Spotlight on Koh Racha Yai diving

Racha Yai is ideal for training dives and refresher dives for inexperienced divers. It’s where PADI Open
Water diver training is completed by Phuket dive schools. It’s also a very good place to do a one day Discover Scuba Diving experience program.

Sloping hard coral reefs start shallow and level off to sand at 30 metres so divers of all levels can dive at a depth that they are comfortable with. Visibility is usually excellent at racha yai is a granite island. Currents are mild and the water is warm, it all makes for champagne diving. There are dive sites on both sides of the island so Racha Yai is divable year round whatever the weather. The favoured reefs run along the east coast seperated by small bays and they are most often dived from May to October when the south west monsoon brings the wind from the west.

In 2010 some unseasonably warm water temperatures caused severe coral bleaching which saddens anyone who remembers how beautiful the hard corals used to be. There are signs of recovery but it will take time. There are still plenty of fish to see plus sting rays in the sand. Actually the sandy areas are full of life with garden eels, mantis shrimps, gobies and pipefish among the highlights. You will probably meet divemasters and instructors with nothing good to say about Racha Yai but understand that they are jaded muppets who don’t remember what it’s like to dive in a quarry in England or some other such place that is a million times worse than Racha Yai.

Racha Yai is also very nice for snorkelers who can swim safely in the shallow, clear water bays surrounded by small reef fish like seargent majors and rabbit fish, surgeon fish, snapper and fusilier. Day trip snorkeling tours run daily to Racha Yai.