Similan Liveaboard – Day 4

By Mark Milburn on 15 September 2008

We were now heading back towards Phuket, three days of solid diving done and only two more to go. Everyone on the boat was friendly enough, and by now we knew each others names and would have conversations about all sorts of things and not just diving. Even after twelve dives everyone was still looking forward to the next one. For some reason I was up early, so was nearly everyone else, all drinking tea or coffee and eating toast, when it was time for the briefing everyone was already there.

Koh Bon Pinnacle

Dive thirteen, Koh Bon Pinnacle, the last dive on Koh Bon was on the ridge two days ago, pinnacles usually have an abundance of life so we were looking for a good start to the day. We entered the water and headed down the mooring line, as we were descending Sharky and I noticed a Zebra Shark lying on the bottom. As we headed towards it, it moved off, they do get spooked easily, but we were quite a distance from it at the time, we watched it make it way down into deeper water and followed it. This time it stayed put, I looked around to see if anyone else had followed us down, but at 45m it wasn’t likely. We didn’t have too much ‘no deco’ time at this depth so after a few photo’s we headed back up the pinnacle to the others. There were lots of life, all of which we had seen before, it was the first shark I had seen, another group had seen a zebra shark on an earlier dive.

Dive Fourteen was going to be back on the ridge, once again trying to see something big. Our luck on trying to see something big hadn’t been going well, something big always refers to either Manta rays or Whale Sharks, perhaps our luck would change. Unfortunately not, quite an uneventful dive, all the usual fish and a lobster, but nothing memorable, perhaps we were getting bored, it was hard to tell.

Beacon reef

Dive Fifteen. This time it was going to be Beacon reef, I had never done the reef as it had quite a lot of damage from bad fishing methods, and was not known for its beauty. The main interest on this reef for us was the wreck of a dive boat that sank several years previously. At last a wreck, oh how I miss diving wrecks, it would only be small but it was still a wreck. We all made straight for the wreck, it even looked like a boat, it had been well stripped, apparently by the divers who were on the boat when it sank, they had made several trip to recover belongings and equipment. Th wreck lays at an angle of about 30 degrees, the stern is at around 28m depth and the bow around about 14m. We had a good look around and headed down towards the dive deck. As we entered the dive deck area we were greeted by a few batfish, we swam into the wreck and came out through one of the broken perspex windows half way along the boat. We did look into the bridge area but there were cables hanging down and thought better of it. A very enjoyable little wreck, short and sweet, we then headed along the reef. There was a lot of life on the reef, it wasn’t the prettiest, but it did have the full range of reef fish.

It was now time for our second hour on dry land in four days, we were set ashore by the tender in what was quite choppy for the Similans at this time of year, no worse than a flat day in England, but the Thais were concerned. We wandered around the island and along a path to a beach the other side, Honeymoon bay, the sea this side was considerably flatter, we thought it would have been easier all around if we had been dropped off on this side. Our hour was almost up and we headed back through the jungle to where we had landed. As the tender made its way towards us they shouted “go round the other side”, it was too rough to land the rib. So off we went through the jungle back to Honeymoon reef again.

Honeymoon bay

Dive Sixteen. As the wind had now blown out our night dive site it was decided to dive the reef by Honeymoon bay, no one knew its name, the brief was to jump in, swim around and come back. It was the usual entry time of 7pm, and we descended where the boat was moored. The reef looked quite pretty, lots of hard corals, a few fish in hiding, a hermit crab was sitting on top of a rock, dark red in colour, a nice pose as well. A cuttlefish changed colours as we passed our torches over it , struggling to work out what colour would best disguise it. Torches flashed everywhere as more lionfish were found, but I was more interested in the biggest crab I had ever seen, it was trying to back into a small recess under some coral, but it was far too big. I would estimate that it was between 40 and 45cm across, the biggest I had seen. Time was up and we all went back onto the boat for even more food.

The main talking point of the day had to have been the wreck, although the other dives had been nice, the wreck made a change.

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

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