We are having a break from fishing and concentrating on our diving. We are concentrating on the shore diving cos it is cheap!! As in £1 a dive.....and we are really enjoying the shore marks this year as there seems such a lot of fish life around not to mention all sorts of interesting crustacea. Here is our recently Open Water Certificed PADI diver, Richard Spracklen from Wool practicing his hovering technique....and jolly good too!
I have dived the Kata area of Phuket quite a bit now over the past 10 years but today's dive was the best ever. It was High Water so we started our dive off by going over the Kata reef rather than diving parallel to it. The reef is pretty shallow and I am mindful of the total lack of regard jet skiers have for anyone as well as the possibility of being hit by a longtail boat propellor. New divers often expres concern about being bitten or stung by marine life....believe me there is MUCH more chance of being hurt by crazy people doing stupid things in 'boats' than by any sea creatures.
Today we very very lucky to see a turtle emerge from the reef right between my legs! It is only the second time I have seen a turtle from this particular area.
This reef is jammed backed with fish life. This year the visibilty is no-where near as good as it has been in the past but this seems to have enourage even more fish into the area. Today we found loads of Dancing Shrimps....we often find a few amongst the rocks but everywhere seemed alive with them today.
And found another one of these amazingly beautiful shrimps. I last found one about three years ago....so deighted to stumble across another today.
There are a number of concrete obrstructions placed into the sea near the coral reef to encourage the fish population to increase....it is certainly working. It is actually difficult to see the concrete frames as there are so many fish all around them.
And so many giant puffer fish resting on the sandy bottom protecting their newly formed nests or hovering in the current above the obstructions.
We were amazed at how many batfish we saw and how friendly they are. We just rested quietly on the sea-bed and the fish came to us.
Here's Richard with a batfish coming to check him out.
Lots of giant puffer fish swimmimng around today.
Anyhow....it was a wonderful dive. I think we have been spoilt this year with the outstanding fishing and the wonderful diving. This has been the best winter 'season' to date since setting up this Thai House project in 2008. There have been lots of great people here and we have had some really enjoyable times.
Next month we are concentrating on Dive Liveaboards where we stay at sea for a few days and dive up to 4 times a day around the amazing Similan Islands...which is an unmissable experience. I hope more of my guests will be able to join me on these trips as more are getting their PADI Certificates now which are required in order to dive from the PADI vessels.
If any of you reading want to know more about getting qualified etc etc...please just email me (pwhittall@aol.com) or message me via Facebook and I will explain how to go about it. When you experience a dive like today, you just wish everyone could share the experience. Paddling back to the holiday swimmers close to the beach, I just wondered if they could just imagine the amazing underwater world that was so close to them. One couple asked me what it was like 'out there' and couldn't believe it when I told them what we'd seen....and then came the inevitable question...'are there any sharks out there? We couldn't ever go diving because we are so frightened.'
Ah well....back to the second paragraph, I believe.
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