We just had a fantastic dive safari,3 days and 3 nights around Surin Islands and Richelieu rock : awesome !

We leave Ranong in the afternoon of the 18th of November and after a little ceremony to Budda, we are off to the National park of the Surin islands. We have a great dinner onboard with massaman curry, my favorite and some crunchy pork, yummy! Its with a full tommy that we go for a good night sleep, a big day awaits us tomorrow.

We wake up in the early morning to discover a dream-like landscape, the virgin forest  covering the islands looks impenetrable, there must be so many birds and animals hiding in this green! We only see a sea eagle and some white sea birds but here a jungle melody and I’m sure there is more to Jungle cicadas make a very loud and strident noise.

We jump in the water at 7h30, late start for a first day, but we have all day. We finish to wake up underwater even though diving feels like a dream. I love this feeling of floating half awake in the middle of fish morning frenzy. Its time for them to find their breakfast and they are busy at it.

We see some beautiful nudibranchs on this first dive and the fishes are so numerous, we don’t know where to look, small shinny blue ones hold my eyes for a little ones, when a big puffer fish come in the background to steal the show. Some huge barracudas are floating on top of us, not afraid by our bubbles, they seem intrigued.

We spend 2 days on Surin island and have the time to go around the island to many different dive sites. One is covered by yellow soft coral and I enjoy spotting the small sea snails hiding and laying their eggs of the same color in it. On another dive, we spend more time on sandy parts at the bottom of a sloppy wall, garden eels look at us from the far and I wouldn-t have seen them if the visibility wasn’t so good as they are getting back to their hole as soon as we get closer. I must say we are very lucky about the clarity of the water, which we could see even before rolling out of the dingy. We see some blue spotted sting ray hiding in the sand only to get away when we get too close.

The variety of fish is remarkable: a school of bat fishes are looking at us curiously, a turtle take of before our eyes and circle around before flying away. We also see some sweetlips parked behind a rock as to be sheltered from the current.

_I spot many mantis shrimps on this trip, some going as quickly as they can back to a safe spot from where only two curious eyes can be seen, other mind their own business sorting through rocks and coral particules on the ground to see if they find anything interesting.

Looking in the cracks, we can also see many shrimps, mostly Durban dancing shrimps, but also cleaner shrimps and transparent ones, those are a wonder to me, they can swim like if they were walking on the water and still you can see through them!

There are many moray eels around the national park and we don’t look at them much anymore but from time to time, I like looking at them for a little longer and feel privileged to assist to their toilet when cleaner shrimps climb on to them, they open their large mouth and the shrimp get busy cleaning the inside, then the shrimps gets to the top of its head and enjoy her price.

In between two dives, we go explore some white sanded beach and a sea gypsy village. Its funny how they have houses made out of palm tree leaves but still have one satellite dish for TV on every one of them powered by solar panels. Kids are just out of school and play in the sea in front of us when we set foot on land.

In the afternoon of the 2nd day, we set sails towards Richelieu Rock, still Thailand’s best rated dive site to do our night dive there. We are lucky to be alone on the site for our first dive there, it’s a real aquarium.

We dive 3 more times around the rock on the following day and can see several pairs of mating cuttlefishes , we spot a pipe fish, barely visible on its rocky background.

For more fishy story, keep tuned!

_ The season is getting better and better and we come back from our second trip this year feeling very lucky to be here !!!

We had a wonderful crowd onboard for this trip 3: 6 days/ 5 night around Mergui archipelago a group of 5 snorkelers from Hawai joined us to enjoy the surface while we explore the underwater. Amongst the divers, we had 2 French couple (Anh Tu and Majdid, Cecile and Jean Luc), an American Diplomat living in Oman (my dear friend Tamra) and a Dutch couple (Germa and Kamiel) who joined us last year on a “Best of Thailand” safari and whom we were very happy to see back onboard so soon.

Once everyone got their equipment sorted out in the office, we took a songtail (local minivan full of colors) to the boat. Immigration came to clear all the paperwork and we were on our way toward Kawthong 30 minutes away to get our entry stamp into Burma and pay the fees associated with it…

It didn’t take long and out staff gave a little ceremony onboard for their Budda to keep bad spirits away and to attract many wonderful creatures… The firecracker was particularly appreciated by our 2 powder addicts, Jean Luc and Cecile, fireworks specialists all around the world.

