Phuket Day-Sites Trip Report (Parts 1 & 2)

[JonnieB]

TRIP REPORT


Phuket, Thailand
17 May – 22 May 2005

Keywords: Thailand, Phuket, SCUBA diving, Seebees Diving, Excalibur II, Shark Point, Ko Doc Mai, Ko Racha, Ko Phi Phi


Introduction

I recently had the pleasure of spending a week in Phuket SCUBA diving some of the local dive sites that are done as day trips. I dived for 3 days, with a total of 8 dives during this time. Fortunately, the weather was close to perfect everyday. It was warm and sunny, with only a smattering of clouds. There was no rain to speak of. The seas were calm and the ride to the dive sites was smooth and relaxing.

The Boat

I again dived with Seebees Diving, located in Chalong Bay, Phuket, Thailand. Of the day-boats running out of Phuket, their boat, the Excalibur II, looks to be the biggest and most comfortable of the lot. [If you want further details on this boat, search this site for my previous report on this topic or go to their website:http://www.sea-bees.com/] Again, the boat was comfortable and the diving staff and boat crew friendly and professional. Dive safety is emphasized and dive briefings are very thorough. If you are qualified, you can have more freedom in your dives, however, if you are with a group, you are closely guided by your DM (in a good way). As reported previously, the majority of the clientele are German. Dive briefings are conducted in English and German. The dive masters know the sites well and are very good in finding and pointing out rare and unusual reef inhabitants.

The boat itself is spacious and comfortable with both indoor and outdoor seating and lounging areas. There is even a small bar for between dive and post-dive libations. The maximum number of divers is 30; during the week, there averaged 20 divers a day. Every diver is provided with a large gear storage crate underneath his dive tank spot. There is also a large additional dry gear storage room beneath the dive-deck. (I used a total of 3 of the gear crates.) If you are doing multiple diving days, you can store your gear on the boat. There are 3 rinse tanks, with one being dedicated to camera/video equipment and computers. There are 4 showers provided and 2 bathrooms.

The boat departs from Chalong Bay at around 9 a.m. Seebees provides return hotel transfers from anywhere in Phuket as part of the dive package. Depending on your dive day, you will either be served 2 or 3 hot cooked meals served buffet style, along with fruit and snacks. Most days are 2 dive days and on these, you receive a full cooked breakfast (yogurt, cereal, eggs, meat, toast). Lunch is usually a mix of 3 Thai and/or Western entrées with bread, rice or pasta. Cookie snacks are served after the last dive of the day. Fruit, coffee, and tea are available all day. Soda, beer, wine and bottled water are available at extra charge at the bar. On the 4-dive day “Super Sunday,” a full dinner is also provided. The food is very good, and I am a picky eater. My only complaint is that only “just enough” is provided…there is definitely never any leftovers. So get in line quickly and take a decent portion because there is a good chance you won’t be getting seconds later. Current day-dive package prices are B2500 ($64) for 2-dive days and B3500 ($89) for the 4-dive Super Sunday. Considering the amenities of the boat, the quality of the meals, professionalism of the staff, and return hotel transfer, I think this is good value for money. There are some boats that are cheaper but you get what you pay for.

So, now that we know the boat is nice and the food is good, how about the diving? As noted above, I dived 8 times over 3 days, including Super Sunday. All the dives were good, with prolific fish and invertebrate life. Special creatures were seen on almost every dive and will be noted below. I think sometimes we assume that to have really great dives in the Phuket area, one must go further out than these local sites, i.e., a liveaboard to the Similian Islands. However, I found the best dives on this trip to be the equal of many of the Similian sites. (Disclosure: I have been on 3 Similians liveaboards, the most recent in April 2005). Considering the cost, I think it is safe to say that spending a week diving local sites in and around Phuket can be just as rewarding as a liveaboard trip to the Similians. Spending almost all day and eating most of my meals on board for 3 days on a large and comfortable boat like the Excalibur, it almost felt like I was. And then at the end of the day, you have a comfortable hotel tub to soak in and bed to sleep on. In addition, the many restaurants of Phuket await your evening dining pleasure in addition to the after-hours nightlife.

See some of my photos from this trip in my Member's Photo Gallery.

JonnieB

www.damnam.org

 

[JonnieB]

This is part two of my trip report from Phuket, Thailand. It covers conditions and reef life observed at the various divesites.

The Divesites:

Sharkpoint

The first day’s diving was at Shark Point and Ko Doc Mai (Flower Island). If you are unfamiliar with the general dive conditions in Phuket, the water temperature on all dives was 28-29 Celsius. I cannot recall any serious thermoclines during the trip. Therefore, a 3 mm shorty suit would suffice, however, I dive in a 5 mm full-body suit with socks, booties, and gloves, so I am always toasty warm. Visibility was 10-15 meters. I dived a maximum depth here of 20 meters. This was my favorite dive of the trip (and of course, I was testing my new UW camera housing so did not have the camera in it). Lots of common and not so common reef fish here but the highlight was certainly the two 11/2 - 2 meter Leopard sharks resting on a sandy bottom. They were quite tame and allowed divers to approach as close to a meter. Other highlights of this site include the prolific white, red, and purple soft corals, which give a beautiful colour to many surfaces.

