The above photo’s were provided by Leon Webber, who joined us for the wreck hunting expedition to Songkla (reported in January – discovering 2 new wrecks).

These show the amount of gear we have to move around – in this case the trip from Koh Tao down to the southern Thai province took more than one day! The left photo shows Gary & Tim packed in the back of a Song-Thaew leaving Chumphon pier. To the right, the luggage check desk platform at Hat Yai train station – it’s not every day they get to see something like this! This was a lot of gear to move around – for only 3 tec divers! But it’s worth it!

Ex naval submarine engineer, Leon plans to join DJL Diving towards the end of summer, teaching Buddy Evolution CCR Rebreather courses and taking advantage of the great wreck diving throughout the Gulf of Thailand.

Returning from the above DJL Diving Songkla expedition, acting on a tip off Leon decided to make a stopover in Vietnam.

In a fishing town north of Nha Trang a lot of Chinese ‘Blue & White’ pottery is being recovered from two seperate wreck sites. Being dragged up in fishing nets, then hosed down on the pier, much of the pottery is being damaged by the fisherman.

The surviving articles such as those photographed above are being sold for peanuts! No diving is permitted.

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The arrival of DJL Diving’s new 6 metre RIB is a major catalyst for wreck exploration throughout the Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea. With a round-trip range of around 200 miles (under good conditions), this offers us a great low cost option for checking out potential marks.

Even better, we’ve come into possession of more than 900 GPS marks, lining both coasts of Thailand from Bangkok to Malaysia. This really is a holy grail for wreck exploration. We’ve already started applying the marks to our charts, some look very interesting! We now have to go through the painstaking work of cross referencing them versus other sources, plus trawling through war & shipping records to discover what the likely target are. We’re itching to get out and do the diving!

Anyway keep an eye on our expedition calendar for future trips – we’re going to be redeveloping it’s structure to accommodate this major project, and will be soon including the history of the wrecks that we’re chasing.

I’m happy to send out e-mails when we’re put exploratory trips together. If you want to be included in the mailing list, (and get involved in the exploration) send me an e-mail using info@davyjoneslocker.asia (mention that you want to be on the ‘wreck expedition list‘.

Together with ‘Worldwide Dive & Sail’ we’re running a 4.5 day / 4 night liveaboard throughout the Chumphon marine reserve.

The diving is great – great mixed coral formations, many fish and lots of turtles. Last week Nereides Diving owner JP discoverd a ‘field’ of seahorses!

But here is the really good news:

Tim has a new mark from one of our contacts on the mainland. It’s likely we’ll be making the first dive on a suspected WW2 Japanese Wreck, north of Chumphon. We expect it to be in about forty metres of water.

We’ll also be revisiting the wrecks we discovered at the end of 2006.

There are still a few places left on the liveaboard – the cost is 17,000 baht. All levels of diver are welcome, as we can give training onboard. If you want to join send us an e-mail on info@davyjoneslocker.asia. Also check out further details by visiting the June Dive Expedition listing.

Watch this space – if we get a new wreck we’ll let you know on this blog (about 22nd June). Fingers crossed