The second part of our interviews with survivors of the Thai liveaboard DiveRACE Class E Fire, which burned to the waterline in the Similan Islands in April 2025.

By Mark 'Crowley' Russell

This article was split in two due to its length. Part 1 is here.

Alexandre Guedes, CEO of a Portuguese pharmaceutical company and an experienced diver, was on board DiveRACE Class E the night it caught fire, together with his wife, teenage son Filipe and daughter Mia.

‘We are relatively well physically and psychologically,’ he tells me when we speak, ‘and Filipe and Mia are also slowly getting over the situation, which hasn’t been easy.’

Alexandre, who had previously worked as an airline copilot, was fastidious about liveaboard safety, even if the boats themselves were not.

‘This was our third liveaboard,’ he said, ‘and we have always briefed our children on what to do in the event of a fire – and agreed with them that in a situation like this they would not wait for their parents and would flee to the furthest place from danger, which would eventually be our meeting point.

Fortunately, they did not become separated, but the lack of alarm meant they remained belowdecks longer than some of the other passengers, who had already made their way outside.

‘We were asleep when we heard someone shouting that there was a fire on board,’ says Alex. ‘There was no light and we couldn’t breathe, so the only thing I could do was leave the room with my wife and my mobile phone, because we needed a light.

‘We chose the light over everything else; equipment, computers, passports, money, everything, and we stayed to put on our life jackets before leaving the room.

‘The problem was the smoke, because when my children left the room we told them to put a towel [soaked] with water over their mouth, but after five metres we couldn’t breathe, and it was a very, very difficult situation.

Alex and his family were able to make their way outside, where he took his daughter and jumped into the water, followed by his wife and son. Raga was already nearby and they were picked up by one of the tenders before being taken to the liveaboard.

As with the other survivors, Alex is gravely concerned about the lack of response from the crew, the lack of a fire alarm system and the failure to post a night watchman.

‘Only when we were upstairs on the boat about to jump, only then did we see the crew,’ he said. ‘We did all of this by ourselves, and there was no alarm.

‘The only alarm we had was the Israeli guy [the passenger who also woke Nicole and Joe] who was shouting for everyone.’

‘The problem is that the guys from the crew were all sleeping. If anybody was awake then the problem would have been minimised.’

Importance of the night watch

There is much discussion on the internet on whether or not a night watch is necessary while at anchor but the simple answer is yes, if you’re at sea.

A resolution adopted in 1973 by the United Nation’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO; at that time International Maritime Consultation Organisation, IMCO) clearly states that the ship’s master, while at anchor will ‘ensure that an efficient look-out is maintained’ and ‘ensure that inspection rounds of the vessel are made periodically.’

The lack of a roving night watch was directly blamed for the deaths of 34 people in the Conception disaster of 2019 off the coast of California. A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into the cause states that:

The probable cause of the accident on board the SPV CONCEPTION was the failure of [the boat’s owner] to provide effective oversight of its vessel and crewmember operations, including requirements to ensure that a roving patrol was maintained, which allowed a fire of unknown cause to grow, undetected, in the vicinity of the aft salon on the main deck. 

In the end, there’s little argument to be made against the practicality of posting a roving night watch on vessels that contain highly flammable materials, are filled with combustible fluids and potentially volatile electronic equipment, with people on board, miles out to sea, with very little assistance nearby.

In 2019, 34 people died because by the time anybody realised their boat was on fire, it was already too late. The passengers and crew of Class E all survived, but if that one sleepless diver had not been awake to notice, the outcome may have been very tragically different.

The US Coast Guard has since been issued orders to enforce inspection procedures, verifying that proper roving patrols are conducted.

The unforgivable lack of fire detection equipment

Thai authorities reported that the blaze began in one of the generators used to power facilities on board the boat such as the lights and hot water heaters, and the passengers we’ve spoken to said that there had been problems with hot water for the previous few days owing to a generator malfunction.

