MY Panunee Liveaboard: Dive Sites Visited

Hard corals are sparse, but pretty. Soft corals are especially pretty as they are wildly-colored. When the current is strong, the soft corals are full and bulbous. Sea fans are less common than they used to be, but still very pretty and healthy and multicolored. Fish life is abundant, with schools of jacks and snappers charging through clouds of glassfish that hover around large fan corals and barrel sponges. This is a favorite manta spot on ridge and in the bay. On deeper dives, rays and leopard sharks are seen. Sometimes nurse sharks on the northern bommies. If swell running, water cascades through an opening from the other side of the ridge, creating large clouds of bubbles that come surging down to greet you during your safety stop.

Good hard and soft corals, seawhips, sponges, crinoids, lyre coral, anemones, everything. A bit like Richelieu Rock, but in so many ways, so much better. The area is so big, it can be dived for several days. There are several dive sites here, some breaking the surface, some underwater. Nearly every square meter is riddled with crevices, nooks and crannies, providing shelter and holdfasts for an enormous volume of fish and invertebrate life. Schools of anchovies and fusiliers dash about avoiding the jacks and bonitos that harass them. In the sand, tube anemones, burrowing sea cucumbers, and varieties of sea stars, and large brown sea anemones serving as hosts for eggshell shrimp, as well as Sebae clownfish. On the reef, hawkfish, gorgonian crabs, basket stars (rarely seen in Thailand), jewel-box urchins, cuttlefish, squid, and cowries. Finally, to marble rays, false and true stonefish, flatheads, Schultz’s pipefish, badger clingfish, tiger-tail sea horses and numerous species of morays. This is also one of the better places to see exotic creatures like harlequin shrimp and harlequin ghost pipefish. Wow. Finally, there is a canyon to the west of the main island which sometimes harbors gray reef sharks, and often you'll find tawny nurse sharks in one of the small caves.

Leopard and white-tip reef sharks inhabit the reef’s outer perimeter, usually in the sandy areas. If the currents are reasonable, swimming deeper will put you in a thick forest of sea fans on the north side. This site tends to attract a wide range of mid-water predators, including rainbow runners, bonito, queenfish, and lots of pickhandle and great barracudas and schooling triggerfish. Soft corals are pretty like they are in Similan. They are visually interesting dive sites, stunning with their rocky boulders and weird topography.

One of the deepest dive sites we have in Myanmar, the water depth around the rock gets to 60m very fast on all four sides. Dense mosaic of small soft corals, orange cup coral and feather stars. Colonies of small, tiger-striped anemones cling to fan corals and gorgonian skeletons; these are seldom seen outside of the Mergui Archipelago. Reef fish are also abundant, especially black-spotted puffers, scorpionfish, spotted hawkfish and blue-ring angelfish and schooling fish like pinjalo snapper and jacks. Really huge giant morays are common as are the jeweled, zebra, fimbriated and white-eyed. It is a good place for sharks and rays, but they are usually very deep, beyond the limits the average diver is trained for. Sometimes you'll see them in the distant blue, but they rarely come close to a diver unless you're below 35m. This is one of the better places to see manta rays. If they are around, they are everywhere as they circle the rock, dancing about.

The most striking natural feature here is a tremendous number of huge, undamaged orange fan corals, mostly below 30m. There are rows and rows of them. Blue-ring angelfish, lionfish and coral trout are among the most common reef fish, in addition to mid-water species like jacks, barracudas and batfish. Leopard sharks are very common here, and almost the only place you see them in Mergui for some reason. They lie in the sand below the main rock, usually in the canyons and are surrounded by huge sea fans. It's quite spectacular. Some people don't love this dive as the currents can be stronger, but if you like currents, you'll love this dive.

Huge fields of orange fan corals, starting at about 30m and continuing to 39m and deeper. A large tunnel running completely through the island, in addition to several smaller caverns and a huge archway. The cavern has species of crabs and shrimp, murex and cowry shells, bigeye snapper and robust fusiliers, along with spiny lobsters. Sometimes tawny nurse sharks lie on the cavern floor. They eat the lobsters so don't take them! Reef fish include blue-ring angelfish, red emperor snapper, red-bar anthias and many varieties of moray eels. Invertebrates include nudibranchs, shellfish, feather stars, anemones and hermit crabs. Even rarities like clawed reef lobsters, harlequin shrimp and frogfish are seen.

The Burma Banks are a series of large underwater flat-topped sea-mounts that lie approximately 180 kilometers (100 nautical miles) northwest of the Similan Islands. The banks' surrounding water is over 350 meters deep and large areas rise to within the depth limits of recreational scuba diving. The name derives from the fact that this 1,500 square kilometer area lies within the exclusive economic zone of Burma. The banks offer some exciting, stimulating diving, but since this is true open-ocean diving, they certainly are not for everyone.

These mountains rise very gradually from the depths and are covered with hard coral growth and large patches of sand. Although the huge plate corals (some of these 'plates' could seat all the knights of the round table easily) are in many areas fantastic, that is not the reason for traveling so far out to sea. The reason is for different types of environments not found in Thailand or in the Mergui Archipelago proper.

