Frogfish and pipefish and eels, oh my! (Feb. 20/09 - Similan Islands, Thailand)

Our sunrise dive at 7am this morning was at East of Eden, a beautiful site on the opposite side of the island from West of Eden yesterday. The sloping sand bottom was punctuated with large coral bommies, so we made our way down to almost 100 feet to a particular spot where special critters were known to hang out. Sure enough, we found a small black frogfish almost indistinguishable from the surrounding coral, an awesome little ornate ghost pipefish hanging out on a soft coral, a vibrant orange and black nudibranch, a dwarf oscillated lionfish (rare apparently!), and an incredibly tiny little lionfish, less than about an inch long! We circled around the bommies as we headed for shallower water, loving the forests of neon soft corals, massive orange sea fans 6 or 8 feet across, bright anemones hosting cute little anemonefish, a yellow juvenile boxfish (looks like a poka dotted yellow box with a tail!), two moray eels, and even a small octopus. Hard corals dominated the shallow reef gardens, and then we heard the boat moor above us just in time for the end of yet another fabulous dive. And all before 8am!

(this is a frogfish!)
After breakfast, we did a live drop into one of the Similans' notorious divesites - Elephant Head Rock. Between islands #7 and 8, three rounded rocks outcrop from the Andaman Sea that are said to resemble the head of an elephant (you'd have to squint pretty hard to see that!). Underwater, the big smooth rocks form steep walls and flat sloping tops, where sporadic corals cling and reef fish hang out. The current was pretty strong against us as we rounded the southern side of the rocks, so strong that we could barely swim against it. On the overhanging wall of a rock face, we found a tiny pair of mating "roboastra arika" nudibranchs, black with bold stripes of orange, green, and red. We cruised through a couple swim-throughs, across the open water to a nearby wall, and eventually up onto the sloping flank of the main elephant rock. A black-tipped reef shark cruised along the slope ahead of us, and several giant trevally raced by, probably to avoid becoming lunch!

Let's see... sleep, eat, dive, eat, dive... next step must be lunch! Then we set off north, leaving the Similan Islands behind, bound for the little island of Koh Bon, a few miles north of Similan Island #9. A ridge off the west side is a popular spot for manta rays to hang around at both to find food and to be cleaned by the resident cleaner fish. We swam around, hoping for some action, but today just wasn't to be our day. It was a beautiful dive nonetheless, with carpets of small soft corals blanketing the walls and thousands of fish of all sorts milling around. We came upon three giant moray eels, a lionfish, a couple barracuda, a scorpionfish, and a school of fusiliers that formed a dense cloud inside a coral head that swirls around your arm like smoke when you move into it. Sunshine sparkled in the shallow water as we ascended, and on the surface we had to wait an unnervingly long time for the boat to make its rounds and pick us up - we've heard stories of divers getting left behind so it always makes you a little nervous when the boat is nowhere in sight!

Onwards to Koh Tachai, another little island north of Koh Bon. On our way, a pair of dolphins cruised by and Thai fishing boats cast out their nets in the deep waters between the islands. We pulled up to the island's south end just as it was getting dark, and moored up to the pinnacle submerged just offshore. Ken was going to sit the night dive out in favour of a nap, so I joined up with a bunch of other people going in. We descended the mooring line onto the flat top of the pinnacle, and were surrounded by plumes of multicoloured feather stars and soft corals that made it look like an underwater flower garden. Scorpionfish were all over the place, easily spotted in the dark since they tend to land on corals that don't match their regularly very good camoflauge. Lobsters, moray eels, and clearfin lionfish were out in droves. At one point, we noticed a huge barracuda hovering around in the dark, looking a bit suspicious... suspecting that he was hunting, we all had the same idea at the same time, and moved our lights over to a few innocent fish that were minding their own business nearby. Sure enough, the barracuda took advante of an easy illuminated target and slowly glided toward the fish, then in a split second lunged forward and swallowed it whole. He chomped it down in a couple big gulps and then disappeared into the dark. I felt a bit guilty for having a hand in that fish's death, but it was pretty cool to see the food chain in action! We carried on, and later we were hovering over an odd scene where an eel and a large parrotfish were hanging out side by side under a table coral... when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the same barracuda came flying out of the darkness behind us, blasted into our light beams, mouth open, coming within a couple feet of one guy's arm! Just as fast as he came, he disappeared, having scared the hell out of us and the poor parrotfish, who burst out of his night time mucus sleeping cocoon and went to hide under a rock. We all looked at eachother, realizeing that he amost made dessert out of us! He was clearly circling the pinnacle hunting, so we were extra careful after that to not shine our lights on eachother! It made for an exciting night dive - one of those dives where everyone can't stop talking about it when your head breaks the surface.