A morning observation dive at Chumphon, for our latest certified Eco Diver.

I really enjoyed this dive. It was quite spooky… very clear unless you looked down.. at 20m there was a thermocline and you could not see a thing… you can see it below as the camera swoops over Jens head…

Hope you enjoy….

Both feeling tired and bleary eyed, we hopped on the bike and rode to Crystal and got our dive kits and then walked to ‘Deep Down’ to collect my camera and made our way to the boat.  Today dive sites were ‘South West’ and ‘Shark Island’
We not been to ‘South West’ for some time, so that made a refreshing change.   The visibility was great, such a pretty dive site with hundreds of enenimies carpeting the pinnacle.  This was the only place that we’ve actually seen a whale shark last year but yet again, no sightings today.   I did manage to capture some good footage of a couple of blue spotted sting rays and butterfly fish  but not much else.  The dive went extremely quickly.  Si was having problems with his reg, which was free flowing and swimming against the current it was letting in some water which isn’t good.  We really need to do an equipment spec to sort our regulators out.
After an hour surface interval we arrived at ‘Shark Island’ (named as it looks like a sharks fin comng out of the water)  The visibility to start with was only a couple of meters which was surprising and there was a slight current.  Simon managed to spot a yellow box fish which I filmed for some time and a puffa.  We did hope to find the albino moray that’s lives there but didnt manage to find it.  In the shallows the visibility was slightly better, coming across a large school of barracuda at the end of the dive and a couple of bat fish near the buoy line.  Slightly disappointing dives but it was good to dive somewhere different.
Back on land, we dropped my camera off at Deep Down and then headed home, stopping at ‘Greasy Spoon’ for lunch ..we were both pretty tired, so ate and then had an afternoon snooze.
We didnt fancy venturing out in the evening so popped down to ‘Kanya’ for our usual  Green Thai curries and then lazed infront of the tv and watched  ‘Wolfman’.

The trip to ‘Sail Rock’ today was cancelled so we ended up on the boat to ‘Twins’ & Japanese Gardens’
I took my camera but I didnt get any real footage.  The first dive we went to look for the seahorses but didnt find them and then spent the rest of the dive swimming around the shallow pinnacle.  On the 2nd dive, instead of going to ‘Japs’ we stayed at Twins.  As most people had spotted 2 Eagle rays on the first dive, that was our mission for our 2nd dive.  The only largish thing we saw was a Trigger which seemed to be minding it’s own business but we did find a lovely puffa fish and saw a blue spotted ray hiding under a ledge.  So all in all two pretty okish dives

That evening our friend Debbie was having a birthday meal at ‘Blue Wind’  We both had an Indian curry with garlic naan and samosa, very tasty.   There was a really good turn out and after we went for drinks at ‘Vibe’.    I think we left just before midnight as we were on the morning boat and the last I saw of Debbie, she was pretty smashed.