A faulty generator at the end of a busy dive season (the Similans National Park closes on 15 May each year) would not be considered out of the ordinary, but according to the vessel’s specifications, it was fitted with two 90 KW Cummins generators.

Some of the passengers believe one of the generators had already failed, and the second was therefore overworked. While this has not been possible to verify, the total lack of power when the fire broke out would indicate that neither was operational.

Either way, the faulty generator represents the first hole in the ‘Swiss-cheese model of safety’. While the name sounds slightly trite, it is a well-known analogy in which each layer of protection against accidents is represented as a slice of Swiss cheese, each with a hole representing a weakness in part of the system.

One or more can fail without serious consequence, but once all the holes are aligned, catastrophic failure becomes inevitable.

The next hole in the safety model, and one of the most neglectful on behalf of the operator, is the lack of any kind of functioning smoke detectors and fire alarm system, which should be mandatory for all vessels on which passengers will be staying overnight.

‘Fire is most likely to occur in the engine room,’ said Chanhyeok ‘Chris’ Kim, who is head of the fire team on board 200,000MT merchant ship on which he is a chief officer, ‘and there should be extinguishing equipment or an alert system for smoke detection. But there was nothing.’

It is a stroke of luck that a sleepless passenger happened to be on deck and noticed the smoke. Had he not been there, the outcome could have been far, far worse.

Inadequate firefighting measures

Once the fire broke out, there did not appear to be an adequate supply of firefighting equipment on board, another hole in the safety model.

The boat’s specifications list 15 fire extinguishers throughout the decks but the lack of muster drill meant passengers hadn’t been shown where they were located and survivor Nicole Yeates – who works for the US Department of the Navy – believes those that were on board were not sufficient to combat a serious fire.

She recalls seeing a member of the crew ‘running around with a fire extinguisher that was about a foot and a half tall.’Alexandre also remembers seeing ‘only one little fire extinguisher’ on the main deck.

‘The flash point of marine diesel is very high,’ said Nicole, ‘but the temperature of the fire is hot enough to burn through anything.

‘By the smell of the smoke we encountered, which was very acrid, the fire was already burning through lube oils and plastics, and that was our first indication there was a problem

‘By that point,’ she added, ‘the fire was already beyond a hand extinguisher.’

Lack of crew preparedness

Both Nicole and Alexandre describe the crew as good people and very competent in the context of running the liveaboard but, apart from the Captain, unprepared to handle an emergency.

Nicole praised the crew’s willingness to help, but said they seemed ‘a little bit frozen.’

‘They just weren’t trained,’ she said. ‘They definitely wanted to help and the captain was very well prepared, he was helping here and there and he was indeed the last one off the ship.

‘He’s a good man, for sure, and when we were at the police station afterwards, he was walking around to all his crew, checking on them. A good man.’

It has been a common story told by survivors of liveaboard disasters, including those of Sea Story, Hurricane, Sea Legend and even Conception – that the boats’ crews were great at everything else, but not well prepared to deal with emergencies.

It is difficult to place the blame for that on any individual crew member – it’s impossible to know how even an experienced person will react in an emergency – but the lack of preparedness among the crew as a team suggests a lack of emergency training.

It fell to passengers and foreign dive staff to prepare the life rafts on Class E, attempt to signal the nearby boat and even rescue the two passengers who had been unable to make their way out of the lower deck.

All the holes aligned

A faulty, possibly overloaded generator; no fire detectors or alarm; insufficient fire suppression systems; untrained crew; no battery backup or emergency VHF radio; no muster drill – the holes in the Swiss cheese model of safety were all aligned.

The Thai Navy didn’t arrive for several hours, and when they did, it was a small patrol boat with an onboard fire hose. The liveaboard burned for seven hours before the firefighting unit arrived on the scene and was able to extinguish the fire, but by then it was too late.

Diverace Class E burned to the waterline, along with all of its passengers’ dive gear, clothing, passports and possessions, before sinking into the depths.

