Colourful fishes have always been a favorite to tropical sea divers but have you taken a closer look at the gorgeous coral species that inhabit the Andaman Sea?  
Do you know what corals are? How coral grows to form the coral reefs (Planet earth largest living structures)  and why they are so important for our planet?
Contrary to common beliefs, corals are animals, not plants and surely neither rocks!
What you see above is actually a group of animal living under the same roof... developing over time like any living thing.

There are hundreds of species of corals! Most live in tropical seas with optimal conditions for their development: lots of light and a temperature between 25 and 30 ° C.

Hard coral are made of a rigid calcium carbonate (polyps' exoskeleton made out of limestone) and appear very much like rocks. When a polyp dies, their skeleton remains and new polyps grown on top of the last ones enlarging the coral one life at a time. Hence hard coral grows very slowly.
There are several categories of hard corals encountered in the Andaman Sea, each of these with many sub-categories and species.

With a very slow growth (from 0.5 to 4.5 cm / year), these round-shaped corals bummies constitute "the pillars" of most reefs, in the Andaman Sea and beyond! They can reach massive sizes like the multi million years bummies depicted bellow from the Burma Banks.

Soft corals are easiest identified from hard coral because they do not have a hard skeleton. They also have 8 arms per polyp. 

The Andaman Sea was gifted with several types of seafans, tall web-like fan structures in various colours. The most impressive is probably the Giant seafans (Anella mollis) which can reach 2 meters in diameter!

Not only are coral stunningly beautiful and giving the Andaman Sea its colours but they are so much more important than for background imagery! 
1- coral feed small critters and fish that feed the bigger ones, no coral= no more fish!
2- 500 million people make a living from coral reefs: from fisheries to tourism
3- coral reefs can reduce waves by 95% and could save the coastline from the damaging effects of tsunamis and storms
4- Coral reefs are also the lung of our planet! Generating half of our planet's oxygen and absorbing about a third of the carbon dioxide generated from fossil fuels usage.

Do you know garden eels? They are strange tropical fishes with serpentiform bodies and puffy faces with big eyes making them, overall … super cute.
They live in large colonies oscillating like whip coral in the currents and disappear like a mirage when you approach.
We will try in this blogpost to answer the question we most often get about these fish, in the form of a garden eel FAQ...

Garden eels, together with congers make up the congridae family. The wonderful garden eel is a medium-sized fish, up to a maximum length of 40 cm. Its body has a circular shape with a diameter of about 10 mm. They dig a burrow with their tail, which they coat with mucus to avoid collapse. 

These small eels live in burrows on the sea floor and get their name from their practice of putting their heads off their burrows while most of their bodies remain hidden. As they tend to live in groups of up to a few hundred individuals, the many eel heads "growing" from the bottom of the sea resembles a plant garden.

Most eels live in the warm parts of the tropical oceans including the Andaman Sea. They can be observed from afar pocking out of "eel pits" in colonies on the sandy plains and slopes that border the coral reefs. They prefer areas swept by currents which bring them more nutrients. They burrow themselves in the sand, mud (or more rarely among the rocks). Unlike most eel species who are nocturnal, garden eels feed during the day and will retreat in their burrow at night.

Although garden eels can swim freely, they prefer to bury themselves in the sand... once they are big enough to dig a hole and settle down they never leave home. The exception is during the mating season when they might come out to dig a new burrow closer to their partner...

Feeding on zooplankton, garden eels catch their food drifting in the ocean current, they don't need to go far but just like plants growing higher to get more sunlight, they need to protrude from the floor to get more preys. And they do this all day! All garden eels in the colony facing the current ready for the next meal. 

No, Garden eels are not dangerous. Their mouth is too small to bite you, they only eat zooplankton, remember? They have no venom, no spines, and very small tooth.
In fact, these little creatures are very shy and disappear underground when divers approach. 

Because they are so shy, it is very tricky to take photos of Garden eels. Some photographers had successful shots by holding their breath long enough… other use a remote control to get the close-up shots.
The photo below is from Pete Atkinson. When asked how he did it he answered: Habituation, patience and breath-holding: I lay on the sand and inched my way closer over about 30 mins. I would hold my breath whenever they appeared so I didn't scare them. Eventually they were so familiar with me being there they came out far enough for a few pictures. I was using a 105mm micro lens on a Nikon F4, with flash. When I breathed out they disappeared into their holes. You might be able to do this more easily with a rebreather…

Hello everyone, as some of you might know, we went to Koh Lipe on a scouting mission to prepare our Southern Andaman itineraries for next season…
 
First, the island is beautiful! Surrounded by emerald water and the rows of long-tail boats it is a beautiful Thai postcard worthy sight from the sea.

