This morning, we took advantage of the stunning diving conditions and headed out for a spot of wreck hunting. Divemaster internship trainees James [UK], Christian [AUS], Keanoush [IRAN] & Luke [UK] joined instructors Tim, Alex & Gary searching for a new wreck approximately 30 miles west of Koh Tao.

Image: Perfect scuba diving conditions off Koh Tao, Thailand

 

Image: From left to right, PADI Divemaster Internship students Keanoush, James, Christian & Luke pose in front of the DJL Diving RIB, ready for a day of wreck hunting!

The sea state couldn’t have been better – zero wind so no waves. Even with the rib fully loaded we were hitting over 30 knots without pushing the revs beyond 5000 rpm.

We departed very early to reach the target during slack current. With no cloud cover we were obviously going to catch a lot of sun throughout the day, so the SPF 50 was slapped on [as you'll see from Keanoush in the photo above].

The area we were looking at has war reports for 4 WW2 Japanese wrecks, sunk in a very small area. Our marks from local fisherman were very scattered – the best was two independant marks lining up very closely so that constituted our primary target for this trip.

 

Image:  The gas platform makes a spectacular backdrop for our sonar searches of the seabed

More than 30 nautical miles west of Koh Tao we reached the target, running a sonar search on the gps mark. On the horizon there was an oil platform making an interesting back-drop.

Image: The guys watch the sonar as Tim manouvers the dive boat around the mark.

Since we had headed towards the Thai mainland, the depth was relatively shallow – just 35 metres on the bottom so within recreational diving depth range. After a period of searching, the sonar showed lots of fish life and eventually a mound on the bottom indicating that there is something down there…  

 

Image: The sonar showing a strong return from something rising up from the seabed at 35 metres.

We dropped the shot and sent in the first wave of divers. Below 20 metres depth, visibility was apauling – approx 0.5 metres at best. We secured a reel to the shot line and ran a circular search in the low vis environment. The shot wasn’t great – we saw some scattered debris but didn’t hit a wreck or pinnacle, and saw very few fish.

Probably the biggest event of the dive was a venomous puncture wound in the finger, likely the result of a scorpion fish which quickly induced ’sausage finger’ swelling [which quickly subsided].

 

Image: Ouch! A swollen finger resulting from a punture wound from a scorpion fish!

Using the first shot as a reference, we ran further sonar searches from the RIB and dropped a second shot line. In the low vis the weighted shot would have to be very accurate to locate the anomaly.

Our second and third waves of divers saw large schools of barracudas and more scattered debris on the bottom. The return we saw on the sonar screen indicated that there should be a structure standing 4 - 5 metres proud of the seabed, but in such poor visibility our dives failed to locate it.

  

 Image: Christian helps Alex & James back onto the dive boat

We’ll try again next week – hopefully more luck then!