PHUKET DIVING PARADISE
| Phuket is the gateway to the best diving in Thailand. The island is the place from which you can either take a liveboard trip up Thailand's west coast to best dive sites of the Andaman Sea or you can stay in one of the many Phuket hotels and take shorter diving day trips to some of the other great local Phuket dive sites.
For families, experienced divers and backpackers, Phuket has long been the Number 1 diving destination in Thailand and it provides a great base for doing PADI courses, diving the local sites via daytrips or setting out on a liveaboard adventure to the Similans. |
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Phuket Dive Sites |
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Koh Racha Yai : |
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Nice and easy diving, with the east coast being the best; visibility normally around 20 - 25m, lots of coral, loads of small fish, minimal currents. Ideal for everyone who wants a relaxing couple of dives. There are boats going here every day. Most commonly used for students doing beginners courses, but you can get some nice dives here if you dive a little deeper. |
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The max depth is really only about 24m unless you like sand. I have dived to about 33m here. All the usual reef fish are here, with regular octopus, lionfish, scorpionfish, cuttlefish, blue spotted stingrays, puffers, butterflyfish...the list goes on. Not the most exciting scuba diving in Phuket but always what I would class a "nice" dive. |
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Shark Point |
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| From the name you may get the impression the site is crawling with sharks - not really, though leopard sharks are commonly seen, especially in the low season. Shark Point is a beautiful place to dive; colourful soft corals, fan corals, oodles of marine life and it remains the only place ever where I saw a dolphin during a dive. | ||
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The dive site consists of several pinnacles. The largest breaks the surface, the second is at 5m, then the rest are smaller. |
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Anemone Reef |
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Near Shark Point you have Anemone Reef, which was hit by the King Cruiser in 1997. This site is one pinnacle, all under water, starting at about 5m. The top few meters are carpeted with anemones, and all over the site is soft coral. Some people prefer it to Shark Point. To me they are pretty similar. |
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King Cruiser Wreck |
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| Sank in 1997, depth is from 15 - 32m, currents can be strong. Not a beginners dive, and conditions are highly variable. Visibility can be 5m, can be 20m. If you get a good day, its a great dive. | ||
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Wreck is covered in marine life. Lots of lionfish and scorpionfish (don't put your hands down!), schools of snapper hanging around. The wreck has been slowly deteriorating since it sank. Now not possible to penetrate the car deck, but it's the only wreck nearby (unless you are Trimix trained), and there are boats here every day, doing trips combined with 1 or 2 of the other sites. | |
Koh Doc Mai |
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| This is a real "love it or hate it" kind of site. You dive along a wall with depths down to 28m in places, and to get the most of the site, especially when vis is low, you need to keep your nose to the wall. All kinds of things to see from seahorses to little moray eels to cleaner shrimps and nudibranchs. | ||
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When vis is good it IS truly spectacular. There are a couple of small caverns at the base of the wall too. I saw mating leopard sharks here one time, which was great. It's almost always the final dive of the day on the way back to Phuket from the wreck. You can see this island anytime you take a ferry from Phuket to Phi Phi - a small limestone island rising straight up from the sea. | |
| Original article can be found here: Diving in Phuket by Jamie Monk | ||
