Blog Archives

Merry Christmas!!

29/12/2019

The MV Smiling Seahorse was full of the Christmas spirit with 16 guests from 11 to 74 years old, from all over the world, South Africa, France, Germany or Italy; 3 generations sharing the same passion for diving!

During this special 7 days trip, we navigated to South twin where we spotted marbled rays, schools of trevallys, hawkbill turtle and lots of cuttle fishes!

The next day we travelled to Black Rock where we expericenced strong currents. They brought us massives schools of big-eye trevallys, rainbow runners, barracudas and long-nose emperors.

Then, destination : Shark cave for Christmas eve! SANTA offered us some beautiful sea horses, turtle, pipe fish and schools of different kind of fishes all around "Submarine ".

For Chirstmas day we had the chance to find warm water and good visibility around the amazing pinnacles of North point!
We spent the last full diving day around western Rocky where the 30meters visibility amazed everybody!! We had the chance to meet with a magestuous eagle ray, schools of barracudas, African pompanos, another turtle, octopuses etc...

And, surprise : 2 bryde whales came to visit us, arrounding the boat for few minutes. What a great last day we had!!
After the dive at volcano, it's time to pack and go back to reality!

Thank you so much for all the fun we share together, we wish you a merry Christmas and hope to see you soon!

The Smiling Seahorse family xxx

ps: Franck, our regular cruise director and photographer was not onboard this week so I'm illustrating this post with underwater photos as well as the Whale video from previous cruises :)

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Full moon (diving) party!

21/12/2019

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Full moon adventures...

This is time for a new adventure onboard of the MV Smiling Seahorse!
9 guests, all experienced divers, joined another 8 days trip to explore the Mergui archipelago. We had the chance to have great weather conditions and made it to the famous "Black Rock".

The strong currents due to full moon brought us an incredible amount of nutrients in the water. We have been lucky to spot some grey reef shark, tones of jenkins and marble rays, a guitar shark, eagle rays, many schools of trevallys, pickhandle and forster's barracudas, long nose emperor etc... And as well pods of dolphins cruising by during our surface intervals.

Marble Ray

We have been amazed as well by the great variety of macro life we spotted : bent-stick pipefish, harlequim shrimp, many tiger tail seahorses, peacock mantis shrimp, elbow crabs...

Harlequin shrimp

Anemone crab

Blue dragon nudibranch

Thanks to all of you for joining this trip. It has been a great pleasure meeting you and making bubbles together. We hope to see you very soon!

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Manta Festival and underwater clean-up!!

12/12/2019

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We had the privilege to welcome on board Thanda Ko Gyi, a 41 years old birman woman, volunteer for Marine Mega Fauna Foundation (MMF), and founder of Myanmar Ocean Project, an NGO registered this year supported by National Geographic and World Animal Protection.
Her goals within MMF are to study the behaviour of the Mantas, collect data about their migration, and identify/ reference them.
Her goat in Myanmar Ocean project is to protect the archipelago by collecting ghost nets and educating locals.
So she was delighted to come onboard and help us in our big clean up project, to remove as much fishing nets and lines from the dive sites as possible.

Anuar joining the boat with his volunteers

Thanda presenting her Manta protection project to our guests

We also had the support this week of Anuar Abdullah, a Malaysian marine biologist, foundator of Ocean Quest Global who just started a coral nursery in Mergui Archipelago and gave us an interesting introduction to his award winning technic to protect/ re-grow/ replant coral. What a great project!

That was such an interesting trip when we all learnt a lot about the technics of those 2 brilliant heroes trying to save our blue planet!

The clean-up team removing some pieces of corals and live creatures (mostly crabs) from a removed ghost net

If you want to help Anuar and Thanda with their missions, please check their website and do not hesitate to send picture of Manta you could have spot during your dives on mantamatcher.com. You will help to study their migration and will receive some news of the Manta you spotted. And maybe give it a name!!

Seal-face puffer fish

Seal-face puffer fish

We have been so lucky to have great acounters with oceanic Mantas during 3 dives of our first day!! We identify 4 individuals! And even if the wind has been tough with us with wavy conditions, we managed to spot great creatures like seahorses, pipefish, frogfish, picachu nudis, big jankins sting rays, cuttlefishes mating and the second whale shark of the season!!!

One of the various mantas we spotted around South Twin identified as a new member of the Myanmar database!

Thecacera nudibranch also called piccachu!

Baby tiger tail seahorse

Giant Frog Fish

Thanks Thierry Lagrave for sharing his pictures with us this week when our in house photographer was away!

And big Congratulations to Nell, Yasmin and Lili for becoming nitrox divers!!
We had a great time together, and we hope to all meet you soon!

The smiling sea horse team!

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