Also seen was a beautiful 30 cm purple scorpionfish on a sunny sandy bottom. White-eye morays, white-lined and common lionfish, large map puffers, porcupine fish, banded cleaner shrimp, and very large schools of snappers are some of the other reef inhabitants noted in my logbook for this dive.

Ko Doc Mai

The second dive of the day was at Ko Doc Mai. Now, having passed the testing on the previous dive, my UW housing now contained its camera. So I now have some pictures to go along with all this verbiage. This is an island pinnacle wall dive, with moderate current. Visibility was reduced from Shark Point, at 3-5 meters. The wall itself is very pretty, covered with hard and soft corals. My max depth here was 25 meters. Again, a large 30 cm scorpionfish was seen, along with some Tobys, a yellow-spot boxfish, map puffers, giant moray, banded-cleaner and hinged-beak shrimp, and porcelain crabs.

Ko Racha Yai (Lucy Reef, Staghorn Reef)

The next day we did both our dives at sites on Ko Racha Yai. The first was at Lucy Reef and the second at Staghorn Reef. These are both relatively shallow sandy bottom sites surrounding the small island of Ko Racha Yai. There is an abundance of hard and staghorn corals, along with rocky outcroppings. Maximum depth for both dives was 22 meters. Visibility was good at 12-15 meters, with no current. These are both easy divesites with interesting things to see but not in the class of Shark Point or Ko Doc Mai. Notables at Lucy Reef included: Yellow-spot boxfish, porcupine fish, moray eels, lionfish, black-spotted puffers, map puffers, butterfly fish, red-tooth triggerfish, titan triggerfish, and garden eels.

At Staghorn reef, I saw more Garden eels, a mantis shrimp, box-cowfish, cleaner and hinged-beak shrimp, white-spotted lionfish, and a 60-70 cm Marbled grouper.

Super Sunday (Shark Point, Phi-Phi Islands, Ko Doc Mai)

As the name implies, Sunday is a special day on the Excalibur, a day when it really does feel like a liveaboard because you start-out an hour earlier in the morning, do 4 dives, and get back to port around 9 p.m. That being said, it is a great day also, as I got to redive 2 of my favorite sites, Shark Point and Ko Doc Mai, and 2 new sites at Phi-Phi island. In addition, the Ko Doc Mai dive was extra special as it was a nite dive.

The conditions on our first dive at Shark Point were not as favorable as two days prior. Visibility was considerably reduced (it can almost seem like a different divesite) but otherwise, conditions were good. Again, very large schools of snappers and fusiliers greeted us around the rock pinnacles and would make great wide-angle photo subjects. Porcelain crabs, banded-cleaner shrimp, tobys, black-spotted puffers, and Titan triggerfish were some of the notables.

The second dive at Ko Bida Nok, Phi-Phi island, was a wall dive with 7-10 meter visibility and minimal current. Depth here is a little deeper at around 28 meters maximum. The wall has good coverage of soft corals and Gorgonian sea-fans. Several wart-slugs and nudibranchs were seen, along with a turtle and Leopard shark swim-by. Many lionfish and Blue-ringed angelfish were also seen, as well as a shy Long-fin Comet.

The third dive at Ko Bida Nai had similar conditions but shallower depth, at around 16 meters maximum. Again, this is a very nice wall dive, with a sandy/rocky bottom. I thought the reef life variety at this site was several degrees better than at Ko Bida Nok. As you will note below, this site attracts some of the more open-water species so is a nice contrast to some of the other more reef oriented sites. Some of the notables included: White-eye morays, Golden morays, scorpionfish, large circling school of Striped barracuda, large individual military barracuda, schools of snappers, large cuttlefish, Blue-fin travelly, Brown-marbled grouper.

The final dive of the trip was the nite-dive at Ko Doc Mai. This was special to me as it was my first nite-dive on a wall. All my previous ones being on shallow sandy/rocky bottom bays. It is quite dramatic doing a nite-dive not muddling about on the bottom but pointing your torch down into the abyss and seeing nothing but black. As I said before, this site is great during the day and it is the same at nite. Only the cast of characters changes. We were warned about possible currents (as this site is known for them and had them previously) and advised to stay close to the wall. However, as it turned out, there was little current and so made for easy diving conditions.

This wall really comes alive at nite as many of the corals open up and provide a lot of colour to the wall, hence it name, “Flower Island.” Notables included many kinds of shrimp just covering some parts of the wall, lionfish, white-eye morays, a lattice-tail moray, and two really special mentions: a large hermit crab ambling about in a barrel sponge and a Spiny-yellow seahorse dangling from a coral branch.

Conclusion

So there you have it! I thoroughly enjoyed my 3 days of diving on the Excalibur II with Seebees Diving. This is the second time I have done day-trips with this shop and have had a great time on each of them. The boat is comfortable, the food is good, and the DM’s knowledgeable and personable. The reef-life I saw was varied and abundant and to me, often rivaled that anywhere else in Thailand’s Andaman sea area. I saw no real effects from the December 2004 tsunami, even at the Phi-Phi island sites. If course, it is likely the captain would avoid any such sites but this only shows that there are still many sites worth diving.

If you have any questions about anything in this report, please feel free to send me a private message. See some photos from this trip in my Members Photo Gallery

Jonnie