Prapaht Sea Sports Club, Phuket Thailand Diving Day Trips

A short trip by long-tail boat (Thai traditional wooden boat) from Patong Beach takes you to a variety of dive sites on the west coast of Phuket. The dive sites have many types of hard and soft corals, colorful fishes and marine life.

Only 40 minutes south of Phuket island by boat lies Coral Island, again this dive site has many types of hard and soft corals, colorful reefs and marine life.

Shark Point is named because it is a favourite sleeping spot for leopard sharks, sting rays, and moray eels. If you are lucky, sometimes whale sharks are sighted in this area.

Koh Doc Mai is a limestone island that rises vertically from the seabed. Some say it looks like a muffin with the jungle clad top flowing out over the sheer cliffs.

Although the visibility at this site is generally not as good as others, this dive is noted for the variety of reef fish and as such you might be lucky enough to encounter Leopard Sharks, Moray Eels, Octopus and Turtles. The east-side of the island consists of a vibrant garden of yellow tube corals as well as two small caverns.

Koh Doc Mai is located on the way to Shark Point and offers an interesting alternative to the pinnacle dives as it is one of the best wall dives in the area.

The dive is usually included as the second dive on many of the daytrips to Shark Point and/or Anemone Reef.

Racha Yai, about one hour south of Phuket, is a beautiful tropical island with plenty of good hard coral reefs, colourful shallow water coral gardens, and a great opportunity for some enjoyable drift diving. There are several excellent dive sites suitable for the beginner and for snorkelling, with depths from 2-20m, making this island a favourite destination for everyone.

Racha Noi, another 45 minutes south of Racha Yai, offers some truly spectacular dive sites with giant underwater boulders, great visibility and scenery almost like the Similan Islands. Currents here can be strong, and the dives are recommended for advanced divers only. There is deep water around the island, so you often see large pelagic visitors such as barracudas, eagle rays, marbled stingrays and there is a chance of encounters with manta rays.

Phi Phi Islands are located 48 kms southeast of Phuket and can be reached by express boat in 1 hour 20 minutes. These islands offer a large variety of dive sites including cave and mini wall dives. There is a large variety of marine life including leopard sharks, eagle rays, sting rays, moray eels, turtles, octopuses...

On May 4th 1997 King Cruiser, an 85m catamaran ferry, strayed off course and hit Anemone Reef ripping one of her twin hulls open. It sunk within one hour, thankfully with no loss of life. With it's multiple decks, great open passages and depths between 12 and 30 meters (40 to 100 feet) the King Cruiser is an ideal wreck dive site for all divers. Schools of snappers and yellowtail barracuda swarm over the wreck, sheltering from the currents. Lionfish, scorpionfish and porcupinefish are other notable residents.

Anemone Reef This unique dive-site is a huge lime-stone pinnacle that soars 30 meters up from the ocean floor to sit 4 meters beneath the surface where it abruptly ends and drops back to a sandy bottom.

The barely submerged reef is a well-known shipping hazard (see King Cruiser Wreck) and is located less than a mile north of Shark Point. The Thai name for this site is Hin Jom which means underwater rock and although not as colorful as Shark Point, the site is famous for its vast fields of sea anemones that cling to every conceivable surface and swing and sway with the current.

The profusion of sea anemones and the nutrient-rich water are a magnet to a constant parade of reef fish seeking fod and shelter. Enormous schools of tropicals, snappers, groupers and colorful clown fish, along with larger game-fish like tuna and barracuda as well as the occasional leopard shark and be seen here.