The story has not made international headlines in the same way that Sea Story and Conception did, because nobody died. Had another liveaboard, the MV Raga, not been nearby, however, the story would almost certainly have been tragically different, as passengers would have had to fight rough seas, strong currents, and a night lit only by the fire from their burning boat while they waited to be rescued.

Speaking with Nicole and Alexandre, it is clear that although they escaped with their lives, the trauma of that night has left a lasting impact on them and their families.

We made contact with the Singapore-based owner of Class E, who was genuinely apologetic over the incident. While he was unable to provide any details due to the ongoing investigation into the fire, he issued the following statement:

We have been operating MV DiveRACE Class E since her launch in 2015. She was designed and constructed following Thailand’s marine regulations. The vessel is also inspected every year by the marine authorities to ensure safety and sea worthiness before renewing its licence.

Items such as independent back up batteries, radios and fire extinguishers were available. Procedures such as evacuation and man over board were briefed during the onboarding process.

As investigations are still ongoing, we are unable to give more information until everything is completed please. However, we are working hard with our insurer to finalise the compensation to all affected guests.

DiveRACE will also review and implement additional training for all procedures that will be applied to our new vessel to ensure such an incident will not happen again.

Having spoken directly with the owner, I believe he is sincere in his intention to implement tougher safety measures on board his company’s second boat, which is currently under construction.

The problem, of course, is that these safety features were not present, or not properly implemented on the boat that caught fire, something that has been increasingly recognised as a problem across the liveaboard dive industry

What next for liveaboard safety?

When Jerry Boylan, captain of Conception, was prosecuted for Seaman’s Manslaughter, his defence team tried to mitigate his sentence on the basis that every other boat in the area was guilty of the same lackadaisical approach to safety, and he shouldn’t be blamed for the failings of an entire industry.

One of his crew wrote that his negligence that night ‘was trusting that what had been safe and successful for 30 years all of a sudden wasn’t.’

It appears this attitude is prevalent among many dive operators: there are lots of liveaboards; there are hundreds of thousands of sailings, most of them are just fine, and with so many boats, accidents are bound to happen.

As Alexandre puts it, however, ‘the entire sector needs to undergo a basic reform in terms of safety,’ because if it doesn’t, more people are going to die, and there have already been too many liveaboard deaths.

Until that reform happens, it falls once again to us, as divers, to call out the operators where we see problems, and demand better of them before we board their boats. 

DiveRACE Class E is an excellent example of a fine liveaboard chosen by discerning divers for its good reputation, highly-praised crew and excellent safety record, because for the previous ten years, everything had been safe and successful.

And then all of a sudden, it wasn’t, because without a proper fire alarm system, that boat was not fit to set sail.

This story, for reasons of length, appears in two parts. The first part is available here.

Related articles

• Survivors of Thai liveaboard DiveRACE Class E fire speak out – part 1
• Fire Alert – Improving liveaboard fire safety for divers
• California liveaboard fire was negligence, say lawyers
• German woman missing, presumed dead, after Red Sea liveaboard fire disaster
• Sea Safari VII liveaboard destroyed by fire in Komodo

The post Survivors of Thai liveaboard DiveRACE Class E fire speak out – part 2 appeared first on DIVE Magazine.

Issue # 38: Hidden treasures

DIVE’s Summer ’25 magazine is here! Packed as always with brilliant photography and great writing – subscribe quickly so you don’t miss out on a copy!

Subscribe for just £1 to get your copy!

A DIVE INTO THE UNKNOWN

Raja Ampat is one of the world’s most sought-after diving destinations but it’s far from being completely explored. Award-winning photographer Jenny Stock dives into the unknown as she visits some previously undiscovered spots on board the Raja Ampat Aggressor, accompanied by some of her fantastic photography of never-before-seen reefs.

