damage you could put down to divers or the infamous dynamite fishermen, only that caused by natural wave action and some silting from the rainwater run-off at the eastern end of the island.

The mid-morning dive at 11.30am could have been at any of the eight designated sites along the south of the island, each with a different aspect. Some were sheer walls from the surface to infinity and others had sandy patches at 10m with coral bommies shelving to the reef edge at 20/25m, then down. I loved the red-eyed hawkfish as they waited on small coral outcrops to be photographed with a black or blue background before moving off to another perch for a different photographic angle. Dozens of reef fish patrolled their own patches, unconcerned at my presence. It was during such an absorbing dive that I heard the familiar bang-bang signal from our dive guide - this time he was close enough for me to hear - to point out a passing manta 'flying' close to the reef a few metres away.

All along the south end you have the opportunity to see white-tipped reef sharks, turtles, lone barracuda, and if you are lucky a range of large pelagics as they cruise past the island.

The afternoon dive at 3.30pm was usually sited at the west end. The most popular site was 'D; Wall', a sheer wall with ledges and caves and the opportunity to see lemon sharks, stingrays and a resident leaf scorpionfish. There were a few soft corals on the wall together with gorgonians and fan corals but these were not as prolific as one might expect with the unobstructed water movement along the reef. On the north west tip of the island there are two sites called 'Wrasse Strip' and 'Valley'. This area, I discovered, was one of the best macro/portrait sites on the island: bannerfish, pipefish, butterflyfish in profusion, emperor angelfish, the beautiful moorish idols and a passing shoal of bumphead parrotfish, all in 10 to 15m of water over an almost continuous forest of coral. Not so popular with the 'deepies' but a spectacular photographic dive.