The most fantastic spot in the Andaman Sea is an extinct volcano. Walls drop to over 700 meters here as well—just off the shoreline—but the difference between this volcano and Barren Island is that here everything is alive and healthy. This is truly a diver’s paradise.

Imagine four-meter tall barrel sponges. Sea fans are twice as large as they are in the Similan Islands. Monstrous dog-toothed tuna—one animal we saw was almost three meters long—cruise the walls and the shallower reef tops. The best part of our first trip to the area was the herds of mobula and manta rays that visited us on every dive—both in shallow and deep water. In four days we saw at least 50 of these rays and our first afternoon there we spent snorkeling with a group of 20 animals while they fed on the surface.

Mantas and mobula are everywhere you go, even in shallow water right up to the beaches. No one knows why there are so many here, but the local soldiers who were stationed at the island said that they stay all year-round.

Barren Island is a volcanic island, and a very active one at that, as it erupts on a regular basis. The eruptions cover almost everything underwater and above with thick layers of black sand, creating an unusual landscape to explore. The southern side of the island has a deep wall down to over 700 meters of depth, and this drop-off is almost vertical. The northern side of the island slopes more gently, but to equally great depths.

Although the layers of volcanic sand and lava killed most of the coral, dogtooth tunas, unbelievably large great barracuda, and sharks swim along its black walls. About the only life growing on the walls are white hydroids, which stings a bit when touched. Hammerhead sharks cruise through here, as well as very large silvertip sharks, gray reef sharks, and white tip reef sharks. Mostly the sharks are seen on very deep dives of over 50m or 200ft, well beyond the abilities of most recreational divers.

On the gentle slope of the northern area, you can still see enormous sea fans which were half-buried by black volcanic sand but still alive and thriving. The contrast between the orange sea fans and the black sand is dramatic and something you don’t see often. It is also very interesting to swim over huge areas of sand surrounded by pitch-black vertical walls. It’s almost as if you’re swimming over a huge black sand beach.
Visibility can exceed 50 meters here, and even though there is not much coral left, the contrasting vivid colors of bright fish against the jet-black walls is almost psychedelic.

The dive area is one of the easiest to access as it lies close to Havelock Island. At first it doesn't seem much of a dive, as the coral is shallow and sparse and most of the small hill which rises up from the depths, is just sand. However, the fish life makes it very interesting. When we first explored the area, we went deeper to see the “big stuff” but soon realized that just sitting in one spot was the best way to dive here. We sat for over one-hour at about eight-meters and just watched the fish circle. We had a little wind-up toy of a white tip reef shark, just under 60 centimeters long, who would swim up to our masks, and then away for a few minutes, and back to us again. The fish overcame their shyness very quickly and soon we were surrounded by thousands of them, of all sizes and species. This is also one of the best snorkeling sites in the Andamans, although you must swim the whole time as there is no bottom to stand on.

The dive schools in the Andamans are almost all located in the Ritchies Archipelago and in particular, Havelock Island. There are now at least five dive centers here, but working and living in the Andamans is difficult and the bureaucracy unimaginable, so don't except this information to be current when you read it. The dive centers have found a lot of good dive sites in the area, but the offshore sites that they cannot reach are still the best in the Andamans. However, everything from diving in mangrove areas with clear water, pinnacles, sandy shoals, channels between islands, and even diving with swimming elephants is possible. For more information, please visit Dive India's website. They have a reputable dive center and have been there for some years.

Although not one of the best sites in the Andamans, it is visited by virtually every dive boat as it’s on the way from Phuket to Port Blair where you must check in prior to exploring either north or south. On the chart, the dive site appears to be very large, but most of the area which lies in depths friendly to divers is sand. Flat Rock, which prominently protrudes from the water, is the only place to dive.

The waters just around it are very shallow, but you can get out to a depth of 15 meters or so if you venture over the sand. Like most places in the Andaman Islands, the fish life is the attraction here. There are almost no corals, hard or soft. But, swim around the area in 10 meters of water or less, and you’re likely to run into almost every kind of tropical pelagic fish imaginable. Sharks, including great hammerheads are seen often. Huge bumphead parrotfish and Napoleon wrasse patrol the area and are not shy around divers.

Passage Island features an offshore pinnacle appropriately called by many, Fish Rock, where almost every kind of pelagic fish can be seen in great numbers. The currents here can be vicious, but the rewards are enormous.

The diving is best when the current is running strong, as fish are feeding during this time. Thus, the best way to dive the rock is by jumping in up current and descend rapidly down to 20 meters or so. Then, grab onto a rock, hold on, and watch the show. Keep your eyes on the deeper blue water and the reef edge where the rock meets the sand, and often you'll see gray reef sharks attacking rainbow runners and dogtooth tuna. Large eagle rays patrol the plankton rich waters completely at ease in the strong currents. Groupers larger than most men cruise the reef unafraid of divers—mainly because they've never seen a diver before. Huge bumphead parrotfish go by in schools of 20 or more. Of course if you get tired of this, you can always look for small animals on the reef and the varieties are unbelievable. However, swimming along the reef when the current is running strong is extremely exhausting, so most divers are happy just to sit in one place.

There are not a lot of other dive sites in the area, so during a trip you are likely to visit this site many times. It’s not a huge site, but there is certainly a lot to see, and a lot of action.