2023 started with some fantastic photo opportunities as we ran 2 photo clinic back to back with our special guest Alex Tyrrell from Dive4photos. The first one was our dedicated blackwater expedition with blackwater dives planned every night (click here to read the trip report). Our second cruise of the year was dedicated to getting the best photos Thailand's Andaman Sea can offer and this is why we decided to focus on thailand's best dive site and one of the World's top 10: Richelieu Rock for most of the cruise. 
Underwater photographers from Thailand, India, England, America, South Korea and France enjoyed daily presentations by Alex in order to get the most out of their cameras!

We found the delightful pikachu nudibranch and pretty yet oh so mean harlequin shrimps.
We witnessed clark anemone fish's parents nurturing their eggs under the protective skirt of their anemone.

Our wide angle captured amazing action with huge ball of jackfish dancing on the reef. There was so much marine life that we didn't know where to look at. School of trevallies, fusillier, yellow goatfish, emperor, batfish, barracuda and glass fish all of this with the pretty pink soft coral that gave Richelieu rock its name! 

The days were bright and colourful but that didn't stop us from running a few night dives, especially blackwater dives for which The Smiling Seahorse became Thailand's expert!
We tried a new spot near the Surin islands, where we installed two lines to accommodates all the divers more comfortably and what great encounters we had!

What a pleasure it has been to welcome all these talented photographers! Thank you all for coming diving with The Smiling Seahorse, the choice liveaboard for Underwater photographers in Thailand!

The did the first dive at shark fin reef for a check up dive, then explored west of Eden, elephant head, and finished the day with the first black water dive of the week.

Because this cruise was dedicated to "blackwater diving", we went diving at the edge of the continental plate, a few hours west of the Similan Islands, giving us the opportunity to dive above hundreds of meters of water...
​
And what did we see on these ​Blackwater dives?  We saw so many cool and weird creatures... 
We saw some cool pelagic such as anemone larval stage, some salps, pelagic sea snake, flounder in larval stage and more...

The highlights of the trip where a male paper nautilus, snake blennies and flying gurnard. 
​But photos seak a thousand words so let me show you what it looks like!

Above, from left to right you'll see one of many type of squids we encounter on Blackwater dives in the Andaman Sea. A pretty golden filefish and a male paper nautilus! Read more information about the wonderful nautiluses and their cousins the argonauts... Males don't have shells, females do to keep their eggs close-by :)

Have you ever seen pelagic nudibranch? This is what it looks like (top left), in the middle is a pretty larval snake blenny and on the right a baby crab! so cute!

In the 4 photos above, you can see a larval anemone, a larval flouder (before it eyes migrate to the other side of its face! yeah, that's a thing!). You can see a reddish crustacean in front of the cloud of ink a cephalopod left behind and the last photo is the alien looking seasnail crossing oceans with its sail-like tentacules...

Flying gurnards, (top left) are rarely seen on regular dives but quite commonly spotted on our blackwater dives.
Morray eels (middle photo) look like this transparent ghost at their larval stage before they grow big enough to settle back to the reef.
The right pic is a sea elephant (Pterotrachea coronata), a finger-sized heteropod - a transparent marine snailusing its trunk-shaped proboscis to hunt its prays. This gastropod looks nothing like your typical terrestrial snail.

On our more regular dive sites, our macro lenses encountered saw some colourful nudibranches, shrimps and crabs as well as Harlequin shrimps, Ghost pipe fishes and the likes...

Thank you! Elodie and Emma for the amazing male paper nautilus and pelagic tongue fish you photographed and for everyone else who shared this adventure with us. We loved it and hope you did too!

We welcome this week 14 guests from Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, Finland, Japan, United States and England and we had a blast, both on the boat and underwater. Thank you for choosing the MV Smiling Seahorse to “pass the cap” on board. 

Starting the trip in the Surin National Park, the highlight of the first day was a curious guitar shark visiting us on our very first dive! 