But we didn’t go there to check the island itself but the underwater world around it…. and we were not disappointed! Koh Lipe delivered some great dives over the week we spent there.

The underwater landscape is very diverse with Pinnacles, flat coral gardens, walls and muck dives there is a bit for everyone!
​
We started with a famous dive site in Tarutao National Park called “Stonehenge”. A simple coral garden shaped like a dome with stunning granite blocks standing here and there covered in bright colourful soft corals.

The scenery is breath taking! The blue water on top is teaming with schooling fish, yellowback snappers, trevallies and barracudas and if your eyes are on the reef, you will find seahorses, bent stick pipefish, moray eels and a large array of damselfish. It is always worth it to go for a little tour over the sandy area to find some spearing mantis shrimps and flounders and the special find was two seamoths…! We have heard that the dive site is also regularly visited by whale sharks but no luck for us this time…

The following day, we went to a place called “Taru”. The dive site is a slopping coral garden bordered by a sandy area, the highlight of our week was there with the encounter with a magnificent Rhinopias!

Belonging to the scorpion fish family, Rhinopias are rare and on every underwater photographer’s list!
The second day, we visited another famous dive site called “8 Miles rock” because it is 8 miles south of Koh Lipe. The top of this pinnacle sit at 15 M and goes down all the way to 40m plus… 

The dive site is surrounded by thousands of silversides glassfish that the giant trevallies are feeding on which creates a lot of hunting action. At the bottom we found a massive school of red snappers as well as some marble rays. The reef is covered in soft corals, anemones and huge barrel sponges.  "8 miles" is another good place to see whale sharks, but no luck for us this week, we did find a pretty frogfish when we finally stopped looking at the giant trevallies dancing in the blue.

On the third day, we set to try the Koh Lipe’s muck dives at “honeycomb bay”. It starts very shallow, a few meters away from the beach and then sloops down to 20 m plus, but we spent most of the dive around 15m with plenty of nudis, shrimps, a grumpy snake eel, up to 6 frogfishes of various colours and ended the dive with 3 Indian Walkmans; there is plenty to see for the critters lovers.

Another nice muck dive is call “waterfall”, that one is literally loaded with nudibranchs like "Shaun the sheep", "ornate stiliger" and there are also cauliflower soft coral hiding the elusive candy crab!

“Steps” named after its shape is also not to be missed to see frogfishes, we saw up to 6 seahorses there, as well as sleepy cat-sharks and catfish hiding in the reef along with colourful nudis and moray eels.

On a different day, we found a baby tigertail seahorse, crocodile flat head fish, nudibranchs and shrimps along with schooling snappers (I tried some motion blur there)

We are looking forward to go back to the area with you on MV Smiling Seahorse for a full on experience starting from Ranong and ending in Phuket. We will get to dive all of the best dive sites of the Andaman Sea from Richelieu Rock to Koh Lipe passing 4 infamous marine national parks. We will start with Surin Islands and Richelieu rock , Similan Islands with Koh Tachai and Koh Bon, Koh Lanta national park with Hin Daeng, Hin Mueang and end in Taruatao National park on this one of a kind 8 days trip.
Join us from 3rd to 10th of December 2021 or 18th to 25th of December!
​Mention this blog post and get a FREE Black Water dive!

​We set off from Ranong in the afternoon of April 19th for a 3-day dive trip in the Similans and Surin National parks. We made a stop on Koh Phayam to pick up a few guests, and then headed straight for the Surin Islands, Koh Chi specifically, for our first dive of the trip. 

​After this excellent day of diving, we set off for the Similan National park starting at Koh Bon, where we dove twice in the morning of April 21st. On the first dive, all groups decided on the pinnacle dive, where we marvelled at schools of glassfish as they spread and regrouped around hunting emperor fish. On the second dive, most groups set out for West Ridge in the hope to find one of the resident octopuses. No Manta today, but instead, cute baby box fish were spotted, as well as marble shrimp.