SAVING MEXICO’S MANTAS

The Caribbean Coast of Mexico is home to one of the world’s largest aggregations of whale sharks – and a gathering of giant manta rays follows them. Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell talks to Karen ‘Manza’ Fuentes about her determination to make sure their populations are preserved, and why they may well be the long-awaited third species.

OCEAN PHYSICS

Helen Czerski began studying the science of bubbles at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography when she realised she needed to learn to scuba dive – and fell in love with it. She talks to Jo Caird about combining her passion for the underwater world with a background in physics in her award-winning science book Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World.

MULTI-DISCIPLINE DIVING

Some underwater photographers prefer macro over wide-angle; others big fish or landscapes. Each takes time to learn and perfect, but diving under the Cement Plant Pier in Barbados provides photographers with a single site to practice them all. Award-winning photographer Catherine Holmes gives us her top tips for study and some stunning results of her own.

UNDERWATER EARNINGS

Lots of people love taking pictures underwater, and there are some super-talented amateurs out there. Most people will only ever see their pictures shared among social media friends – but can you earn an income from sharing them with the world? Colin Marshall shares tips from his 30-year history as a stock agency photographer.

SPEAKING OF PHOTOGRAPHERS…

While there some talented amateurs out there among the underwater photo pros, many, many divers pick up a camera and turn into nightmares with bubbles. Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell shares some of his experiences from his time a full-time dive professional, and what steps divers need to take before ever even thinking about taking snapshots!

BIG SHOT TOGETHERNESS

DIVE’s latest Big Shot underwater photography competition called for images of underwater animals living together – in harmony or, as the case might be, not. Check out the best of the entries from our Big Shot Living Together photo competition as they were meant to be seen – on the pages of a glossy print magazine.

More DIVE Magazine previews:

• DIVE Magazine Spring 2025 – Ocean Colour Scenes
• DIVE Magazine Winter 2024/25 – Never Stop Learning
• DIVE Magazine Autumn 2024 – a giant stride for mankind
• DIVE Magazine Summer 2024 – exploring the depths
• DIVE Magazine Spring 2024 – the Magazine with Bite

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The post DIVE Magazine Summer 2025 preview appeared first on DIVE Magazine.

On 12 April 2025, the Thai liveaboard DiveRACE Class E caught fire on the final night of a Similan Islands cruise. Everyone survived, but they were not unscathed, and the fire has brought liveaboard safety failings into question yet again. DIVE spoke to some of the survivors.

By Mark 'Crowley' Russell

This article was split in two due to its length. Part 2 is here.

In the early hours of 12 April 2025, the Thailand-based luxury liveaboard Dive Race Class E caught fire on the final night of a five-day cruise through the Similan Islands.

All 16 passengers and ten crew survived, but the incident has not been reported in the global media with the same intensity of scrutiny that followed the Sea Story disaster of November 2024, in which eleven people died when their Egyptian Red Sea liveaboard capsized.

While the Class E fire survivors escaped without serious physical injury, the incident has taken a heavy toll on the mental health of those who escaped the inferno, and they are very aware that the litany of safety failures leading up to their rescue could have made their situation far, far worse.

No muster drill

Nicole Yeates, who works for the US Department of the Navy, and her husband Joe, a serving US Navy Officer, were on a three-week, first-class ‘trip-of-a-lifetime’ to Thailand before Joe headed out to sea for an extended period of duty.

Nicole, a self-confessed ‘big trip planner’ who enjoys researching the minutia of a potential holiday, did plenty of investigation before settling on DiveRACE Class E (from hereon just Class E), a well-appointed 34.5-metre steel-hulled vessel launched in 2015 that came with an excellent safety record and brilliant reviews.

The couple was picked up in the afternoon of 8 April and boarded Class E in the evening with another 14 divers. They set sail soon after arriving, and while the lead guide presented a safety briefing in the saloon, there was no proper muster drill to familiarise the guests with the boat’s emergency equipment and procedures.

