Phuket Dive Report

First, some statistics:

4 Days
12 Dives
1 Aborted Dive  (Equipment Failure)

Total Dive Time:   11 hours 9 minutes
Number of Pictures Taken:   746
Number of Species Photographed and Identified:  65, by my most recent count  (And quite a few as yet unidentified species also.)

I was lucky enough to take a five-day trip to Phuket, Thailand to do lots of diving.  I flew from Bangkok to Phuket Wednesday, 30th April and took a taxi to my guest house where my host, Marcia, met me with the key.  Marcia owns and operates Gekko Scuba Divers in Phuket. (Website here; Marcia's E-mail here.)   Her business offers two main services.  First, she books dive vacations in Phuket for people.  I had her book all of my dives.  This only happened after quite a few e-mails so she could learn about the type of diving I wanted to accomplish.  She then chose the dives based on this.  The second service is to provide a dive master to go along on the dive boat.  First, a bit about prices.  The actual prices I paid for the dive trips were no more expensive than if I had booked the trips myself.  The only extra cost I chose to incur was hiring her as a dive master each day.  The benefit of this ended up being huge.  I had one single dive buddy (Marcia) for the entire four-day thirteen-dive trip.  If I had just booked the dives and gone alone, I probably would have been in five or six different groups of divers by the end of the weekend, trying to go slow as I take pictures and then rushing to catch up.  Instead, I got to dive as I learned in Puget Sound.  With a dive buddy.  We created our own dive plans.  Then we dived them.  It was fabulous!  And Marcia knows the sites well enough to spot some pretty cool things.  (You'll see and hear more about that later in the individual dive reports with pictures.)  The diving ended on Sunday 4th May, and I stayed overnight and flew home on Monday after a wonderful and amazing trip.

Well, enough of that stuff.  Let's get to the pictures and the dive reports!  All of my pictures were taken with my Casio Exilm EX-Z1000.   (I should warn you that I have included A LOT of pictures.  I did this for two reasons.  First, I like taking pictures.  It helps me identify the critters I see while diving.  This leads to the second reason I included a lot of pictures.  I like to identify the critters I see when I dive, so I tried to include as many of the individual species I saw as possible.  This, of course, means some of the pictures are less than stellar.  One more note about my pictures:  I did crop a few of the images, but they are otherwise "non-photoshopped" in any way.)  As for the critter identifications, I have tried to ID as many as possible.  I am also not perfect with my IDs, so if you see a mistake or happen to know one of my missing IDs, please send me an e-mail.  Thanks!

Day 1 - Shark Point, Anemone Reef and Koh Dok Mai - Highlight:  Ghost Pipe Fish on Koh Dok Mai

Day 2 - Shark Point, Koh Bida Nok, Koh Bida Nai, and Koh Phi Phi Ley (Night Dive)  -  Highlights:  Seahorse on Koh Bida Nai and Cuttlefish on Koh Phi Phi Ley

Day 3 - Koh Bida Nok, Koh Kiaew, and Koh Dok Mai  -  Highlights:  Titan Triggerfish and lots of nudibranchs

Day 4 - Shark Point, Anemone Reef, and Koh Dok Mai  -  Highlights:  Snowflake Moray, Fimbriated Moray, lots of nudibranchs and an equipment failure.