Phuket Dive Report - Day 4

Dive Sites:

Shark Point
Anemone Reef
Koh Dok Mai
 

My last day of diving in Phuket started great, but it finished on a weird note.  (More on that later.)  We decided to revisit sites I'd already been to on this trip.  I like seeing sites more than once.  It gives me a chance to see the diversity of a site by finding new critters on later dives and comparing what I see with earlier dives.  Wait.  That sentence didn't make much sense.  Anyway, I like seeing a dive site more than once if possible.  And in order to avoid pushing to hard against my no-fly times after four straight days of diving, I dove with Nitrox today.

The first dive was Shark Point.  As you might expect, with a name like Shark Point I was hoping to see some sharks.  Leopard sharks are the most frequent of these spotted here.  Unfortunately, on my dives at Shark Point I didn't see any.  I think I'll rename this dive site "Soft Coral Point."  I saw far more soft coral than I did sharks.  In fact, the variety of colors and formations of soft coral is impressive.  One of the highlights of this dive was finding Nemo.  I mean "really" finding Nemo.  In one of the anemones, I found a juvenile False Anemone Clownfish, Amphiprion ocellaris.  Another highlight was a Snowflake Moray Eel, Echidna nebulosa.  It even left its den and was freely swimming around the reef.  Very cool site!  This was a wonderful start to my last day of diving in Phuket.  Total Dive Time:  52 minutes.  Maximum Depth: 22.3 msw.   Average Depth:  9.9 msw.

The second dive of this day was Anemone Reef.  Doing a better job of living up to its name, Anemone Reef really is covered in anemones.  This brings with it an assortment of clownfish.  But that's not all that happened on this dive.  I spotted and photographed the largest Tiger Cowrie I think I've ever seen.  And a very cool fimbriated moray eel, Gymnothorax fimbriatus, was the subject of another of my favorite photographs from this dive trip.  For me, though, the real highlight of this dive was my surging confidence in my technical abilities as a diver.  After four days of diving and over 10 hours in the water, I guess it was bound to happen.  But I simply felt like I had one of my best dives ever in terms of how I managed my buoyancy, etc.  It was a fantastic feeling!  Total Dive Time: 55 minutes   Maximum Depth:  17.9 msw  Average Depth:  9.8 msw

The last dive of my trip was at my favorite dive site here:  Koh Dok Mai.  I like this site for a variety of reasons.  First, it's a wall dive.  I really enjoy wall dives.  I'm not sure why, exactly, but it's such a different experience than cruising over a flat reef.  A few other reasons this was my favorite dive site:  Ghost Pipe Fish, Sea Horse, and nudibranchs, nudibranch and more nudibranchs.  I lost count of how many cool nudibranch species I spotted on this dive site, but it came close to ten.  This dive was no different.  Within minutes, I spotted a new nudibranch species, Phyllidiella rudmani.  But about 18 minutes into the dive, Marcia signaled to me that she was low on air.  I looked at her rather stunned.  I was the hoover, not her!  How could I still have 135 bar, when she's giving me the low-on-air signal and the decision to surface.  She signaled for me to look at her first stage.  I checked it, but didn't see anything weird.  She could sense my incredulity, so she showed me her gauge.  46 bar!  She asked me to check her tank again.  This time, I could see the tell-tale string of bubbles.  But it wasn't coming from the o-ring where the first-stage connects to the cylinder.  It was actually coming from the tank itself, where the valve screws into the cylinder.  Very weird.  So we started to surface.  Since she was low on air, I got ready to donate at any time.  Not necessary, though.  I inflated the SMB and we did our safety stop and surfaced quite a bit sooner than planned.  Needless to say, it was a bummer to finish the dive trip this way.  But my rule as a diver is this:  In order to qualify as a good dive, I have to return safely and see some cool things.  We came back with no trouble, and I saw a few cool things.  After over 11 hours underwater on this trip, I figured I shouldn't worry about losing out on 30 minutes of dive time.  It was a phenomenal trip, expertly organized by Marcia.  Total Dive Time:  26 minutes  Maximum Depth:  16.4 msw  Average Depth:  9.1 msw

And now I'd like to discuss my use of Nitrox on the last day.  I knew I'd be flying home the day after diving, so I wanted to give myself a good safety margin.  I planned on doing two dives.  Then in talking with Marcia, an alternative idea came up.  Using Nitrox, but diving on air tables.  (Well, the way I consume air, I could have used a Nitrox table and been fine.  I typically run out of air before I run out of NDL time.)  So below is a table of Desaturation Times and No-Fly Times (based on my dive computer software; Uwatec SmartCom computer with SmartTrak software) for each day of diving.  One problem with this look at data is my day 4 third dive was cut a bit short by the equipment problem.  But I think the benefit of diving Nitrox should be readily apparent.  Granted, the sample size here is quite small.  But I'm glad it worked out this way.

Pictures from the day are below.  Click on the image to see a larger version.