Big school of fish, trevally, barracudas and fusilier were  present around the famous Richelieu Rock. Looking on the reef we could spot ghost pipefish, a seahorse and 2 pairs of harlequin shrimps for the pleasure of all!

Cruising down south to the Similan National Park for the next two days, everyone really enjoyed Koh Tachai pinnacle which was teeming with life. it’s always great to see the diversity of this ecosystem and two dives are far from enough to see it all. 
The first night dive was at Koh Bon where we saw the tinniest Pygmy squid, plenty of moray eels hunting (some where huge!!!), cool crabs like anemone crab or decorate spider crab. The reef was alight with shrimps eyes shinning in our torches and getting closer we recognised Durban dancing shrimps, transparent cleaner shrimps, marble shrimps and tapestry shrimps (both are saron shrimp and oh so colourful!)

A smooth cruising down south to Koh Lanta National Park where we dove the next day around Hin Daeng and Hin Muang, including a wonderful night dive! On this second night dive this week we encountered many crustaceans and morays including another pair of harlequin shrimps!

Despite being tired by 4 dives that day, quite a few guests and most staff were also up for a big new year celebration, starting with a succulent barbecue and ending up dancing on the sundeck with music, hats and party favors! We all ended up drinking champagne (courtesy of the smiling seahorse) with  bright hats on our head, blowing party horns to the sea breeze :) Fun times! 

Back to Lanta National Park, the cameras flashed again in front of harlequin shrimps, a massive stone fish and the amazing wall full of soft coral of Hin Daeng (Red) and Hin Muang (Purple).
We spent the rest of the day in Koh Haa, hunting a variety of nudibranch that even some guides had never seen before ! We went through the scenic Cathedral and Chimney perfect prop for our annual group picture!

Last day but not least, Bida Nok with its many black tip reef sharks and their dense school of yellowback fusilier.
Last dive before heading back to Phuket was at Shark Point with the perfect finish to this wonderful cruise: a long and chill encounter of a Zebra Shark !
 
Stay tuned for our next adventure ! Thanks for reading, more fishy stories for you next week !

Merry Christmas to all, we had a really amazing Christmas trip and hope you also enjoyed the festive season with your loved ones. We had 15 fantastic guests coming all the way from France, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and Sweden to visit the best spots of the North Andaman Sea of Thailand: Similan National Park and Surin National Park for a 7 day- cruise. What a blast!

Unfortunately Franck took the week off to enjoy Christmas at home with the kids, which was a treat for our family but means no underwater photos this week! Thanksfully our dream team took over with lovely photos onboard and it looks like everyone had a fantastic trip without us (Camille and Franck).

Great dives were had with lots of schooling fishes, cute nudibranch, octopus, and black tip reef shark. Torinla Rocks, In surin islands, were amazing this week, with Pikachu in their trees (hydroids) and kuhl's stingray flying over a bunch of garden eels.

Richelieu was incredible, we saw a seahorse, few ghost pipefishes, ribbon eel, zebra moray and a huge amount of fishes dancing over the rock, trevallies, barracudas, fusiliers, rabbit fishes, batfishes.

In the Similans, Three trees had strong current, but the school of barracudas were hovering over the reef which gave us a magical show!

Fun was had onboard, especially during Christmas eve as we enjoyed a wonderful Banrbecued Lamb shank and a few drinks! Thank you to our lovely guests for joining us this Christmas ! A

​ll the Smiling Seahorse team wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !

Do you know how the Christmas Trees tradition started?

Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, ancient peoples hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness...

Looks like our tree brought us luck this week and kept bad spirit away :)

How was your Christmas? Did you take a holidays?  Did you go diving somewhere cool?
Or did you stay home?
Did you get fun scuba-diver gifts under the tree?
Tell us all in the comment section!

A small group for a big trip, this week MV Smiling Sea Horse had 7 lucky guests, coming from United States, France, Singapore and Israel. Franck, our co-owner and onboard photographer wasn't onboard this time so a big thank you to Boris Mekler for illustrating this blogpost with fantastic photos. Thanks a lot for coming back with us for the sixth trip in a year! It is always a pleasure diving with you! 

