My friends over at Scuba Adventures in Plano published one of my pieces in their blog portion of their website. You can find it here on the big currents in Thailand. https://www.scubaplano.com/conquering-currents-in-thailand/
There is lots to like in Thailand big schools of fish…
Great food and a low cost of living. Hmm might be time to back sometime soon.
The only wreck dive in the Phukett area of Thailand, is near the Phi Phi islands. The MS King Cruiser was a car ferry. On May 4, 1997 it sank off the West Coast of Southern Thailand. The ferry was operating between Phuket and the Phi Phi Islands in southern Thailand when she hit a submerged collection of rocky pinnacles at Anemone Reef, 10 miles off Phi Phi Island. The impact tore a large hole in the hull, and the vessel sank within two and a half hours. Nevertheless all of the passengers were rescued.
The ferry was on a regular crossing in normal conditions, and the Anemone Reef was charted and well known by captains in the area. This has led to various unproven theories as to why the accident occurred. Theories include insurance fraud due to the owners experiencing financial difficulties on the unprofitable route, and also that local dive companies paid the captain to sink the vessel as, up until that time, there were no wreck dives around Phuket. The captain was found to be negligent.
The vessel sits upright on a sandy bottom in around 30 meters of water. Originally the shallowest part of the wreck rose to ~10 meters, but today most of the superstructure is collapsed making the shallowest part of the wreck currently deeper than 18 meters. The wreck remains largely in one piece, although all of the upper deck has collapsed.
When we dove the King Cruiser we had a calm day, with very small surface waves. Although we were diving the wreck at slack high tide, the current around the wreck was moving. Getting to the mooring ball with my camera was a chore. We all descended on the mooring line which ties to the wheelhouse. Once we got to the wreck, the wreck for the most part blocked the current. The thing that struck me was that the first school of fish we was a school of giant porcupine fish. Now in the past I have seen a couple of porcupine fish swimming together but I’ve never seen a school of several hundred swimming together. Now here was the disappointing problem, besides the current moving pretty quickly where the porcupine fish were swimming, viz was maybe 20 feet. Instead of burning my air to try to get a picture that would at best have been difficult to see the school, I opted to follow individuals around as they swam around the boat. 
As we dropped down over the leeward side of the wreck it was pretty obvious that the hull was covered in oyster shells and other mollusks. I could see an enormous number of sea urchins. That was reason enough to be careful not to touch anything. But there were also other reasons like lion fish and stone fish on the hull. If you look closely beneath the lionfish in the middle of the screen you can see the tail of a stone fish who is right next to a sea urchin. 
Soon we were in the mist of an enormous school of big eyed snappers. The schools of fish were crazy and the were everywhere.
As we made our way around the wreck we found the ship’s propeller which is at about 93 feet. 
The current near the bottom was not nearly as strong as it was towards the top of the wreck so I stayed near the bottom, but had to watch my deco time. I stayed over 20 minutes at 90+ feet and then had to move up once I got back to the leeward side of the ship.
Where there were once windows in the ship there were large cutout where you could look in and see some of the schools of fish. 
When I reached the stern of the wreck again it was time to start the ascent. No I didn’t go into deco, but I did have to do three stops to avoid doing so. This was a very good dive to be diving a shearwater dive computer since it made determining the end and stops on the way back up very easy.
All in all the King Cruiser was an interesting dive. I was really wanting the rebreather so I could have extended my bottom time and not had to rush through certain parts of the dive.
After making a 10 day exploratory trip to Thailand I can say, I sure hope I get to go back. Here is what I learned from the trip.
5. If you are an underwater photographer, plan on shooting more macro than wide angle. From Phuket where I got on the boat, until we had sailed down to Phi Phi island, the water reminded me of the Platte river in Nebraska; too thick to drink to thin to plow. We did not do any diving for the first couple of days of the trip because the water visibility was too poor. Diving would have resembled the Helen Keller diving school, you see with your hands and not with your eyes. That said there was plenty to see topside.
6. If all you shoot underwater is macro, you are going to miss some great wide angle shots. If you think about it for a moment, you will probably realize that the abundance of particulate in the water is food to fish. And, yes we did see some amazing schools of fish on quite a few of the dive sites. So if all you shot was macro, you may have missed shooting the enormous fish aggregations. 
There were three divers on the other side of this school of fish. I couldn’t see them, can you? Now I could swim through the school of fish to find them, but I think I’ll take a shot or two before I do so.
7. The long tail boats (see the first picture above) are everywhere and you do need to be careful where you surface. Near Phuket the long tails are powered by what looks like an old chevy engine.
The engine is attached to about an 8 foot transmission with a propeller at the end. That system allows the long tails to operate in very shallow water with a draft of about a foot.
For divers long tails can be bad, because if you get hit by the prop you will look like a frog in a blender. Not a pretty sight. As we got further from Phukett the long tail boat engines were smaller so that towards the end of the trip they were running with what looked and sounded like lawn mower engines, but even those engines could deliver a lethal blow to an unsuspecting diver. We surfaced as a group and made sure we had our smb’s deployed during the safety stop.
8. Be ready for current. Cozumel Mexico has current, for the most it part goes one direction. The Cozumel port authority shuts down diving if the current gets too fast or the weather gets too bad. The water around Thailand has current; its fast and it doesn’t necessarily go in one direction on any given dive. There is no port authority monitoring it. Early in the trip we anchored the boat, threw out the tag line and the pool was open. One of the guests jumped in with a noodle and before he came up he had reached the end of a 50 foot tag line. We moved the boat and got out of that current. So watch the current it can be fast. Dive with locals who know the local currents.
Those are the big points I learned from the trip. More on the dive sites later…