Thailand Diving - Wreck of the Hardeep, Koh Chuang and Shark Fin

Saturday 8th March, 2008
 

I was lucky enough to be invited to a private dive boat trip to the Wreck of the Hardeep and "other coral dives" this Saturday.  A friend that I met on ScubaBoard, Peter, was coming down from Bangkok with some friends of his and he asked me to tag along for the day.  The group had hired a boat for the day of diving.  It was fantastic!  We got to be "real" divers again with normal buddy teams not dictated by who happened to be on the boat and which DM we got paired with.  We decided on a plan before diving, and got to make our own decisions. 

The first dive of the day was the Wreck of the Hardeep.  My first dive in Thailand ever was on the Hardeep, so it was nice to be back.  It's a beautiful wreck with lots of life covering all surfaces.  I didn't notice as many fish on this dive, but Peter pointed out a nice tiger cowrie and a nudibranch I'd never seen before.  (I still don't have an ID on it yet...)  I also spotted a second nudibranch and a pair of juvenile moray eels peeking out from the wreck.  We reached our turnaround pressure and headed back to find the line to the surface.  The visibility wasn't great, and I could feel a bit of current.  We ended up not finding the line.  Since my air was running low, we made a blue-water ascent.  Peter popped his safety sausage during our safety stop, then we finished our ascent.  I wondered how far off the boat we had drifted.  Luckily, the current only took us about 60-70 meters away from the dive boat.  I reset my dive computer to use meters for depth and bar for pressure.  It was actually much easier than I thought.  Dive statistics:  Maximum Depth: 24.4 msw; Average Depth:  15.5 msw; Dive Time: 41 minutes.

Back on the boat we had a decision to make.  Where to dive next?  We decided on a local island called Koh Chuang.  On the south end is a crescent-shaped bay with some nice coral, so we were going to give it a try.  The weather had turned a bit from sunny to drizzly and windy.  The surface swell was quite large as we did our graceful (or not so graceful) giant stride off the boat.  We surface swam a bit and decided we didn't want to fight the surf so we dropped down.  Once we hit the reef, we dropped right onto a jelly that was very cool.  It had a circular "hole" through the middle of it, and it also had numerous fish hanging around inside of it.  Very cool.  We swam around the corals a bit and spotted the usual suspects.  (A few porcupine fish, lots of variety of coral, some sea cucumbers, a couple giant clams, etc.)  We made our way around the rocky point towards the boat to find really healthy corals.  There were some nice formations of gorgonian corals in one spot that made a nice panorama.  Peter pointed to it and wanted me to take a picture, but my mask was so fogged up I had to "rinse and clear" every 20 seconds to keep the dive going.  I ended up snapping one bad picture and just moving on.  Other than the foggy mask and the surge that made us feel like we were diving in a washing machine, this was a great dive.  I'd like to come back to this site with better conditions.  Dive statistics:  Maximum Depth: 11.0 msw ; Average Depth: 5.8 msw ; Dive Time:  67 minutes.

The last dive of the day would be Shark Fin.  (I took one picture of it topside to show you how the name refers to the shape of the pinnacle, but it didn't turn out all that great.)  We dropped in and started our circumnavigation of the pinnacle.  This was another fantastic dive.  Peter and I had a chance to use scooters for this dive.  I suggested that our usual purpose was to go slow and take lots of pictures, so we didn't use the scooters.  (Foreshadowing of things to come...)  We spotted another jelly, a lion fish, lots of great coral, some sponges, another nudibranch, a giant clam and some very cool small soft coral formations.  We kept cruising around the pinnacle, finding cool stuff.  As we got near the end of the dive, I noticed I was really having to swim hard against the current.  It was kicking my butt.  I kept thinking about how nice it would be to have the scooter now while trying to make it back to the dive boat.  Oh well, I got my workout for the day.  This was another really fun dive and a great finish to a wonderful day of diving.  Dive statistics:  Maximum Depth: 14.9 msw; Average Depth: 7.7 msw ; Dive Time: 67 minutes. 

Some pictures are below.  Click on the image to see a larger version. 
 

    The Wreck of the Hardeep
 

A sea cucumber that I haven't IDed yet.	A tiger cowrie.	A beautiful nudibranch.	A red-lined flabellina, Flabellina rubrolineata.
Koh Chuang
The jelly that we dropped down onto.  I hadn't set my MWB yet, so the color is a bit off.
Shark Fin
A funeral Jorunna,  Jorunna funebris.  First time seeing this nudibranch.  Woohoo!	A hermit crab on a coral formation.	A tunicate.  I can't seem to find an ID on this yet.	Pink anemonefish hovering over a magnificent anemone.
One of the cool coral soft coral formations.	The lionfish.	Peter snapping photos of the jelly.	Another tiger cowrie.
A beautiful gorgonian fan coral.	Another small soft coral formation.	A feather duster.	The sun setting behind the fishing boats in Samae San after we unloaded the dive boat.