This just in from my good friend and diving partner Skip Stubbs, who has just returned from another of his excellent dive expeditions, this time to Thailand:
We are just back from 12 great days on the Ocean Rover out of Phuket Thailand. This liveaboard diving vessel is in my opinion, hands down, the best in the world and is owned and was designed by Jeroen Deknatel of FantaSea Divers. We had a custom trip with 6 days diving in Myanmar (Burma) sandwiched between three days on each side in Thailand. The diving was quite good, with beautiful colorful reefs with abundant fish and other life, lots of strange small critters and occasional larger animals such as mantas, zebra sharks, and whale sharks..
Timing is everything. We all witnessed mating and egglaying by reef squid and cuttlefish, and even mating octopi at various sites! Must have been the season for cephalopods. There were numerous sightings of such rare creatures as harlequin shrimp, ornate ghost pipefish, seahorses, bumblebee shrimp, frogfish, sea snakes, and mantis shrimp. Of course, I only saw mantis shrimp and sea snakes myself. There were beautiful soft corals, especially in Myanmar, and many species of nudibranchs and mollusks. Some people reported seeing over 60 nudibranchs on a single dive at 3 islets.
This boat and destination can be highly recommended for a dive trip, especially considering all of the other possible sights to see in Thailand and SE Asia.
Click the image above to see some of the stills that Skip captured on his trip!