We start the trip cruising south from Lanta National Park, Hin Daeng and Hin Muang to Tarutao National Park. Harlequin shrimps were present for our first night dive in Hin Daeng, a big school of barracuda and some nice nudibranch. A Mobula rays few by us on 8 miles, next to koh lipe and a we also found a sneeky frogfish hiding in plain sight!

Blackwater this week was fantastic so most guests asked to make a second black water dives this trip. We saw so many cool and weird creatures. The first blackwater dive was loaded with baby puffer fish blowing up in front of our masks as well as a baby stargazer! The second BW dive was full of baby Moray eels with long transparent bodies and sharp/tinny tooth! All the energetic babies were quite fast moving and so hard to photograph so we can't show you unfortunately this time, you'll have to come see for yourself! 
But we can still show you flying guenard, anemone, baby squids and octopus and a sea elephant.

After the crossing overnight from south Andaman to North Andaman contouring Phuket, we spent the second part of the trip between the Similan and Surin National parks. Visibilty was great, especially around Koh Bon and koh Tachai. 

Great trip starting from Khao Lak with 13 guests coming from US, Belgium, Canada, England, and French. The first place we dive was in Koh Chi in Surin National Park were the wonderful pikachus welcomed is in colours and after that, we went to Richelieu Rock for 3 more dives that first day!

Then we moved south towards Similan National Park for a day split between Koh Tachai and Koh Bon. We saw a nice school of pickhandle barracudas in the blue and on the reef found Maldives sponge snails, the eggs of Spanish dancer (aka the reef rose) and a beautiful green turtle.

The 3rd day, we were at three trees, elephant head, and west of eden for some great dives. We saw a curious octopus, a couple of blue ribbon eels sharing the same hole, and loads of beautiful nudibranch. I still wonder why two blue ribbon eels shared the same house as color usually determine the sex of these drag queens...  if you know or wanna guess, let us know in the comment section!

Similan delivered some fantastic dives but so did Lanta National Park! We got lucky to see our first manta ray of the season but unfortunately no photo this time! sad...
​Then we made an exploration dive around Koh Rok before going south to Tarutao National Park. 

Full day around Koh Lipe to dive 8 Miles, Stonehenge, Koh Yang East and Sawang. 8 Miles dive site was amazing with huge school of trevallies (some were huge!!!), barracudas and for the two frogfishs hiding in the middle of it all!

That night was black water night and was really good, Franck managed to catch a picture for the first time a Tonguefish.

Last day, first dive in Bida Nok and second in Shark point. We saw some black tip reef sharks, cuttlefish and beautiful tiny squat shrimps.

Thank you Timothy and Emmanuelle for choosing us to celebrate your honeymoon! wishing you many happy dives together!

Special trip for special guests coming from Israel, Malaysia, Canada, China, Hong Kong and Thailand. Diving with us and conduct some research on the reef, to understand more about the cleaning stations and the different coral species interactions.

One of the main goal of this trip was to locate a cleaning station, we settled down some cameras where we found loads of cleaner wrasse, and leave them during our surface interval, hoping to capture some pelagic images when no divers are diving on the site.

Amazing day in Richelieu, dive site is always full of life and specials encounters.
Franck managed to capture on a picture the egg of the clown fish around the anemone, Ghostpipefish, seahorse and the most wanted harlequin shrimps.

Diving in the Similan National Park for the next 4 days, Koh Tachai, Koh Bon and the Similan islands number 7 to 9 were our research field. While the divers examine the reef, we were lucky to see some sharks and rays in the blue and some beautiful Nudibranchia on the reef.

It has been a fascinating trip, the surface interval was busy with some presentation on the different species of coral, their threats and some ecological solution to save our reef !

Dedication for the special shrimp we found and were so happy to discover for the first time in the archipelago..... the..... hairy..... shrimp ! Well done Camille !