Colona Liveaboards

Phuket’s ‘Coral Reef Squadron’ 90% destroyed: TDA

The ten aircraft were transported to Phuket in a convoy of flatbed trucks in April last year.

PHUKET CITY: Phuket’s ‘Coral Reef Squadron’ sunk off Bang Tao Bay last November is 90 percent missing or destroyed, the Thai Dive Association admitted today.

Rainer Gottwald, head of the Thai Dive Association (TDA) technical committee, said TDA divers visited the site on Wednesday and were only able to find one of the 10 aircraft that formed the artificial reef.

Storms and heavy monsoon season currents were to blame, Mr Gottwald said.

Failure to follow instructions by some members of the team who chained the aircraft to large concrete blocks, and subsequent damage by trawlers,may also have played a role, he said.

The destruction of the site was ‘very upsetting’, given all the work and expense put into the project by the TDA and the numerous other agencies and organizations involved, he said.

The project was initiated by the Bangkok-based For Sea Foundation and funded to the tune of 4 million baht by the Cherng Talay Tambon Administration Organization, which hoped the reef would boost tourism in the area.

The project also received a great deal of private-sector sponsorship.

Mr Gottwald said the TDA would have to learn from its mistakes and would probably use train wagons instead of aircraft in future projects.

The ‘Coral Reef Squadron’ consisted of four Douglas C-47 Dakota Skytrain military transport aircraft and six Sikorsky S-58T helicopters.

The TDA divers were only able to find one Dakota during the dive on Wednesday, which followed a series of heavy storms, he said.

TDA divers will survey the area to try and learn more about the fate of the aircraft when sea conditions improve, he said.

Mr Gottwald said he did not think currents would carry the aircraft to the shore, because if that were going to happen it probably would have done so already.

The missing aircraft were probably buried beneath the sand, he said.

Just becasue the Similan Islands are closed and MV Colona VI & MV Giamani are in the boat yard having some new additions to them doesn’t mean that we stop diving here on Phuket.

The dive sites that the local day boats visit such as King Cruiser Wreck, Shark Point, Phi Phi, Racha Yai and Koh Doc Mai to name but a few offer excellent diving all year round.

In fact some customers that were diving with us yesterday at Racha Yai  on a Discover Scuba Diving trip and were lucky enough to spend some time with a large Manta Ray!

Manta Ray during Discover Scuba

Our 2009 - 2010 season in the Similans and Burma starts on the 30th October for MV Colona VI and on the 1st November for MV Giamani. Between them they will offer 75 trips rangingfrom 2 day Hin Daeng / Phi Phi trips to the 9 day 31 dive Burma / Thailand trip once a month on MV Giamani, our steel hulled IMO certified liveaboard.

In the never ending search to deliver some of the best diving to be had to our customers, in the 2009/2010 season as well as offering the usual excellent Thailand and Myanmar (Burma) itineraries MV Giamani will also be visiting the Andaman Islands for three 8 day trips (available for full charter only) in March 2010.

This group of over 500 islands lies almost 300 miles to the north west of Phuket and covers more than 3000 square miles. Its largely undived due to the remoteness and lack of commercial operations there and offers something new to the discerning diver.

With a selection of fringing reefs, walls and pinnacles as well as volcanic lava dive sites to choose from there is something different on every dive. The diversity of the marine life is staggering with huge schools and LARGE fish being prevlent. There is no commercial  fishing in the AndamanIslands and this has allowed many species to flourish, how about five napolean wrasse all over 2 meters long cruising past, sharks take your fancy - Grey, Blacktip, Nurse and Leopard sharks all abound and some sites even offer up Oceanic Whitetip & Hammerhead action.

For those that are more interested in the macro side of things there are enough ornate ghost pipefish, seahorses and nudibranchs to keep your memory card full and for those who just love diving there are abundant hard corals, soft corals, sea fans, schools of sweetlips, rainbow runners and jack, groupers, potato cod, stingrays plus of course manta rays and the occasional whaleshark all just waiting for you.