‘We got there in the evening of 8 April and got underway,’ Nicole said. ‘There was no safety briefing other than a kind of, “here’s this, there’s that”, you know?

‘They said our life jackets are in the state rooms and the life rafts are on the top deck but there was no drill of any kind.’

Chanhyeok ‘Chris’ Kim, a diver from South Korea enjoying his first liveaboard – and who is also chief officer for a 200,000MT merchant ship – told the same story

‘The lead divemaster gave a short briefing about safety instructions,’ said Chris, ‘however, it was just: life jacket is in your cabin; life raft is on top.

‘They didn’t tell us about other safety equipment, for example, the place of the fire extinguisher or the fire alert system. Also, they didn’t talk about the muster station for fires or the abandon ship situation.’

No smoke detectors or fire alarm

For most of the voyage, everything was almost perfect, and Nicole gives praise to the crew where it’s due. ‘Things were efficient,’ she says; ‘they were well run and everything was well organised. The food was excellent and, overall, it was really well done – no complaints.’

On the last night of the trip, Class E and her passengers were moored over the Boonsong wreck when it became apparent that the vessel they were on was anything but perfect.

‘At about 3.15, 3.20 in the morning, Joe wakes me up and he tells me: “get up”,’ says Nicole. ‘He said: “Do you smell that smoke?”, but I’m half asleep at this point so I kind of take it with a grain of salt.

‘And then I hear somebody yelling, “Evacuate! Evacuate!”’

There were no smoke detectors or fire alarm system on board, and no roving night watch posted by the crew. The alarm was raised by a passenger who, unable to sleep, had been up on deck at the time the fire broke out.

Nicole and her husband left their cabin to investigate, and the nature of the emergency was instantly apparent.

‘As soon as we got into the hallway, there was thick smoke,’ said Nicole. ‘I tried to cover my mouth, but it was too much, and very acrid, so we ducked down and went outside onto the dive deck.

‘The smoke was out there too. We went to the edges to try and get some fresh air but it was already overwhelming the dive deck.’

They did not see any flames at this point, only smoke, so the couple headed out to the dining area on the upper deck, where other passengers were starting to gather.

‘We had about half the passengers at that point,’ said Nicole. ‘The head divemaster and a couple of the other divemasters showed up but then smoke started filling that area too, and it got too rough, so we walked along the side and went up to the front of the boat.’

Not realising the gravity of the situation, none of the assembled passengers had brought their life jackets with them.

‘It all happened too fast,’ said Nicole, ‘and I don’t think anybody realised that when people said “it’s smoky” that they were going to be jumping over the side.’

A couple of the female crew members, apparently unable to swim, had turned up with life rings.

No power, no radio, no battery backup

Approximately 10 minutes after leaving their cabins, the passengers realised the whole boat was without power – and had been for some time.

Another liveaboard, the MV Raga, owned by Smile Dolphin Adventures, was moored nearby but there did not seem to be any attempt by the crew to make contact.

According to Chris – who is in charge of his merchant ship’s firefighting team – Class E’s captain was at the front of the boat, and did not appear to be in control of the situation.

‘He could not speak English and looked panicked,’ he said, ‘so I went to the bridge to use the distress signal.

‘I tried to call by VHF radio, but it was not working because there was no electricity, so I tried to push the distress button, but it was also not working.

‘I tried to find other emergency equipment, but there was nothing,’ Chris continued. ‘The only thing I found was SART [Search and Rescue Transponder, which can be detected by other ships’ radar] but it was not that important in this situation.

‘So I couldn’t do anything because there was no power, and the batteries were also not working.’

DIVE has spoken with the DiveRACE Class E’s Singapore-based owner, who said in a written statement that ‘independent back-up batteries, radios and fire extinguishers were available’.

The simple facts remain, however, that two highly trained maritime officers – one civilian and one military – could not find a working radio on the bridge and, if there was a backup on board, neither the captain nor any of his crew put it to use.