_After a delicious dinner and a good night rest, we wake up with a stunning sunset near by high rock. There a big bunch of Dolphins were hunting around at least 20 of them less than 100 meters from the boat. That’s a good start! If dolphins are here, it means there must also be lots of fish under, lets go diving!!! We guear up and jump into the 30 degrees water… I must say I’m the only one able to get cold in this water… most divers go in their shorties, some even in rash vests only while I put on my hood… ridiculous, I know, I just hate getting cold…

On this first dive, I stumble into a ghost pipe fish in the first minutes, lucky eye! Everyone stares at it in wonder and regret the camera they left onboard for the first dive…

There is a wonderful yellow coral garden (green cup coral) there and I love looking at the tinny yellow sea snails feeding on them and replacing the toxic flowers by their eggs to keep predators away. Smart.

For the second dive, we go to Dragon island, also called dinosaur island because of its long reptile shape undulating above the water. The specificity of the site are 3 tunnel crossing the island below the water from one side to the other.  The caves themselves are quite large and our groups of 4 could go side by side if they wanted to. Lots of crabs and shrimps of all kinds scurry around the walls and dark cracks. Reaching the other side is always a great experience as the light gets more intense, so does the density of life. Fishes are frantic above the coral garden and the colors are nearly overwhelming after the darkness of the cave.

Third dive is at Tower Rock current was very strong and we saw loads of scorpion fishes and a sea snake hunting over the reef.

The night dive was at a new spot we called Spanish garden because of the number of spanish dancers we saw there, one of them gave us the pleasure to dance in front of our eyes deploying its large skirt for us, wahouh! There was also profusion of crabs, and particularily spider crabs with its hairy legs and a lovely anemone garden in which we spotted some porcelain crabs.

The next day we started with a pinnacle, the current was strong again and one of the two groups missed the pinnacle by a few meters… we saw it and had a great dive. The whole pinnacle is. We understand very quickly what the fishermen were after, lots of fishes around. Schools of barracudas passing on top of us by the hundreds, thousands of fusiliers are coloring one of the slopes and a few bat fishes are passing above them.

But we only reach my favorite ever dive site at 11 this morning, for our second dive. Shark cave is well named. Our friends are back for a restful nap, a 3 meters long nurse shark is in the cave, in company of 2 huge blotched sting rays. There size is imposing and being in a cav e with them is for sure something to be remembered. If I didn’t know they were eating shrimps and shells, I would probably feel a lot less easy looking at them in the shadows. They let us pass in their home like if we were long known friends and I can only go with the heart pounding of excitement and awe. We stay there for 2 more dives, one outside the cave, around what we call eagle rock, because of the huge two eagle living on top of it there the life is at its most, fishes are everywhere our eyes are looking. Yellow, blue, grey. Lizardfish and groupers look at us passing on top of them from the sandy bottom and the hard coral, we find some soldier fishes behind the huge sea-fans and we start ignoring the scorpion fishes which are just way too many.

We go back to the cave for our night dive, the shark and rays are still there, whaouh, they are big, one of the two rays is bigger than me and comes towards the light a bit too much. I must say, my hearth skipped a bit. I was at the same time relieved to get our of the cave and wanting to go back.

Our boat travels to the next spot during the night, we reached North Twin, the furthest point of our itinerary from Ranong all the way north and far far away from the main land. The viz’ is fantastic 30, maybe 40 meters. Baracudas are hunting above and we see them several times during the dive. The dive site is a pinnacle at 12 meters surrounded by deeper water, the sandy bottom is at 35 with big boulders around. The perfect spot for fishes to hide when we pass by with our bubbles, but we still can find them.

We stop in front of a beautiful beach at South twin, some go explore the thin sanded beach, while other snorkel around. The diving is also excellent with big rocks on a slope covered by hard and soft coral.

_On the next day we dive seafan forest and slalom between huge seafans, its pinnacle, usually a perfect spot to sight mantas left us a bit disappointed from not seeing them this time and Western rocky. The coral is stunning, so many different types: purple soft coral, like in a flower shop, fire coral, hydrocoral violet and orange, mushroom leather coral, whip coral, white and black usually hosting some small shrimps or hawkfish. During the night dive, a cuttle fish enquire, it is definitely curious about the light and let us come very close.

