April Diving In Thailand

Its been an incredible week on Koh Lanta This week. I really love April, it’s when the least amount of visitors arrive as getting near the end of the season. That also means very quiet dive sites too - not so good for dive shop owners, but good for divers!

April really is an amazing time to visit Thailand ( especially when i have heard in my home town back in England they have had 4 inches of snow this week). The weather is super hot with temperatures around 34 degrees. The sea conditions have been outstanding, usually flat seas on the way to the dive sites and underwater visibility exceeding 40 / 50 metres at Hin Daeng. I have never seen it so beautiful with the sunlight illuminating the soft corals. We have had manta rays all season and 2 days ago I didn’t spot a manta but was rewarded by a Devil Ray passing by, as well as spotting a zebra moray eel, juvenile emperor angelfish as big as my fingernail and a barracuda like I have never seen so big before — even with the magnification underwater it was BIG!

Dropping off on the smallest rock at Koh Ha ( it is not visited many times due to everyone wanting to dive the Caves) you soon get to realize the untouched feeling it has when you see the amount of fish and huge soft corals and also - no other divers. It is very rare! We now have common sightings of a sea horse there which sits around 15 metres making it great for every qualified diver to see, even beginners. Harlequin shrimps have been on show and also ghostpipe fish not forgetting nudibranchs and a huge variety of marine fishes.

These 2 Videos were shot on the same day. The turtle is filmed at Koh Ha 1 and was very relaxed whilst he was eating. Unbelievable how close you can get to them.

The Sea Snake was filmed at Koh Ha too. I tried to get as close to the floor as possible and is was great watching it come towards me. No, I didn’t turn the film off because I got scared.

Koh Bida Islands also has been amazing this week, the visability which can change quite a lot here, has been around the same for the last month between 10 and 30 metres. This is one of my favourite dive sites due to the incredible scenery below and above the water. Having the usual encounter with a leopard shark is one of the main reasons for diving here but this week has been great with a few sightings of black tip sharks in the shallows around 5 metres even the snorkelers on the boat have had an encounter with them. Also the amount of trevally action and jacks is enough to keep any diver happy and occupied for an hour along with cuttlefish, tomato clownfish and boxfish.

So don’t forget April is a great time to dive Thailand, great visibilty, calm seas, less divers and the dive staff have learned where all the funky stuff hangs out!