Diving Similan & Surin Island, Thailand
This December I had the wonderful opportunity to go diving in both the Similan and Surin Islands of Thailand. I did 40 dives in 10 days while on 2 different boats. Things were amazing. So amazing in fact that I took over 1600 pictures and about half an hour of video on my little camera. I even took some good ones. I’ve decided that because of the large number of my photos, that this post will be an overview of my dive with a large number photos. I’ll follow this up by making a post with just fish photos and another with just nudibranch photos.
My trip started in Japan where I took three trains, and then two planes, and an early morning cab ride that ended in Phuket. I then got a couple hours of rest before getting into a minibus, which took me to a speed boat, which took me out to the Similan Islands and my liveaboard boat. The boat was operated by the company ScubaCat and was a wonderful place to spend my time. Good food, smart staff, and comfortable living spaces made for relaxing times between dives. I actually spent my time on two boats, both owned by the ScubaCat company. The first boat was the ScubaCat and the Dive Adventure, both pictured below. On the first boat we did five dives a day, and four dives a day on the second boat, which is how I managed to fit in 40 dives over the ten days.
Life above water was almost as pretty as life below water. Both sets of islands are notional parks, which means the area wasn’t packed with people or boats (most of the time) and the waters were quite clean. Except for the occasional spoon we found.
The underwater reefs around these islands were wonderful. Coral everywhere. Giant sea fans. It was quite the sight to be seen. Sometimes I found it distracting. Hard to find the small things when there was big stuff everywhere to be seen! Note how small the person is next to the giant sea fan.
Besides coral we also did two local wrecks in the area. One an illegal fishing boat and another a sunken diving boat.
With such a healthy reef system around the islands the area attracted a lot of fish. A lot of fish. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many fish before. Insane amounts of every type possible. (For a much longer list of fish, check out this other post with just photos of fish.)
Sadly I didn’t see any turtles underwater, but our boat did attract quite a few of them. We threw bananas in for them. We did see several sea snakes though
The highlight of my trip was when my group came across 3 manta rays in the Surin Islands. These giant fish had wing spans of over 4 meters, and just seems to fly around in the water. They were great. So peaceful, so graceful, so big!
While I kept my eyes out for big fish like the manta rays, I also did manage to find some really cool small things.
I also did a few night dives during my time in the Similians. I do love night dives, as all the really weird things come out then. Like big lobsters and crabs. So weird.
But enough with these other animals, lets go to my favorite group of creatures. The Nudibranches. Or as they’re more commonly called; sea slugs. I saw quite a few. Some ugly and some beautiful. (For a lot more photos of my slugs, check out my slug post.)
But what blog post about diving would be complete without a couple photos of me.
Besides taking 1600 photos I also took about half an hour of video using my little digi cam. I put most of it in a youtube video, as well as some video taken by other divers in my group of the manta rays. (I was too busy taking photos to take video. Man was it exciting!)
So that was my trip. It was a crazy ten days diving, but completely worth it. Plus I hit my 100th dive on this trip! Quite the mile stone for me. Over 100 dives in just two years. I’ll see if I can’t speed things up a bit in the next two years.
