Ao Nang - Dives 1 & 2

First dive day! Up and waiting for pickup at 7:15, today I was headed about 45 minutes out on the boat between Phuket and Krabi to two sites in Shark Point Marine Sanctuary.

Aqua Vision, the dive company I booked with, was fantastic! Very safe, very professional, very welcoming, and a veritable UN of languages. And in another random coincidence on this trip, my dive guide for today is also from Calgary... small world!

I will mention that I kind of love my GoPro because it's cheap, small, indestructible, and wi-fi enabled. But it's not ideal for underwater photography as there is no viewing screen (so you have no idea what you're taking pictures of), there is no focal adjust (so unless you have the focal range memorized and have impeccable control of yourself while fighting currents and buoyancy, you're often too far or too close to your subject), and switching between modes takes a few solid button presses (meaning your subject is gone between switching from burst photo to video). I think it's about time I invested in a real dive housing for a real quality camera and save GP for fun adventure times on dry land.

I digress...

The first dive site was Anemone Reef. They weren't the greatest conditions for diving - the current was quite strong at times and a bunch of illegal trolling boats had sent sediment swirling up - but it was still a great experience.

Clown fish

Lion fish

Grouper

And for the first time in 35 dives I saw a seahorse! Here is a sub-par video taken on my GoPro because I mostly missed the target.

I also saw a big school of barracuda, a yellow tiger eel, and a huge moray eel. The moray must have been at least two metres long and 30 cm wide.

The next site was Shark Point. As they rarely see sharks here, the name has more to do with the rock formation than the inhabitants. I really enjoyed seeing the variations of species I was familiar with as well as seeing new ones.

Lionfish - invasive species

Can you spot the rock fish?

Cutey spotted yellow boxfish

A Crown of Thorns Sea Star - an invasive and damaging species

Sea urchins on the move

Three eels chasing fishies around

Generally, I'm the one annoying nature, but this time around a very instistent and annoying remora decided that my slow, white legs looked enticingly like a shark's belly and made it his mission to stick to me. It's not damaging or painful, but it is startling and annoying to have some squirmy fish with a velcro patch on its head try to stick to you. Go away you scratchy little thing!

When I got back to the resort, the skies opened up and it began pouring. Then I discovered we had a little waterlogged guest on the balcony. This little soaking bird hung out and shook dry and stole our snacks. Because of his wiggly butt dance, we named him Little Ken in honour of our tour guide Ken and his hilarious butt dance.

You shake those tail feathers, Lil' Ken.

On the way to watch the sunset over the beach and find some dinner, we saw a large snail on the move across the pathway. I was actually surprised at how quick the snail was rolling along, especially for a snail.

The tide in Ao Nang is pretty impressive. It has to be at least two metres difference throughout the day. The speed or force of the tide leaves little rivers in the sand.

This is the time to dig for clams apparently. We saw dozens of people out with knives or spatulas digging up clams and crabs. Later, we saw and ate them at the beach adjacent restaurants. Yum!