Trip 020 Similan Islands

Everything came together perfectly for our twentieth Similan liveaboard trip of the current season. Weather was great, the Andaman Sea was nice and calm, no crazy currents despite it being full moon, lots of cool critters, plenty of fish action and a large giant oceanic manta ray on our last dive. Perfection !

And that intro is only the diving part, we also had lots of familiar faces on board the MV Blue Dolphin, some family and some cool new guests too. There was also an important birthday to celebrate, happy birthday Steve Boot !

With so much good diving this time, I’m just going to single out some of my highlights. There is a disclaimer needed though, this was my first trip with a prescription mask. Maybe all my dives have been this good, I’ve just been diving them blind for a while :D

Straight away on dive one at Hideaway Bay we spotted two ornate ghost pipefish, followed by a turtle and some schooling barracuda on dive two at Boulder City. Dives three and four at Koh Tachai Pinnacle were amazing. Along with the usual high productivity in the water and the beautiful fans and coral, the huge school of chevron barracuda were back plus a black-tip reef shark on the sunset dive. Richelieu Rock was on fine form once again on day three and with my vision restored we spotted another two ornate ghost pipefish along with a few other cool critters.

Day four and dive two at Koh Bon, we were all geared up to head over for our customary dive at the pinnacle when we spotted lots of snorkellers following a giant manta ray that was cruising around the bay. Hasty dive site change and everyone getting ready as fast as possible and we were in the water at Koh Bon Bay searching the blue for any sign of the ray. It was not long before she appeared coming from the direction of the ridge.

The manta was quite large, possibly up to 3m in disc width with a missing right cephalic lobe. She cruised around checking out the various groups of divers before heading off out of view. It was an epic end to our trip, for me even more so as I haven’t seen a manta ray in years! We’re still waiting for some more info from Manta Matcher as we got some great ID shots from Chris (thank you) and I’ll update here when we know more.

Thank you everyone who joined us for the trip, was a real pleasure to work this one. Until the next time, Ric and all the team, out.