I would like to show you some pictures taken during my last trip in Similan Islands and Richelieu rock, Thailand, that spot Richelieu is amazing enough to do 6 dives due to the quantity and density of different species that you can find there. All pictures are taken with a Canon R6 mkII in Isotta housing and AOI UIS-P1 strobes. Furthermore, the crinoidea picture has been taken with filters such in the lenses as in the strobes

@atus Excellent! That’s a cool place but very popular, eh?

Great shots. My old stomping grounds. I was diving Richelieu four days a week when I was working there. An incredible site with so much to offer 🥰

But yes, a little too popular unfortunately, or more precisely, badly managed.

Where was the shark shot taken? Reef sharks are quite rare in the area.

Edited Thursday at 09:12 AM2 days by bghazzal

7 hours ago, bghazzal said:

Great shots. My old stomping grounds. I was diving Richelieu four days a week when I was working there. An incredible site with so much to offer 🥰

But yes, a little too popular unfortunately, or more precisely, badly managed.

Where was the shark shot taken? Reef sharks are quite rare in the area.

Hi bghazzal, my impression there is that it was managed the same way than the Thistlegorm in the Red Sea, every single dive operator trying to bring the most possible divers. There is even a pair of launching boats which goes from mainland (I guess Phuket) to a diving trip boat which they use as a base on the site some days specifically to dive in Richelieu. I can't understand how can a divemaster dare to enter the water with a pair of "divers" one on each hand grabbing their regulator and make them a tour with currents and the bottom in 30 meters, and some times with poor visibilty. Specially when you see those "divers" no flapping at all.

It was crowded but it's worh it, even it was quiet a bit hard to take a divers clean picture. The shark picture was taken in Surin during a night dive, the guides told us that the night dive was going to be with black tip sharks so that spot must be well known. In Similan wasn't uncommon to find reef sharks in some dives but they left as soon as they saw a diver.

6 hours ago, atus said:

Hi bghazzal, my impression there is that it was managed the same way than the Thistlegorm in the Red Sea, every single dive operator trying to bring the most possible divers. There is even a pair of launching boats which goes from mainland (I guess Phuket) to a diving trip boat which they use as a base on the site some days specifically to dive in Richelieu. I can't understand how can a divemaster dare to enter the water with a pair of "divers" one on each hand grabbing their regulator and make them a tour with currents and the bottom in 30 meters, and some times with poor visibilty. Specially when you see those "divers" no flapping at all.

It was crowded but it's worh it, even it was quiet a bit hard to take a divers clean picture. The shark picture was taken in Surin during a night dive, the guides told us that the night dive was going to be with black tip sharks so that spot must be well known. In Similan wasn't uncommon to find reef sharks in some dives but they left as soon as they saw a diver.

Yes, the major problem is that there is only one Richelieu Rock, and all the liveaboards include it on their itinerary. The worst I have seen was 14 liveaboards moored around the site, all planning three to four dives there. That meant 200+ divers in the water on a very small site. I learned to guide specifically to avoid people there.

Liveaboard planning is extremely tight. Days are short in the tropics, and once you factor in meals and surface intervals, you only have about 20 minutes of leeway in the dive schedule. Meals and snacks have to be offered, tanks filled, dishes washed, cooking done, housekeeping handled, etc. All of this has to fit around the diving before nightfall.

Which means everybody goes at roughly the same time. There is no way around it.

The only way to manage this would be a booking system, like the one implemented at Batu Bolong in Komodo. I was working there at the time. It was not the greatest idea (carrying capacity restrictions), but it did reduce congestion.
Unfortunately, Richelieu Rock is in the Surin area and handled by a different authority than the Similan Marine Park, and when I was there it was extraordinarily inefficient at enforcing even the few rules that existed.

You had liveaboards mooring directly on the site, which is not allowed, in full view of rangers who were there to collect tickets.

What you describe, basically a DSD situation, is also not allowed in the marine parks. Introductory and training dives are prohibited. Of course, this is not followed by all operators. There are many shady operations, but also some very good ones doing what they can.

That base you mention has been around for a while. The platform boat was moored at Koh Bon when I was there, and they ran a hop-on hop-off service from Khao Lak or Phuket.

I worked for Big Blue in Khao Lak, which had a speedboat going there four days a week. The other company running daytrips was Wetzone, also from Khao Lak, or more precisely Ban Nam Khen. We would alternate days.

The good thing about the speedboat was that we would often hit the rock during the liveaboard lunch break, and sometimes had the site all to ourselves, which happened a few times a year.

When the park ticketing system changed, with advance booking required, things became more complicated. Our go-to site on days when it was too rough for Richelieu was Koh Tachai, which is in the Similan National Park. That meant we could not reroute there with Surin NP tickets.

So we started exploring the Surin more. Ao Tao, for example. Nice coral, but generally less life.

The last season I worked there was 2020, the pandemic year. I have worked in quite a few great places, but some Richelieu dives, especially sunset dives, are still burned into my mind.

It is good to hear that sharks are being spotted more often. I worked quite a few seasons there, and apart from whale sharks, reef sharks were very rare. You might see white tips on early morning dives, maybe the odd blacktip cruising by, and very, very rarely a grey reef at Tachai. That was about it.

Carpet sharks such as shovelnose rays or guitar sharks, and leopard (zebra) sharks, were relatively common. The Surin did have a bit more shark activity. Juvenile tiger sharks were spotted a couple of times, but we were not doing night dives there at the time.

