Scuba Diving Phuket

Koh Dok Mai Dive Site

The name means Flower Island in Thai and this diving site must be named for its underwater beauty because above the water there are no flowers, only a few trees and bushes. As soon as you descend however, the colourful flower-like coral covering the wall makes the name understandable.

Koh Dok Mai is a small limestone islet rising vertically out of the sea. The site is mainly a wall dive down to thirty metres, with a hard coral staghorn reef sloping to the west. On the east side of the island are a series of caverns and caves which are great for practising penetration techniques, and maybe search and recovery!

Koh Dok Mai is a favourite dive site for Phuket's diving pros because of the diversity of small stuff on the wall and it's famed for the resident yellow tiger-tail seahorses. Try spotting them hidden amongst the lacy gorgonian sea fans. They are in there somewhere ... honest! Whilst your dive guide is looking for them for you, he'll also be looking for ornate ghost pipefish and harlequin ghostpipefish. There's also a huge variety of invertebrates here, such as lobster, crabs, zigzag clams, pencil urchins, oysters, squid, and white-eyed moray eels. This is one of the top macro sites for scuba diving Phuket so if you're a photographer a macro lens is the best option here.

Bigger fish such as leopard sharks and grey reef sharks are occasionally seen here and Indonesian bamboo sharks are becoming a more common sight beneath coral heads following a recent breeding program by the Phuket Marine Biological Research Centre. Octopuses are also common on the walls and if you look up you can normally see crocodile long-toms swimming close to the surface.

If you ever come across a dive buddy who claims in their log book to have seen a yellow submarine at Koh Dok Mai, then it's not necessarily likely that they took too many hallucinogenic drugs in the 1960's. One Phuket tour operator here did take non-diving tourists down on submarine tours around the island to goggle at the marine life. Thankfully, they don't play the accompanying music to the passengers.

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Koh Dok Mai Reef Basics: Small islet and wall diving
Depth: 5 - 30m
Visibility: 5 - 20m
Currents: Usually strong
Surface Conditions: Calm
Water Temperature: 27 - 30°C
Experience Level: Intermediate
Number of dive sites: 2
Diving Season: All year round
Distance: ~15 km east of Phuket (1 hour)
Access: Diving day tours from Phuket Thailand

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