Phuket Diving, Day 3

Today it just kept getting better. The dive outing consisted of just 2 dives, and that was all we needed to totally overwhelm us. The visibility was not the best and it didn't even matter. In the shallower depths, the sun provided enough light to cut through most of it and everywhere you looked there was some creature that we had never seen before. I don't even know where to start. My camera is getting closer to taking shots that I want, but now it is up to me to learn it a little more and get the settings right. We hit two dive sites very close together, Shark Point and Anemone Reef. It was a one and a half hour stroll out there at 7 knots in the big yellow Excalibur II. When we got there the two sites were 300m from each other. How convienent! The first site of Shark Point gets one word to describe it and it's not sharks. It's PURPLE! The purple soft corals were truly astonishing! There was a little current making photos difficult. The sea life was abundant and our guide Martin has great eyes for the weird and different. He would show us all sorts of things hiding in the rocks. We were able to see things that I only saw on TV nature shows.

 

The second location of Anemone Reef was (as you expected it) full of anemones. And with anemones,comes the clown fish. This was my time to try to nail a good shot of those little guys.

The three days of diving with Sea Bees had to come to an end. We totally lucked out with great weather, a good guide, and small numbers of people on the boat. This is the rainy season for this side of Thailand and for us to luck out like this is very special. The 1.5 hour ride back was nice giving us plenty of time to fill out the log books and chat with Martin a little bit. He has a great life story and is living it up as a dive guide with his girlfriend that is in the business with him. We traded contact info and maybe sometime we will see him in the Maldives doing what he does best. Thanks for the wonderful 3 days!