Thailand Diving - Koh Chang

Hin Luk Bat (Night Dive), Koh Yak, Three Fingers, Hin Rap and Hin Luk Bat

Tuesday - Thursday, 21st - 23rd October, 2008

The family made a trip to Koh Chang for our October vacation (See the "normal" trip report here.)  I got in two and a half days of diving. 

The first day of diving was actually a single dive, but it was a NIGHT DIVE.  Woohoo!  I don't get to have night dives very often, so when the opportunity presented itself, I took advantage.  This dive was organized by Don at White Sand Dive Center, but the actual dives were with BB Divers out of Bang Bao.  We left the pier and headed to a local spot called Hin Luk Bat.  It's a small pinnacle that barely breaks the surface.  We dropped in and descended down the mooring line to about 15 msw.  Then we worked on circumnavigating the "islet" while ascending after about halfway, creating a multi-level dive profile.  A few times during the dive I thought I was next to a huge wall.  Many of these walls were covered in what I call Orange Cup Corals.  They were really beautiful, with their feeding polyps extended, creating clumps of bright orange. 

The second day I went out with Nikki and Mark from White Sand Dive Center. (Great people, by the way.)  The first stop was an island about two hours away called Koh Yak.  It's another small island that we fully circumnavigated on our dive.  Visibility was probably over 10 meters, approaching 15 meters at times.  Near the end of the dive, things got a bit stirred up, but overall the dive was really great.  After a nice lunch, we moved over a few hundred meters to a dive site called Three Fingers.  This site is completely submerged, but it's marked by a mooring buoy.  I like this idea, as it keeps dive boats from having to drop anchor and possibly destroying reef.  The dive site was three "fingers" of coral reef.  The dive was pretty relaxing until the end when the current kicked up, causing us to work hard and limiting visibility a bit.  But as usual, the dive was good.

My last day of diving would be another wonderful day on and in the water.  The boat was a bit more crowded, but once we were underwater I seemed to get lost in the moment.  The first dive was Hin Rap, another small pinnacle that barely breaks the surface.  Huge schools of fish greeted us after we dropped down.  Every corner of the reef seemed to hold new sites.  From schools of fish to lots of christmas tree worms to lots of sea cucumbers to a wall covered in soft coral.  It was all beautiful.

The last dive of the day was a return to Hin Luk Bat.  I was really excited about this, as my previous dive there was a night dive and I wanted to compare the site from the different dives.  Wow, what a difference!  First of all, the site seemed so much smaller during the day.  Second, the colors were more subdued during the day.  The orange cup corals were retracted and more bland in color.  Third, there weren't any huge walls like I thought.  The "walls" were simply the sides of some fairly large boulders.  They weren't nearly as large as I thought, though.  It was a great way to finish the diving on this trip.

Below are some pictures from the diving.  A few of them turned out alright.  Click on the image to see a larger version. 

(Note: A few pictures were cropped, but none of the images were "photoshopped" in any other way.)

Hin Luk Bat (Night Dive)
A feather star.	The orange cup corals with feeding polyps extended creating wonderful color.	An odd unidentified coral.	Some orange and green cup corals.
Koh Yak
A blotched porcupine fish hiding in some coral.	A tunicate on the coral.	A red-breasted wrasse.  First time I've seen this fish.	A giant clam.
A sea cucumber feeding.	A close-up on some coral.	Some goatfish hanging out on a coral formation.  Normally these seem to stay on the sandy bottom, so this was an odd place to find them.	A huge colony of christmas tree worms.
Three Fingers
A GIANT puffer fish that was at a cleaning station getting cleaned by some cleaner wrasse.  One even went into his/her gill opening.  It was very cool to see.	A bridled monocle bream.	A murex shell (I think).	A beautiful purple coral.
A nudibranch on the side of a boulder.	A rainbow on the boat ride back to the dock.	The front of the boat, adorned with some flowers.	The "pier" we returned to after the day of diving.  Kind of ramshackle, but it worked.
Hin Rap
More colorful christmas tree worms.	A magnificent anemone with some pink anemonefish.	A school of fish (Unidentified at this piont).	A blenny hanging out on a rock.
A corallimorpharian.  Say that ten times fast.	A beautiful blue-spotted ribbontail ray.  It was hiding, but I got a decent picture.	A white-eyed moray eel.	Another feeding sea cucumber.
A huge part of the reef covered in soft coral.	A close-up on the soft coral.
Hin Luk Bat
A pair of christmas tree worms.	The soft corals retracted.  Not nearly as colorful as the same corals at night.	Looking down the barrel of a barrel sponge.	A barrel sponge.
More barrel sponges.  Not sure why, but my count of "decent" pictures of these sponges increased dramatically on this dive.	A close-up on a magnificent anemone.	That'd be me.  (Picture taken by the divemaster, Nikki Soons.)	A blue-ringed angelfish.
A colorful green coral with lots of christmas tree worms around.