| Operator | Site | Dive | Depth | Bottom Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loma Diving - MV Bavaria | Richelieu Rock | 73 | 94.4 | 40 minutes |
| Richelieu Rock | 74 | 76.2 | 40 minutes | |
| Koh Tachai, North Reef | 75 | 60.0 | 52 minutes | |
| Koh Tachai Reef | 76 | 59.5 | 40 minutes |
Richelieu Rock is considered one of the top dive sites in the world. When we arrived, it was entirely underwater: it’s a pinnacle that at high tide is under the water surface. The pinnacles extend down about 100 feet below the surface, and has more life than I’ve ever seen at any dive site in my life. Our plan on arriving was to dive three dives at Richelieu Rock, before heading elsewhere for the night dive.
Josh was feeling a bit under-rested, so skipped the first dive of the day. There were a few other boats moored there in the morning, so I expected quite a busy dive site, and I was right. Our plan on dive one was to extend down, then head towards the southwestern pinnacles for a chance to spot some large pelagic life.
These were the deepest dives we did, the only time I was getting close to NDL limits, and having to check my computer often. Diving Nitrox absolutely made NDL much less of an issue, even with our previous dives starting deep, but we spent most of our time here in the 60 to 80 foot range, especially since the surface currents were so rough. I was greatful for my Shearwater, as it’s quite the amazing piece of dive tech. I know I barely scratch the surface of what it’s capable of, but it is fantastic.
Visibility was not good in a lot of areas, the currents were moderately hard. Add in the multiple large groups of divers, and it was a fairly tough pair of dives. I’m very glad we stopped here, but we called it quits after two dives and moved back to Tachai Reef, and that was a great call.
One of the coolest things I did see was an octopus squeezing around within its hole. But the sheer overabundance of life was what made this site an amazing pair of dives. Josh did come join the second dive, so I’m glad he got to see it before we left the area. The low point of this dive was flooding my lights. I was in a hurry to get going this morning and forgot to put the water caps over the charging ports. Even after two days of trying to clean and dry them, they were toast, and my biggest concern was safety with the wet large batteries.
Tachai Reef and Night Dive
This was the second time we went out to Tachai for a night dive, so I’ll skip the third dive, and just talk about what we saw at night. While I can’t give you an exact number, while the first night had tons of hunting morays, both visits to this site had tons of hunting black tip reef sharks. Five, six, ten? No way to know for sure, as they loop around and come back to you. But I do know it was more than four, because that’s the amount I saw at the same time.
You didn’t really need to swim around looking for the sharks, nor chase after them. They’d eventually come up to the lights, do a circle around you, then take off. This lasted the entire time we were down. Sometimes twenty or thirty feet from you, sometimes swimming right underneath you. It was the most active shark experience I’ve had since the aquarium dive.