Thailand Northern Andaman Sea diving Richelieu Rock and the Similan Islands. Richelieu was really amazing I've been diving a long time and this site is definitely in my top five spots ever. I Used a GoPro 11 and two Backscatter video lights. Comments and constructive criticism always welcome I'm here to learn.

Edited Friday at 09:40 PM3 days by PeterN

excellent, 2 or 3 clips are a little too much warm, you could have slow down the video one the Smalltooth Emperor fish clip...but in General TOP Video, i would never guess that the video was made with Gopro 11

Edited Saturday at 06:54 PM2 days by Nando Diver

@PeterN That's great stuff! I was there a couple years ago. Wonderful diving. Did you encounter a lot of green water? Also, did you filter your lights at all?

4 hours ago, Nando Diver said:

excellent, 2 or 3 clips are a little too much warm, you could have slow down the video one the Smalltooth Emperor fish clip...but in General TOP Video, i would never guess that the video was made with Gopro 11

Thank you for the comment. Now that you mention it, the white balance is a bit off on some of the clips and totally agree on the Emperor fish, I could have slowed down the clip a bit. But thank you again for the constructive comments it pushes me to do better next time.

4 hours ago, humu9679 said:

@PeterN That's great stuff! I was there a couple years ago. Wonderful diving. Did you encounter a lot of green water? Also, did you filter your lights at all

Yes the diving really was really wonderful. For the most part the water visibility was pretty clear except for the last dive at Richelieu Rock when the water turned green and visibility dropped. It's funny the first three dives had great visibility and the fourth and last dive of the day it turned green. Since it is an open water spot it must have been the currents.

Regarding the lights I did not use any filters. Perhaps I should have on a couple of the clips.

Appreciate your comments.

Peter

Been there in december, your video is exactly as I remember. We did a night dive in Richelieu expecting to be the best dive of the trip and it actually was the worst, during the day Richelieu was quite clear despite the currents but during the nightdive the visibility dropped to 5 meters as much. I would go back to Richelieu, Koh Bohn and the Dome right now, very nice dive. But the Similans are not on the top of the best spots to dive in Asia in my opinion.

5 hours ago, atus said:

Been there in december, your video is exactly as I remember. We did a night dive in Richelieu expecting to be the best dive of the trip and it actually was the worst, during the day Richelieu was quite clear despite the currents but during the nightdive the visibility dropped to 5 meters as much. I would go back to Richelieu, Koh Bohn and the Dome right now, very nice dive. But the Similans are not on the top of the best spots to dive in Asia in my opinion.

I have to agree it was Richelieu Rock that made the trip special, but as you experienced conditions can change in the matter of hours! Thanks for watching.

When I was working there, we called these sudden murky green cold-water upwellings the “Green Monster”. It was particularly strong at Koh Tachai, which is the most exposed site in the area, as well as Koh Bon and, yes, Richelieu Rock.

We had a season in 2019–2020 when the water stayed cold and green for weeks, if not months. At times it shifted from green to brown at Richelieu, prompting Japanese divers to joke that it was like diving in miso soup.
The cold water did bring out a lot of interesting critters, with plenty of rays of all sorts, including shovelnose rays (guitar sharks).

Richelieu, Bon and Tachai are really special sites. I have worked in quite a few excellent places, but I still have dives from there etched in my mind 😃

21 hours ago, bghazzal said:

When I was working there, we called these sudden murky green cold-water upwellings the “Green Monster”. It was particularly strong at Koh Tachai, which is the most exposed site in the area, as well as Koh Bon and, yes, Richelieu Rock.

We had a season in 2019–2020 when the water stayed cold and green for weeks, if not months. At times it shifted from green to brown at Richelieu, prompting Japanese divers to joke that it was like diving in miso soup.
The cold water did bring out a lot of interesting critters, with plenty of rays of all sorts, including shovelnose rays (guitar sharks).

Richelieu, Bon and Tachai are really special sites. I have worked in quite a few excellent places, but I still have dives from there etched in my mind 😃

That is really interesting, I would not have known that the "Green Monster" existed. I can count myself as fortunate since the first dive at Richelieu was just gorgeous, dark blue clear water. Eight hours later on dive number four the green Monster appeared LOL .

Shooting video, I prefer the early morning and late afternoon dives because I can much more easily paint my scene with video lights. The mid-day sunlight is very flat so I tend to shoot small stuff.