The last day starts with volcano, an island with 10 meters high walls all around, we can enter it through a whole at the basis, opened during low tide and invisible at high tide. Inside, some reef shark circle, black and white tips. The snorkelers have a good look at them and even some nice videos, the divers are less lucky this time, sharks just hate the bubbles and get away as fast as they can. I only spot one, 1.20m long on its way out of the volcano when we arrive.  Then its time for the small stuff, nudibranchs of weird shapes and colors and two seahorses pose for us. The last dive of the trip is at slope rock, a wall at 15 meters below the surface. Visibility is not at its greatest but we can see that fishes love the place, it is full of life. Juvenile and adults are there going all over the place. A small ball bounce on top of a coral table, I look closer and recognize a small box fish, I’ve never seen one that small, so round and cute. We end out dive surrounded by very dense schools of glass fishes and a gelly fish comes by to show its passengers, juvenile file fish on their way to another reef.

That’s it for this trip. We take the way back to kawthong where we stay for an hour and a fresh beer. We have to say goodbye to our new and old friends. Two days in Ranong and we are off again for more adventures, on Thai water this time.

Stay tuned for more fishy-stories J

After months of expectations, the boat is finally ready for more dive cruises and looking better than ever.

Many improvements have been made both above and below the surface:

We enlarged the wings for acute stability of the boat, installed a brand new, bigger propeller, installed battery operated fans in order to be less pollutant and noisy during the nights.

The cabins also have seen a major make-do, we have new silk curtains, cotton bed sheets, battery operated fans and decoration.

We also added some foam around the engine room to reduce further the noise during the cruising.

On the diving equipment side:

Our compressor,tanks and regulators were thoroughly tested by the number one dive equipment shop in Thailand, dive supply and repairs were made wherever was needed. We have now 9 new nitrox compatible tanks and 2 bigger tanks for the heavy-breathers. We are very proud by our security standards and you can see onboard our certificates of inspections.

We bought 5 brand new kits for rental (Scuba Pro and Mares), new 220 Lumen torches for comfortable night dives.

We are also proud about our facebook page and the support of our fans, now over 200 in only a few months of operation. What we like even better is to see familiar faces from last season coming back onboard MV Thai Sea for more fantastic diving holidays.

Our program remained pretty much unchanged with 4 types of cruises from 4 to 8 days. Our 8 days cruise is so popular this year that we had to add 3 more departures than expected, book your space early if you want space on this special cruise going all around the archipelago.

To a group of 5 Austrian, one Norwegian added himself, we are going to the South of Mergui Archipelago, Myanmar!

Sea of wonders, I have missed you… Once more we are alone on every dive sites and feel privileged for all the healthy life we can witness here.

We brought our new toys, sea scooter that we can finally try out on real dives. So cool! Diving takes a whole new dimension.

We make our first dive on “Volcano”, we go into a swim through to discover the interior of the island, not a sound for the outside world, peaceful is the word that describes it best. A few birds circle the sky but the monkeys are not of the party today.

We then explore a new dive site on the way to Western rocky. While we never dove this site, it is once again full of good surprises, cuttle fishes  run away when we surprise them on the sandy bottom telling us through black clouds of ink that they didn’t appreciate the encounter just as much as we did. We decide to stay around for our night dive. Spanish dancers are out with their party clothes, one of them is swimming and its dance is mesmerizing.

Back onboard, we appreciate a delicious dinner made of Thai delicacies and cruise in direction of Western rocky. We make our first dive the next day around 7 am, the food frenzy is on, schools of fishes of all colors are feeding or hunting. The small ones feed on the coral reef, larger ones try to get a bite on the most chubby ones when they aren’t looking and tuna, on the top of the food chain comes in and out of our sight.

We explore then the cathedral, a beautiful tunnel through the island, one part has very high triangular ceiling which has given it its name. It ends up in a smaller tunnel where numerous lobsters found a comfortable home. The ground is full of broken shell, proof that the cave was also used by nurse sharks. At this sight, I can’t stop but comparing it to caves on the land, used by bear.

Our next stop is at Seafan Forest, with hundreds of gorgonian seafan hiding nudibranches of all colors. Looking up, we see schools of batfishes and barracudas.

We take the opportunity to ride the sea kayak between two dives to explore the surrounding.

North rock was out next stop we were lucky to spot porcelain crabs in the anemone garden, squat crabs were popping up from cracks here and there.

We take the way back toward the East and stop in a gorgeous crique for the night and wake up to a stunning sun set.

We ask for permission to visit a cave were birds make their nest, a famous and priced delicacy making the cave a gold mine. Unfortunately we didn't get the authorization this time, they had some bad experience in the past and do not let the tourist enter the cave anymore, too ad. Our first dive will be on slop rock were we were welcome by some blue spotted sting rays and many colorfull nudibranches.

We go back to Ranong for 2 days and then back again on the Mergui Archipelago for 6 days on the 11th.

Keep on reading, keep on commenting, more stories to come soon!