Netnawee Similan overnight trip 18/02/08

This trip saw Fabio and Barbara pass their Open Water course under the instruction of Corrado a new Italian instructor who has been joining us on the boat. Also joining us was another instructor, Dave who was joining this trip just for fun! He was accompanied by Neville, Kim and Miyuki from South Africa, Norway and Japan so quite a mix of people on the boat! Rachel and Louie both from the UK also joined us for snorkeling. Last but not least was Theresa who didn't snorkel or dive but was along to have a relaxing time on the islands and the boat.

We had a change to our schedule for this trip and went out to a dive site near island number 3 for our early morning dive. Islands 1-3 of the Similans are closed to divers for reef rehabilitation and also because there is a turtle sanctuary on island number 1. There is however two dive sites near island 3 which we can dive. The one we went to was called shark fin reef, the dive site is almost entirely under the surface with a series of large rocks and boulders stretching about 1km it is a pretty impressive dive site, it is also one of the only places in the Similans where you can find humphead parrot fish, and they're pretty big. Also there were loads of blue dashed fusillers (shown above ) swimming above, below and all around making it a little hard to work out where to look! Other pictures shown are yellow box fish (above left), red tooth triggerfish (above right) Miyuki (below left), scorpian fish (below right) and Neville (below left)

A good trip was had by everyone with lots of interesting marine life been seen by divers and snorkelers. Rachel and Louie were surprised by the amount of different fish that they saw snorkeling , both both were lucky enough to have the company of a turtle with them. Of course everyone had time to relax and digest all the fantastic food being served to them throughtout the trip by our fantastic cook pee Pa. Whilst on the beach we decided to take a frisbee and throw it around for about 15 minutes before having to sit down and have a rest or running into the sea to cool down...