Hopefully the shark population has had some kind of rebound.

Edited yesterday at 07:30 AM1 day by bghazzal

The worst I saw there was a very big boat, with 80 divers capacity, plenty of chinese. When our guides saw that boat arriving to the same spot we where they changed the plan for the day because find them underwater was very disgusting, too crowded. I don't know what's the solution, but if I can give my thoughts I would avoid launching boats and diving cruises with more than 20 divers.

We were diving with the Mantha Queen fleet aboard the Mantha Queen VI. To be honest I would not repeat with that boat, but I would do repeat with Mantha Queen. We were 9 friends and paid the whole boat for us, the boat is for 14 divers but even this the boat was too small, the chambers are small, it is not prepared for cameras as long there are no tables in the wet zone, and there are no plugs enough for the batteries. The bed is horribly hard and little more than a wooden board. But the Meals were amazing, the Crew was kind and nice, the captain never said no to anything and the dive guides, two spaniards and and english guy, know the spots really well. We finished the trip really happy. I let you here our diving itinerary

4 hours ago, atus said:

The worst I saw there was a very big boat, with 80 divers capacity, plenty of chinese. When our guides saw that boat arriving to the same spot we where they changed the plan for the day because find them underwater was very disgusting, too crowded. I don't know what's the solution, but if I can give my thoughts I would avoid launching boats and diving cruises with more than 20 divers.

We were diving with the Mantha Queen fleet aboard the Mantha Queen VI. To be honest I would not repeat with that boat, but I would do repeat with Mantha Queen. We were 9 friends and paid the whole boat for us, the boat is for 14 divers but even this the boat was too small, the chambers are small, it is not prepared for cameras as long there are no tables in the wet zone, and there are no plugs enough for the batteries. The bed is horribly hard and little more than a wooden board. But the Meals were amazing, the Crew was kind and nice, the captain never said no to anything and the dive guides, two spaniards and and english guy, know the spots really well. We finished the trip really happy. I let you here our diving itinerary

Ouch, yes, unfortunately a rather poor choice. It was something of everyone’s nemesis, to be honest. At one point they even ran an IDC program, so freshly certified, newly arrived instructors could get a kind of work experience on the boat after passing their exams.

If there is a next time, look into operators like Junk/Phinisi, Deep Andaman Queen, Smiling Seahorse (mostly for Myanmar) Sea Bees, or Big Blue. I have been away for a few years so things may have changed, but these operators were generally regarded as well organised and professionally run.

Looking at the itinerary, that Surin site would have been Ao Packard i guess.
Interesting to see elephant head pinnacle in there, as it's less common. Finishing on Hideaway Bay is a bit of a downer though. We would usually finish on Koh Bon (especially if mantas had been spotted), or the murky depths of the Boonsung wreck for macro - I think the Diverace is lying on the bottom close to it after it sunk.
Makes me nostalgic - my favourites were Richelieu, Koh Tachai (dome, pinnacles...) Koh Bon (bay, west/north ridge, pinnacle...) and Three Trees and, to a certain point, Elephant's Head Rock.

For amazing regional flashbacks of days gone by, do check out the great Nick Hope's Reef Life of the Andaman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ncUVddkK3Q

cheers

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by bghazzal

Nice photos, and glad you had a good experience.

Richelieu brings back some memories from almost 25 years ago, when Kitty and I were total rookies. We jumped in (near the open-end of the horseshoe) with a rookie DM, immediately got pulled away by the currents, and couldn't find where the site was - what with the viz and general rookie-ness. We floated around for 5 min in the murky blue water, and then called it a dive.

Later that day, the more experienced DM on the boat (Rhapsody) took us down and we had a good dive. It wasn't so crowded back then. I was sorry to hear a few years later that Rhapsody caught fire and burnt down during a Similar trip.

Kind regards,

Ajay

7 hours ago, bghazzal said:

Looking at the itinerary, that Surin site would have been Ao Packard i guess.
Interesting to see elephant head pinnacle in there, as it's less common. Finishing on Hideaway Bay is a bit of a downer though. We would usually finish on Koh Bon (especially if mantas had been spotted), or the murky depths of the Boonsung wreck for macro - I think the Diverace is lying on the bottom close to it after it sunk.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ncUVddkK3Q

cheers

The guides were all the time "worried" about that big boat with 80 divers, so when they saw the spot was going to be so crowded they changed the diving spot. I don't know if that's the reason or it is as it was planned. We were aware during some breefings that mantas can be spotted but never happened, only once in shark finn reef a pair of divers of the group said that they spotted a manta but so far

4 hours ago, Ajay said:

Nice photos, and glad you had a good experience.

Richelieu brings back some memories from almost 25 years ago, when Kitty and I were total rookies. We jumped in (near the open-end of the horseshoe) with a rookie DM, immediately got pulled away by the currents, and couldn't find where the site was - what with the viz and general rookie-ness. We floated around for 5 min in the murky blue water, and then called it a dive.

Later that day, the more experienced DM on the boat (Rhapsody) took us down and we had a good dive. It wasn't so crowded back then. I was sorry to hear a few years later that Rhapsody caught fire and burnt down during a Similar trip.

Kind regards,

Ajay

This is why I don't understand how can a DM or instructor make a DSD in spots like Richelieu. And worst, the two "divers" doing the DSD with hat with ears, brand new equipment, white socks above the knees instead of wet suit and apnea pink finns which obviously they didn't move one single time to help de divemaster.