Hidden amongst some soft corals was an elusive ornate ghost pipefish, which is a rare, extremely camoflauged little fish covered with shaggy decorations that make it blend in perfectly with the corals it hid amongst. It was a great find - always exciting to finally see things you've only seen in magazines. Other critters of note included a blue spotted stingray, huge napoleon wrasses, ember parrotfish, garden eels swaying like tall grass in the sand, coral cod, powder blue surgeonfish, yellow-margin triggerfish, moorish idols, sargassum pipefish, anemonefish, and a couple varieties of pufferfish. Near the end of the dive, we ended up amongst some massive house-sized granite boulders, then ascended and swam back to the boat. If this is an indication of what's to come, we're going to leave here as very happy campers!
Our second dive of the day was at a site called Boulder City, which is a bunch of huge rocks submerged offshore of Similan Island #2 - the second southernmost of the chain of nine islands. We descended straight down below the boat to about a hundred feet and then worked our way over and around the huge rocks into shallower water, all the while keeping an eye on the deep blue water for the chance of seeing passing sharks or manta rays. No luck there yet! We found a couple tiny, frilly nudibranchs (surprisingly pretty sea slugs!), some delicate little white porcelain crabs, a clown shrimp, and some too-big-for-comfort triggerfish that came a little too close with their mouths open (they bite!). At one point, the sky seemed to darken a bit, so we looked up and saw a massive school of about 100 barracuda hovering midwater, silhouetted against the sun. Unfortunately, the depth of our dive and the amount of swimming we had to do resulted in having to surface a lot sooner than usual, but it was still an awesome dive! Lunch was ready and waiting when we climbed back onboard, then some of us went snorkeling in the pretty bay we anchored in, where big smooth boulders were lapped by the bluest water imaginable. A turtle came paddling up to the boat to take advantage of the pineapple scraps that were tossed overboard, and we spotted two moray eels swimming out in the open below us.
Dive #3 was at a pretty spot called West of Eden, where we cruised by big rocky faces and giant boulders adorned with every type of coral imaginable. Stefano (our guide) knew there was a resident ornate ghost pipefish near one particular rock, and eventually he found not one, but two of them floating motionless in a soft coral fan. A pretty anemone porcelain crab hid within a hard staghorn coral, big triggerfish munched on corals, a green turtle cruised the reef looking for lunch, and all sorts of angelfish and butterflyfish that we had never seen before seemed to be everywhere. Near the north end of the island, the boulders gave way to sheer vertical rock faces, which made for a dramatic end to a lovely dive. We surfaced out of sight of the boat, so we waited for the zodiak to zoom over and pick us up. We're definitely loving this eat-sleep-dive routine that is liveaboard diving!
As the sun started to set, we zipped over to the beach on Similan Island #4 for a little beach time (and solid ground!). The sand was the whitest, finest sand we had ever seen - so fine that you had to rub it off rather than wash it off - thanks to its origin as coral. When the sky was dark enough, we geared up for the fourth time today and jumped in. A lot of the daytime fish were absent (sleeping!) but some fun nocturnal creatures were out in the open. Crabs, moray eels, interesting flatworms and nudibranchs, and even a sea snake that was slithering around a coral head, hunting. Since we spent three and a half hours underwater today, the last dive was kept short and sweet - besides, we were all cold and hungry! Today was really an awesome day of diving; dives like these are the blissful ones we'll be reminiscing about the next time we haul our butts down to the beach at Whytecliff back home in 100lbs of gear in the snow!
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