Anemone Reef and Sharkpoint

By Mark Milburn on 22 September 2008

We had arrived back from the Similan trip just two days ago, my travelling companions were in no rush to get back in the water, but I was. Having been to Thailand seven times previously and logged over two hundred dives there, I was surprised when going through my log that I had never dived Anemone Reef. Anemone Reef was famous for being the reef that the ship King Cruiser struck, it holed one of the catamarans hulls, which caused it to sink. I had already planned another trip to see the King Cruiser and Sharkpoint on the next Tuesday, but my only opportunity to dive Anemone Reef was going to be on this trip, so I booked it.

Chalong

The minibus arrived at 8:20 and went straight to the pier at Chalong. Chalong is the main harbour where nearly every dive and fishing boat is moored in Phuket. It has a fairly new concrete pier, I think its about three years old, and about 500m long. The old pier was made of wood, you had to be careful where you stood as it was full of holes and broken planks, the Tsunami finished it off though. The pier transport took us and our diving kit down to the end to where the boats are moored, we collected our kit and boarded the boat. Its very hard to get food in Phuket at 8am, none of the restaurants open till 8 or 8:30, on the boat they had a very nice choice of rolls, and plenty of them. There was a quick boat briefing, then we assembled our dive kit, the idea was to assemble it before we got out of the harbour at Chalong and into the sea, it had been a little breezy overnight and the sea would have not been as flat as usual. Everyone put their kit together and found somewhere comfortable to sit out the one and a half hour trip, in what was now quite a choppy sea for Thailand.

Sharkpoint

Due to the current, and the amount of divers in the area it was decided that we would dive Sharkpoint first. Most day trips to the area start at the King Cruiser wreck, then Sharkpoint, so all the dive boats were on or heading for the wreck. Sharkpoint is actually a series of nine rocks getting gradually smaller and deeper. There was a quick briefing of the site before kitting up. We entered the water at 11am near to the second rock, the visibility was alright at around 8m. There is always plenty of life on Sharkpoint, number two has more soft corals while number one has more anemones. All the usual suspects were there, Lion fish, Scorpion fish, moray eels, shoals of glassfish and big eye snapper. We continued across to number one where there are some huge gorgonian sea fans as well as tube sponges and some small hard corals. After the allotted 60 minutes was up we came back to the surface, which had now flattened down a bit, and were collected by the boat. The boat then moved to the second dive site location several hundred metres away and moored up.

We had a nice selection of westernised Thai food for lunch, and plenty of it, that’s one thing that has to be said for all these boats, you never get hungry. After a decent surface interval we had the next dive briefing, I paid more attention this time, I had never dived Anemone Reef before and wanted to find out as much as possible about the site.

Anemone Reef

While we were moored up on Anemone Reef the sea flattened out totally to how it normally is, as flat as glass. We entered the water around 13:15 and descended down the mooring line. The first thing I noticed was the amount of anemone on the reef, it looked more like grass, waving gently in the current. We headed for the bottom where we watched a white eyed moray eel swimming freely looking for lunch, quite close to that was an adult devil scorpion fish. The moray was still foraging behind us, being followed by a moon wrasse, hopefully catching anything the moray missed.
A first for me was the sighting of some blue octocoral, there wasn’t much of it, I’ve seen many other colours, but not blue. More of the usual suspects, puffer fish, boxfish, lionfish, banded cleaner shrimp and I managed to catch a blue-lined grouper having a check up from a cleaner shrimp. Then along came the turtle, I am sure that they like having their photo taken, they do seem to swim slower near divers with cameras, it came to rest just below me to get a nice close up. Everyone was getting low on air now, it seemed a pity to end the dive, everyone else grabbed the mooring line just as the other group came around the corner, I still had plenty of air so joined them while they finished their dive. I showed them the turtle, they showed me a yellow headed moray, then it was time to come up. I must say that I was quite impressed with the site, the amount of anemones was unbelievable, something I hadn’t seen before, and the site in general was very interesting and full of life, I took quite a few photo’s and kept 43 of them, that’s how I know it was a good site. I won’t overlook it again.

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Author: Mark Milburn
Email: info@travel-dive.com

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