This Trip Was All About Whale Sharks with Daily Presentations by Kirsty Magson, Marine Biologist and Whale Shark Specialist
We took off from Thap Lamu around 6pm, ready to navigate a few hours toward our first dive site in Surin with 15 wonderful guests onboard. Amongst them were three more marine biologists from Israel who came to study the reef and manta ray habitat.
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Koh Chi in Surin National Park was a perfect check dive, but we headed to the south of the Surin Islands for our second dive, choosing to dive Torinla, where we’ve spotted many Pikachu nudibranchs this season. Instead, we got loads of Jenkins’ rays! Which was a great surprise, beside the fact that no one was equipped for wide-angle photography on this dive…
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“Diving is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get”
Yellow Rock and the sweetlips welcomed us for the third dive that day, with some barracudas as well as Napoleon wrasse. We then did the night dive not too far from there in search of the colourful Saron shrimps.
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Next day was all about Richelieu Rock. We had to deal with a lot of current due to the full moon, but it created a lot of action. Jacks and snappers made the dive!
One of our guests, “Pin”, signed up for 4 photo coaching dives, and Richelieu Rock was the perfect place to do two of them, as one of the best-known dive sites in Thailand offers so many opportunities for a photographer.
Underwater photographers are spoilt for choice at The Rock, and the hardest part is probably selecting the lens, as there are so many subjects, both in wide angle and macro.
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Nemo’s eggs, harlequin shrimp and lots of ghostpipe fish to practise macro.
We then headed south for the third day to Koh Tachai, where there was a massive school of barracudas as well as jacks for two consecutive dives there. It was mind-blowing!
We finished the day with a night dive at Koh Bon.
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On the following day, we left Surin National Park and headed into the Similan National Park, starting at Three Trees for a very pretty dive before a tropical storm came from the west, forcing us to get shelter on the east side. So instead of North Rock, we dived Breakfast Bend, which was also very nice, and that’s where we found batwing sea slugs, a psychedelic little critter hiding in plain sight at just 1mm.
The weather calmed down as quickly as it went rough, so we could carry on with our plan to dive Elephant Head Rock in the afternoon.
Franck carried on with Pin’s photography coaching, and her photos improved a lot!
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We went to the edge of the continental plateau for our Blackwater dive that night.
We navigated for an hour towards the west before we got about 150 m depth under the boat. We deployed two lines of lights to give more room for all divers, and the dive was amazing. We were all surrounded by special critters the whole dive, from mantis shrimp larvae, flounders, stargazers, ribbon eels and reef octopuses, but the night’s favourite was for sure a male paper nautilus!
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We headed back to the Similan Islands for the night and explored Shark Fin Reef in the morning… What a surprise for me to see my first feathertail stingray there!
The day went on just as planned, with one dive at Deep Six playing in the swim-throughs, followed by one dive at Christmas Point where we completed the photo coaching with Pin.
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Continuing on our Ultimate Surin and Similan 7-day route, we dived Koh Bon next, where we were greeted at the ridge by the visit of a giant oceanic manta ray!
It went a bit too fast to get the perfect ID shot for the Thailand Manta Project database, but it was still seen by almost everyone onboard!
We were hoping to see it again at Koh Bon Pinnacle for the next dive, but no manta luck this time… It was still a very nice dive, and a big eagle ray played its part while some schooling barracudas kept us company for a while.
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Thanks to all our lovely guests for joining us on this great adventure, as well as to our special guest Kirsty from the Thailand Whale Shark Project.
We were a bit sad the whale shark didn’t turn up for its appointment (these gentle giants are so unreliable), but we loved Kirsty Magson’s presentation and learned so much about them and their environment.
We regularly run special expedition with guest Marine Biologists covering various subjects. Get in touch for more info!