If all that isn’t enough for you there is also Raja the elephant that you can snorkel with at Havelock Island.

Raja the swimming elephant

MV Colona VI & MV Giamani
www.diving-thailand-phuket.com

Thank you for all the tremendous photo’s that were submitted, we had a hard time choosing from amongst them.

The following photo’s are the five that impressed us most.

Photograher - Paul

Photograher - Alex

Photograher - Henning

Photograher - Lawrence

Photograher - Adam

Out of these we have decided that the photograph by Adam of the whale shark with the snorkler is the one that takes the prize.

Congratulations to Adam and we look forward to welcoming him onboard MV Colona VI on the 1st May for the 6 Day 6 Night special trip to the Similan Islands, Koh Bon, Koh Tachai, Surin and Richelieu Rock.

MANILA — A baby whale shark has been found in waters off the eastern Philippines, raising hopes that the world’s first breeding ground for the creature may have been discovered, the World Wide Fund for Nature reports.

In this handout photograph released by World Wide Fund for Nature on March 9 shows marine conservation officer Embet Guadamor holding a rescued baby whale shark, in eastern Pilar town on March 7. Photograph by: World Wide Fund for Nature, AFP/Getty Images

The whale shark, measuring just 38 centimetres, was found in shallow water off Donsol in the Philippine province of Sorsogon.

Local fishermen had tied a line to its tail and anchored it on a local beach so it would not escape.

Whale sharks, which can grow up to 12.2 metres long, are the largest fish on the planet.

Donsol is known for its large adult whale-shark population but it is not known to be a breeding ground, Elson Aca of the WWF said.

After it was examined by biologists the whale shark was taken to deep water and released.

In spite of all the research being done worldwide on whale sharks, to this date no one knows where they breed or give birth.

“The pup was so small, it was probably born here,” Aca said.

“For many years, scientists thought Donsol was merely one of many feeding grounds along the global network of marine highways where whale sharks cruised,” he said.

“This new discovery is the first indication that this coastline may actually be a birthing site,” he said.

Below are a selection of photo’s taken so far this season on MV Giamani.

We have had some great diving so far and there is more to come!

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Most divers wait a long time to see their first whale shark, some are lucky and see it sooner, we have even had Open Water students on their 3rd dive ask afterwards what the “big fish” was.

One thing in certain though, when you do encounter a whaleshark its a fantastic experience.

We don’t always have the luxury of diving from either MV Giamani or MV Colona VI and some of the great range of day boats that we have available on Phuket don’t always go where we want to.

So a great way round this is to use a Thai longtail boat, the traditional Thai boat that is used for everything from fishing to ferry duties, to take us to the dive site. It’s a bit like diving from a rib - only Thai style!

This is the type of boat that we use for diving the Coral Reef Squadron, Ya Nui Island, Promtehp Cape, Koh Bon and some of the other great dive sites that are not visited by the regular dive boats.

For divers that are based on Phi Phi and wanting to visit some of the scenic bays there or dive some of the local sites longtails are the preferred method of doing so.

After a slow start the Manta’s have arrived in force in the Similan Islands, Thailand and the customers onboard are loving the excitement of diving with Manta Rays at Koh Bon, Koh Tachai and Richilieu Rock.

The dive guides may pretend that they have seen it all before and try and appear calm and relaxed but when no one is looking and there are Manta’s waiting the “cool & calm” facade slips a little bit……..

On Thursday the 5th February we have a confirmed trip to dive the Coral Reef Squadron at Bang Tao, Phuket, Thailand and we still have a limited number of spaces left.

The start time is 8am at the Colona Liveaboards main office at the Hilton Arcadia Resort and Spa in Karon Beach from where you will be transferred to Bang Tao beach.

From there a traditional Thai longtail will a take you & your guide out to the dive site. Its a maximum depth of 20 meters and is perfect for those diving nitrox as it lets you have a longer time investigating the 6 Sikorsky helicopters and the 4 DC Dakota planes plus of course the marine life that has now moved in!

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