Good bye 2020, hello 2021!

Happy new year 2021 from The Smiling Seahorse crew!

We just returned from our first cruise into 2021 and must say the beautiful islands in Surin and Similan National Parks in Thailand delivered.

We were delighted to welcome back some familiar faces onboard! Nicola, we discovered The Smiling Seahorse last week couldn’t say goodbye and we were very happy to welcome her for a second week. We also welcomed back Jeff, Hiroshi and Dario who met onboard last year as well as our once Dive Master trainee: Kostas back for another cruise.
Thank you so much for your continuous support during good and bad years!

The highlights of the Surin islands this week were an enormous turtle cruising by as we searched out tiny cute pikachu nudibranchs (thecacera pacifica), eerie ghost pipefish, lobsters, vibrant peacock mantis shrimp and ornate tapestry shrimp. The variety of life and giant schools of fish kicked the trip off brilliantly. 

​Our second day was filled with some of our favorite locations in Similan as we explored Ko Tachai, Ko Bon, West of Eden and Deep Six. The bright soft fan corals and giant foam corals painted a beautiful underwater landscape as we floated through massive schools of fish in excellent visibility. Nudibranchs were everywhere, including some of our favorite slugs: psychedelic batwing slug (sagaminopteron psychedelicum) and piccachu (Thecacera pacifica)! 

​ The most exciting sighting of our trip happened at Shark Fin Reef : Not only did we see some white tip reef sharks sleeping under coral heads, but we also had a tiger shark saying hello at the safety stop!! Safety stops can really get thrilling with such a special guest visitor! Again no photo of this special guest who tend to show up only in front of divers when they don't have their camera!

Tuna Wreck at Anita’s Reef sent us into our deepest dive as we descended to catch a glipse of the unique ship tipped on its side at the bottom of the sea at around 30 meters.

​We also experienced a fun filled dive at Elephant Head Rock, which led us through underwater boulders and swim throughs. We found more white tips reef sharks swimming and the trip of black, yellow, and blue ribbon eels poking out to say hello. Between dives we made a stop at Donald Duck Bay to enjoy the iconic rock formations and pristine white sand beach. 

​The journey back north toward Surin National Park held four more days of amazing sea life. We found bright tiger cowries latched on to fan corals, crabs nestled around their eggs, and nudibranchs galore! 

​Ko Tachai was so fishy this week and we spent most of a dive in a swirling school of thousands of chevron barracuda covering the reff between 10-20 meters deep. The big fish kept coming through in massive schools of giant trevallies, bluefins trevallies, jackfish as well as 10 huge tunas passing on top of us! Wow!

​We glided through schools of batfish, surgeon fish, rabbitfish and jackfish at Richelieu Rock. We found two giant frog fish this week, a bent stick pipe fish, seahorse and some ghost pipe fish. But what I loved most was an eagle ray passing less than a meter away on our night dive there!

​We celebrated not only these beautiful sites but also a new year’s arrival! As we were moored in the Bay of Ko Bon, we enjoyed our infamous barbecue night and were gifted with the lovely voice of one of our passenger: an opera singer to start the year in beauty. It made the new year truly special for everyone and after a bit of dancing, singing and laughing we made it to bed awaiting for our dives on the 1st!

Our new year began with another amazing trip through our favorite Thai islands, and we are so grateful for our new and returning friends who joined us.

Thanks to Andrew for sharing your photos of the trip! And a special congratulations goes out to Martina and Fabian for completing their Nitrox certification course!

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6 days/5night, 21 Dives!