We did a morning dive at Koh Tachai before our boat trip to Koh Bon and back to Khao Lak. Koh Bon’s dive was the most “bland” of them all, with large sand banks, and everything spread out and fairly lifeless (for Similan at least). But it was also probably the most clear and relaxing dive, and not a bad way to finish the trip. Thirteen dives in four days was an amazing experience. Having a friend able to travel with me and enjoy it made it even better.
I’ll happily go on another liveaboard. Next time, I bring neoprene socks, I’m more careful with my equipment, maybe I actually take a nap or a dive off, and definitely I bring a buddy again. The boat ride back was much longer than here, as it was the liveaboard and not a speed boat taking us from the islands to the shore, but they have to restock some time, and get their one day off before heading out again!
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.
Three dives at one site was not quite what I expected, but the boat team decided to hope for some large fish sightings, and this was a good location for it. Spoiler alert: we saw nothing, but I don’t mind the opportunity to see a whale shark, or something similar. The dives ranged from 75 to 94 feet down, but had no current, and a very clear “swim to depth, then meander slowly upwards for 45-55 minutes” profile. I was usually the first one out of air, and always felt guilty, but in retrospect, a 45 minute dive that hit a depth of 94 feet is not “horrible air consumption,” we just had someone in our group still at a half a tank when I’d be nearly empty.
Koh Bon Bay is a fairly large area with multiple different regions to dive through. One group did see a manta ray, but generally we had a pretty “normal” reef dive with plenty of life and areas to view. The life was quite reminiscent of my first dives in Thailand, but this time with great visibility. Anemones and clown fish, colorful reefs, parrotfish, huge reef shelfs, and a great amount of life. What was nice was getting into a rhythm: dive, eat, relax, dive again. Since we did Koh Tachai for our next two night dives, I’ll talk about that in the post for day 3.
Let me just say, that dive made this entire trip to Kona worth it. Seven massive rays, flying around, brushing (or knocking into) the top of our heads, twirling, dancing, feeding… it was absolutely amazing. The pictures and video just don’t do it justice. While I can’t say it’s my best dive ever, it was amazingly unique, wonderful, and an astounding experience.
The videos don’t do justice to the experience. The lighting is a bit off, and the clips range from short to long, but they’re absolutely worth visiting. The dive just reinforced to me why I like Jack’s. Their crew are great, with a great attitude, the dives they choose are wonderful, and I can’t understate that anyone going into Kona NEEDS to do one of these dives.
Highlights: Back in a more pleasant dive environment, and the Javanese Lowlights: How can you not see ANY eels at a site called eel cove?
The Dive
Josh and I went out on this, my thirty-something dive, back again with Jack’s Diving Locker, my favorite charter I’ve used over the past few years. As always, the boat was amazingly clean and nice, the crew was laid back and fun, and the location, well, I came back to Kona for a reason, ya?
The first site we dove was called Pipe Dreams. As you can see by the album cover, it’s an area where the energy lab placed some large pipes to do research, and in this case, one giant pipe that they laid just to see how well pipe held up in the environment. This pipe is the only remaining segment from that experiment, and is, as always, teeming with life. The neatest part is that insite, a giant Javanese Eel was hanging out.. and I do mean giant. Probably two to three feet in diameter. It spooked and swam away, just as I was going to take a picture, but it was an amazing sight.
Also spectacular on the first dive was my first octopus sighting. I didn’t get a good look, as it had wedged itself under a rock, but the blinking eye and the one look at the suckers on its tentacles were enough to make me smile in memory. Other than that, what this dive gave me was a remembrance of why I loved Kona so much, the color, and life well exceed the other dive vacations I’ve taken.
The second dive, at “Eel Cove” was quite the disappointment. Our DM Shep mentioned that the last time he dove the site, he saw no less than eight different species of eel, and that I might get to once again see a dragon eel (which I’ve seen now twice, and are quite beautiful). The grand total at the end of the dive for eel sightings were a whopping zero.
That’s right, no eels in eel cove, at least for us. I did get a great shot of a pair of lizardfish, had fun getting swarmed a few times by schools of raccoon butterflyfish hoping that I scare away the parent fish on guard over their egg nests, and got to see a couple of beautiful cornetfish and trumpetfish. So in honesty, a good dive, only disappointing in the expectation of numerous eel.
Molokini was a huge disappointment. The center of the crater is so over-dove, that there was very remaining coral and life. Yes, I’m excited that I got to see a 5-6′ black-tipped reef shark, and many young spotted boxfish, but the dive was also dominated by a beginner who breathed so heavily he ran out of air quickly, and the second dive was cut short while I still had 700psi to go, getting pulled out so the operator could depart.
We did see a gray reef shark and a white-tipped reef shark on the second dive, and an unusual box-fish with spots top and bottom, white stripes at the corners, and black sides. But overall I will not be visiting Molokini again, at least not the inside of the crater.
One other thing about diving with the old timers, they weren’t particularly fond of cutting a dive short due to newbie divers. Our surface time was spent on learning to breathe. Lessons about how, holding your breath and not actively exhaling are two different things, yoga type breathing, and more. This showed in our 56 minute and 66 minute bottom times, with massive depth to start.
The first dive was impressive with the amount of ocean life. Triggers, hybrid butterflies, tangs, and more. While the second dive, I learned lessons on dive plan management, and extending bottom time through a long, shallow finish after a deep start.
There is a massive difference between Jack’s beautiful boats, and young energetic dive masters, and a dive operated by seasoned vetarans.
One passenger on the boat publishes the photo books of Hawai’ian fish, and used Dive Makai exclusively to find particular species. “I’d like to get a shot of XX” “Oh, we know of one that’s hanging out at this dive site, we’ve named him Ed”
The first site had amazing sea life, the most aquatic life of any of the dives this trip, including a huge eel named “Satan”, a psychedelic wrasse and his harem, and more. We visited one of the arches, and then went down to the drop-off.
The second site had two very large eel, a fried egg nudibranch, leaf fish, and many more.
My first tropical dives since being certified. Jack’s impressed me with the quality of their boats and service. While this log is coming almost two decades later, I do recall with fondness the service from Jack’s, enough so that subsequent trips, they were my go-to provider (and still are).
As a newbie, all the basics of butterfly fish, parrot fish, tangs, and everything else that dominates the Hawai’ian sea life were enough to keep me satisfied. But the first dive included a great frog fish sighting (aka “living playdough”), and some amazing diversity.
The second dive site, regardless of the name, had no turtle sightings. Yet, many eels, and a triton shell being brought to a crown of thorns for feeding, were fascinating sights.
Less than thirty days from being certified, Amy and I decided to make a quick trip down to San Diego to begin our diving adventures. Dive Adventures took boat trips from San Diego out to Coronados, so we booked a charter, and made our first weekend dive plans.
Just a few words can describe this trip. Diesel. Vomit. Choppy. Abrupt.
The diesel fumes from the boat, mixed with the serious chop, led to my first test of SCUBA training… when down at the bottom, vomit through your regulator. Yup. It works. The 24 pounds on the 14 mil of wetsuit worked perfectly, and I had no issues once I was down underwater. Except… the dives were pretty short, cut short by being pulled out of the water. 40-50 feet of depth, nearly a third of the tank left, seeing not a lot in the way of ocean life or views, this was definitely a disappointment of a trip. Definitely wouldn’t recommend the charter, nor the dive, in general.
