Another week rolls by, so it’s that time once again to give you the run down on conditions this past week. We are delighted to confirm that after a very wet and windy time in the previous week, that the sunny blue skies have now returned and we’ve been enjoying calmer, flatter seas on our journey’s out to our dive sites. This came as a relief to everyone, including Captain ‘Pigface’, who just loves to ride out from the shore to the dive boat with our longtail drivers Wy & Peow. Only when its calm though. Pigface is definitely a fair weather diver!
Now that conditions have improved, we’ve taken the opportunity to get out to some of the further away dive sites once more. First on the list – Chumphon Pinnacle. This is always a favourite among staff, fun divers and students alike – and it’s not hard to see why! It’s large granite pinnacles rise form the sea bed at around 25-30metres and rise up to as shallow as 14metres. This makes it perfect for deep adventure dives on the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course. If you swim off the pinnacles a little, you can push as far as 40m, so its also a site where we can conduct PADI Deep Diver specialty courses.
We also went to some more distant shallow sites such as Laem Thien and Mango Bay. These sites, although rich in marine life, are more suited to divers who are not yet ready or qualified to go deeper, such as PADI Discover Scuba Diving participants. Other dive site fixtures included a couple of old favouites, Japanese Gardens and Red Rock – otherwise known as NangYuan Pinnacle. Each of these sites can be dived separately, or for the best of both worlds you can explore both by dropping off along the coastline by Red Rock, and diving along the wall into into the bay at Japanese Gardens.
We’ve enjoyed more fabulous marine life this week as always. Between all of our dive trips we’ve seen not one, not two, but 3 whale sharks – although unfortunately Rob wasn’t on the boat to photo them all. Still, this is a great sign that perhaps our Whale Shark season is approaching early – normally sightings pick up around September time. Fingers crossed!
Happy viewing, and see you for more underwater fun next week!
