Wicked Diving Special - Whale Shark & Manta Ray - Educational Tour

Whale Shark & Manta special education trip

Wicked Diving does far more than just talk about making our world a better place. We have made great efforts to reduce our impact on the local environment, we assist in educational programs for the local community and we try our utmost to help our guests walk away with a deeper appreciation our underwater world. We also offer several unique educational trips each year - focusing on species that we are fortunate enough to encounter. The most popular of our trips is the Whale Shark & Manta Ray tours.

These are the two largest species of their respective families. While they may not look like it - they are both Elasmobranchs. These trips are scheduled to coincide with the most frequent encounters each season.

Among the goals of these trips are to:

• The learn about the Life and Times of the largest fish in the world though our unique educational program
  
• Train, Educate and Certify our guests as Shark Divers
  
• How to safely interact and treat such large creatures
• Reducing your impact on the Reef - through active training like improved bouyancy and through use of biodegradeable products
• Positively impact our ecosystem through a beach and reef clean up
  

Each year, we choose the time when sightings are most frequent. While we can never guarantee an encounter - we are certainly prepared to use our encounters to help document the migratory pattern of these giants of the sea.

This trip we were blessed with great Manta Ray experiences! Sadly the Whale Sharks gave us a miss :(

For this trip, Tour leader Therese, along with our resident marine biologist Karina, Karin and Tuk headed out this trip to some of the divesites around the Similan Islands favoured by the manta rays and whale sharks in the hopes of spotting some of these beautiful animals. Videographer Steff was on hand to capture footage of the guests as they enjoyed the wonders of the ocean.

Captain Kaew drove the Parinee up north of the Similans to explore areas of the Similan and Surin National Parks, ably assisted by Nuk and Poh, with our ever-fantastic cooks Pi Pa and Pi Lek on hand to rustle up delectable meals throughout the trip.

Joining us on this unique educational experience were Kristina, Stefano, Jo, Pete, Karen, Marcus, Ben, Carolien, Christoph, Rob, Deia, Veronia & Luca. Congratulations to Kristina, Stefano and Jo on a successful completion of their Advanced Open Water course during the trip, and also to everyone for achieving their Shark Diver specialty certification whilst on board.

Whale sharks (the biggest fish in the ocean) are often seen around Richelieu Rock and Koh Tachai, whilst Koh Bon is a favourite divesite for manta ray sightings. Unfortunately the whale sharks were nowhere to be seen, but Koh Bon worked its magic and everyone was treated to a stunning acrobatic display from the manta rays!

If you would like to see some of our previous Educational trips where we did encounter a whale shark....

Despite the lack of big fish round Richelieu, the macro delights were everywhere - all kinds of pipefish, harlequin shrimps and seahorses; plus banded sea snakes, cuttlefish and loads of different species of moray eels. Pete grew tired of looking at the fish and shared an intimate moment with a great barracuda that was feeling a wee bit curious!

All of that combined with great vis made for an awesome trip!


If you are interested - we are offering several different Educational trips in the upcoming season. Please check our Educational Tour Page as well as our Schedule.

-Similan Diving