Discovering Koh Lipe: a new side of the Andaman Sea
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.
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.
 colourful soft coral |  bent stick pipe fish |  tomato clownfish |
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!
 massive barrel sponges are regular in Tarutao National park |  mustard coloured Rhinopia  Tigertail seahorses everywhere! |
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 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.
 purple frogfish | 8 miles hunting action |  purple anemone and skunk clownfishes |
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.
 sting ray's eye |  snake eel |  Indian Walkman |
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!
 ornate stiliger |  candy crab |  spearing mantis shrimp |
“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.
 pretty frogfish in Steps, Koh Lipe |  catfishes |  catshark |
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)
 crocodile fish |  baby seahorse |  trying out motion-blur photography |
The general feeling is that no matter where you go there will be a lot to see, from rare to common species.
The reefs are very colourful and it is definitely worth going over the sand for a little tour.
We found Koh Lipe to be quite similar to the diving in the Mergui Archipelago with a lot of macro life and current to keep the colourful soft-coral reefs healthy. The difference is that it is a lot smaller and no Giant Oceanic mantas around.
The reefs are very colourful and it is definitely worth going over the sand for a little tour.
We found Koh Lipe to be quite similar to the diving in the Mergui Archipelago with a lot of macro life and current to keep the colourful soft-coral reefs healthy. The difference is that it is a lot smaller and no Giant Oceanic mantas around.
 The cutest dive buddies ever! |  |  |
RSS Feed
