Even though Koh Tao is only 8 square miles in size, more people get certified to scuba dive on this tiny island than anywhere else in the world. It is a pretty fantastic place, although I wouldn't exactly classify it as a Thai experience. There are more westerners on this island than thai people, and everything there is very well set up for travelers.
The plan was to stay for a few days while Adam got his Open Water scuba certification, but we ended up staying there for over a week. We both got our Advanced Adventure Diver certification (we can now dive down to 30 meters, dive at night, and have been trained to dive in various complex situations -- like with low visibility, around a wreck, and in strong currents).
Wreck Dive
The diving on Koh Tao and the nearby reefs was pretty phenomenal. The reefs were very healthy, the visibility was 20-25 meters, and there was an amazing amount of biodiversity there. I saw many large schools of fish, sharks, rays, eels, shrimp, anemone, urchin, soft and hard corals, even a sleeping turtle. Unfortunately Adam's underwater camera was not rated to go to the depths we were diving at, so I don't have many pictures from these dives, but below are some pictures taken by others who we dove with, or pictures I found on the internet which show the sites we dove at and the animals we saw.
Moray Eel
Scorpion Fish
Angel Fish
Christmas Trees
Anemone Fish
(image credit: Carin Nelson)
Lion Fish
School of Fusilier
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Nudibranch (small sea slug)
(image source)
Coral and Stuff
(image credit: Kytus Ho)
Fish
(image credit: Kytus Ho)
My favorite dive site was Sail Rock (a reef surrounding a rock in the middle of the ocean, about 1 hour's boat ride away from Koh Phangan). There I saw a whale shark, several bull sharks, huge moray eels, and a large school of bat fish. There were also some huge groupers and barracuda.
Video by Peter Teunisse of our Sail Rock Dive
Diving with sharks is not as scary as it might seem. Whale sharks, while the largest in the shark family (and the largest fish in the world), feast on plankton and have baleen/filter instead of teeth. They are mostly just intimidating because of their size, but pose no real danger to the divers. Whale sharks actually enjoy swimming in the bubbles that divers produce, and so if you come across one while diving they will often circle above the divers to feel the bubbles on their skin. We encountered our whale shark while descending on our first dive at Sail Rock. The whale shark actually circled around me, and was an arms length away. It was amazing.
Whale Shark!
That's me in the bottom left
(image credit: Janina Faller)
More pictures from our dive with a whale shark.
Bull sharks on the other hand have been known to bite humans, and are considered the third most dangerous shark in the world (after great white and tiger). From what I've read, sharks actually don't like the taste of humans, and never intentionally try and eat a human. What happens in shark attacks is that either they mistake a human for a seal or some other fish (this happens a lot with surfers because of the shape of their board -- be careful Frankie!) and then take a "test bite" from the human to see if it is something they like to eat. However, as soon as they realize that what they have tasted isn't a tasty fish or seal, they don't eat it anymore. Unfortunately the "test bites" are often large enough to cause the person to die or lose a limb.
Bull Shark with a Whale Shark!
(image credit: Janina Faller)
Another thing that happens is that in certain places people/divers/tour groups will feed sharks or chum the waters in order to give people a more exciting experience / interaction with the sharks. This causes problems, because the sharks learn to equate humans with getting food. So accidental bites occur during feeding (like a hand gets bit off), or when a hungry shark mistakes part of a human for the food/chum. Shark "attacks" are a much bigger problem in countries or locations where there is a practice of humans feeding them.
At Sail Rock is the home of a family of bull sharks for several years now. Divers are almost guaranteed to see a bull shark during a dive there. However because the sharks are not fed by the divers, and have enough marine food to satiate them, there has never been any problem with the bull sharks attacking the humans there. Fortunately I didn't even realize that bull sharks were dangerous until after the dive, and so I was completely not scared at the time. In retrospect, it's pretty crazy that I got the opportunity to swim with them in a natural, non-manufactured setting. The bull sharks we saw were 2-3 meters in size. We even got to see a bull shark interacting with a whale shark -- they seemed to be in a intimidation dance with each other that ended in the bull shark swimming away suddenly and incredibly fast. Seeing the bull shark move that way made it very clear that if it was interested in eating me, it would have been able to do it without a problem.
Another creature that I encountered for the first time in Koh Tao is the bat fish. These fish are pretty huge ~30cm. At Sail Rock we saw a school of about 50 of them. Bat fish are super curious, and tend to like to follow around divers. They don't bite or attack. It is almost like they are playing a game of chicken to see how close they can come to a diver before they scare themselves away. It is pretty adorable.
The moray eels here are also incredible. I've seen small eels on other dives, and in aquariums, but these eels have heads which are about the same size as human heads. It was hard to tell their length because often they were inside crevices and hole, but we've been told that they get up to 3 meters here. Moray eels are pretty fearless, when you swim by their home they keep eye contact with you and bare their teeth. A moray eel with not bite you unless they feel cornered so they aren't dangerous, but damn they look scary when their mouths could easily fit your entire hand.
I did read a story about a moray eel at a popular dive site, that was often fed sausages by divers. This eel would "come out and play" and swim around divers. However, one day a diver fed the eel a sausage, and then the eel mistook the divers fingers for another sausage and bit off the diver's entire thumb. Another example of human-fish interaction that causes injury to the human but because human's feeding the animal causes them to behave in an unnatural way.
I would totally recommend doing a diving holiday in Koh Tao, especially end of October / November. Apparently there have been loads of Whale Sharks during this time for the last two years. Also getting certified / diving there is about 1/3 of the cost as diving in America.