​On our last day, we dove Richelieu Rock twice before sailing back to Ranong and reached the pier around 7pm. On the way back, we were lucky to see some dolphins swimming next to us, and the captain slowed down so we could follow them for a while. It was a lovely way to end the trip .

Oupsi it looks like I have been a bit late publishing this one...

​We departed in the evening of April 13th for a 4 nights / 3 days trip over the Thai Songkran holiday. Leaving in the evening allowed us to sail at night and wake up bright and early for our first dive at 7am on Koh Chi Island, Surin. This is our usual spot for the first dive, aka “check dive” of the trip.
The peanut shaped island has a slopping reef going from 5 to 18 meters, finishing on a sandy bottom, and is great for finding bentstick pipe fish, sea moths, Pikachu nudibranchs, as well as turtles, black tip reef sharks, and parrotfish. 

​While the visibility was not the best for Surin on our first 2 dives, (10 to 15 meters) several groups were happy to spot 2 turtles, a pipefish, a baby box fish and lots of colorful angel and butterfly fish.
On the agenda for that afternoon, a visit to a Sea gypsy village and a night dive on Surin before departing for Koh Bon in the morning…or so we thought… 

​After a full day of great diving, we went back to Surin for 2 morning dives, were we drifted with current on Torinla and finished the trip off with 2 dives on Richelieu Rock. There, the currents had cleaned the plankton from the water, improving the visibility considerably back to it’s normal self, and we had two great dives, visiting our regular friends, the giant frog fish, ghost pipe fish, harlequin shrimp and we even found a new baby seahorse! 

​In the evening, we celebrated our successful trip with a Barbecue and Ti Ponch cocktail and sailed back to Ranong in the morning.
What a lovely way to spend Songkran, we are glad we were so lucky to have you all with us on this trip!

​Our most recent trip took place from April 9th to 11th; we departed Ranong in the evening 9th to wake up in Surin National park, ready for 3 full day of diving, 4 in the Surin islands, followed the next day by 2 dives on Koh Bon and 2 dives on Koh Tachai and ending with 3 dives on Richelieu Rock the following days. 

​On this trip, we had 2 advanced open water students and a majority of young divers, many who experienced night diving for the first time during this trip. We are happy to report they both graduated with honors and everyone loved night diving!

When jumping in the water on the morning of our very first dive of the trip, our first group spotted a turtle swimming at a very shallow depth of 3 to 4 meters and decided to follow it for a little while. It proved to be a great idea as behind the turtle, they discovered 3 black tip reef sharks circling around the reef. Later on during the same dive, another group spotted an eagle ray passing by. What a fantastic way to start our journey!

​During the rest of the day, Surin made for incredibly lovely dives, with some coral dives mixed with a drift and muck dive, all the group saw blue spotted sting rays sleeping in the sand, some cuttlefish were spotted, a juvenile pipefish, and even a hump head parrot fish!!

​The following day, we sailed to koh Bon for 2 morning dives. The visibility was great and currents allowed us to do 2 dives on the pinnacle. Some of us chose to dive the West ridge and got to hang out with one of the resident octopuses, saw lots of shrimps, nudibranches, while others dropped on the pinnacle, traversed to west ridge and spotted a black tip reef shark. 

​While Koh Bon had only mild to no current, koh Tachai had stronger currents bringing in a plethora of barracudas, jacks and the usual schooling batfish. On our sunset dive, we sought shelter from the current and began our search for small creatures and found plenty of nudibranchs, lobsters, box fish, baby scorpionfish and more. 

In the evening, we feasted on our usual Barbecue, and played a really fun game called the box game. We’ll let you figure out the rules for yourself, photos are better than words sometimes! With all the young and flexible guests onboard, it made for a lot of laughs and good vibes. The cocktails might have also helped. 

​On our last day, we dove 3 times on Richelieu Rock before setting back to Ranong. On top of the usual harlequin shrimps, ghost pipe fish, frog fish, tiger eye coweries, we were lucky to spot another eagle ray, who came to see us off until next time.  No Whaleshark this time, but we are keeping our fingers crossed for the next time.

​Thanks everyone for making this trip a great one, and hope to see you back onboard soon and again, congrats to our new AOW!