Wicked Liveaboard Trip #28 (31/1/09)

On board we had the trip leader Ricky, famous for his eyelashes. To his help we had a special visit from Koh Tao, Instructor Bazza, the Swedish Divemaster Henrik and The Wicked Poy!

We started the first two dives at Koh Bon, the famous dive site for Manta Rays. The expectations on the boat was high and everybody was excited to get in to the water. The first thing we saw from the surface was a huge black and white silhouette! Regulator in and down we go!
We counted to 5 different Mantas during the dive. The Mantas really had a show for us and they where with us almost all the dive. Still we manage to see allot of other good stuff like Goast Pipefish, Octopus, Morays and Nudiebranch.

We spend the evening with a Wicked Draw Off, awesome! Thank you very much for that Dawn. And Ricky, your Hangman wasn’t too bad either.

Sunday and a new day was going to offer us 4 lovely dives. During the night we travelled to Richelieu Rock for our morning and second dive for the day.
A dive site covered with colourful soft corals and a great variation of marine life.
We got to see a beautiful Tigertail Seahorse, Mantis Shrimps, Goast Pipefishes, Banded boxer Shrimps and much more!

Moved on to the Surin Islands which tured out to be a perfect place for our third dive and night dive. A nice drift dive with schools of Batfish, Jenkins Stingray, Khul’s Stingray, Octopus and a Turtle, some people even saw a Blacktip Shark. A lucky man was Marciej who decided to snorkel instead of diving and there was the shark!
Marciej, “You break my heart like a Blacktip Shark”.

A wonderful night dive at the “Space Bay” before we slowly started our journey back.
Still 3 dives remaining and we started our last day at Koh Tachai Pinnacle. Strong current and a thermocline hit us just a few minutes after the descent. A really good experience I would say! The fishes were going crazy when the thermocline where getting closer and suddenly the visibility just disappeared. 3 minutes later everything was back to normal and we saw Schools of Barracuda, Big Eyed Trevally, Trumpetfish, Nudiebrach and Potato grouper. If this wasn’t enough a Manta Ray was having a show for us at the safety stop. He was showing us the current wasn’t strong at all as he gracefully glided through the water, what a creature!

You can never get enough of Mata Rays so we decided to test our luck on Koh Bon again. Oh yes, there were still there and even more curious! Take a look at the close up on the video, wow!!!

How do you pick the last dive after a great trip like this? Boonsung Wreck of course! Stonefish, Nudiebranch, Cuttlefish, Honeycomb Morays, Scorpionfish, Barracudas, you name it!

This trip was awesome and I would like to thank you all for making this a wonderful trip!
Thank you Fredrik, Kristy, Caroline, Martin, Maciej and Karolina for joining us.
A special thanks to Dawn, Erron and of course the Katapult Sea Monkey that made their third trip with us.
The new DMT’s Brad, Christy and Jenessa, thank you for your help.

Hope to see you all again soon!

Henrik - Wicked Diving