‘The is pretty key to me,’ says Nicole, ‘and very aggravating. They went to the bridge to look for the bridge-to-bridge radio, assuming it had a battery backup. It did not.

‘They went looking for an emergency beacon. No battery backup on that, either, so no way to signal Mayday. Nothing.’

SOS by smartphone

With no way to communicate with the outside world, people started to signal Raga using the flashlights on their mobile phones.

‘They were probably 150 to 200 metres away,’ said Nicole, ‘far enough to circle the anchor chain and not hit us. People were trying to signal SOS with the flashlights on their phones, but [the crew of the other boat] also seemed to be sleeping, and there was nobody on the bridge because we couldn’t get their attention.’

By this time the fire had taken hold on the back deck. Unable to raise a reaction from the other boat, and with no way to signal an emergency, the passengers realised they were probably going to have to abandon ship.

‘At this point we could see a glow in the back of the boat, and it was getting worse and worse,’ says Nicole. We are talking via a video call, and it is clear to see the memory is clearly not easy for her.

‘We heard planks starting to hit the dive deck, and we start hearing air hoses start popping, which is just feeding the fire, and we heard things exploding.’

Somebody was bringing life jackets up to the forward deck, so Nicole and her husband – both strong swimmers and, as US Navy personnel, able to handle emergencies pretty calmly – start passing them out.

Sea conditions worsened as the boat burned – Nicole estimates a 1.5–1.8 metre swell – and a steady drizzle made the decking slippery, causing her to fall and break her sacrum (the triangular bone situated between the two hip bones of the pelvis) as she was helping.

It also became clear at while they were preparing to abandon ship that two divers were missing. Fortunately, one of the divemasters – a foreign national, not a member of the Thai crew – was able to open the forward emergency hatch, enabling them to escape the lower deck.

The liferafts were deployed – again, not by the crew but by one of the foreign divemasters and a passenger. Sea conditions and current made them difficult to access when people started jumping into the water, but – very importantly – they remained tethered to the vessel while the passengers abandoned ship, rather than drifting away, useless, into the dark.

By this time, the flames and the noise of the small explosions had aroused the attention of Raga’s crew, who deployed their boat’s tenders and weighed anchor to pick up Class E’s survivors.

The first mayday was issued by Raga’s captain at approximately 4.15 am.

This story, for reasons of length, appears in two parts. The second part is available here.

Related articles

• Fire Alert – Improving liveaboard fire safety for divers
• Liveaboard safety – how divers can change it and when to walk away
• Emperor Seven Seas liveaboard destroyed by fire in Port Ghalib
• Sea Story liveaboard survivor tells her story
• Divers rescued after Komodo liveaboard sinks

The post Survivors of Thai liveaboard DiveRACE Class E fire speak out – part 1 appeared first on DIVE Magazine.

The granite topography of Thailand’s Similan Islands gives writer and photographer Mark B Hatter plenty to work with during a journey on board the Thailand Aggressor

Words and pictures by Mark B Hatter

Occasionally, a rookie mistake can result in a positive outcome. Such was my situation on our final dive aboard the Thailand Aggressor as we approached the end of our cruise in the Andaman Sea, off the western coast of Thailand.

Everything seemed perfect on this final morning in the Similan Islands, capping off a wonderful week. The sea was smooth and super clear, and the early morning sun, hazy behind a thin layer of high clouds, would likely provide excellent sunburst photographic opportunities.

As a bonus, our boat was the only vessel at the dive site.

We’d visited Christmas Point earlier in the cruise and I was looking forward to again shooting the wildlife in and around the massive granite boulders strewn around the site.

The smooth rocks are signature surface and underwater topography features of the Similan Islands. Settling onto the sandy floor at 20 metres, between two massive granite boulders, I attempted to test fire my camera to validate aperture and shutter speed settings. The lack of a response was puzzling and unsettling. Up until now, I’d had no issues with my kit.

After a quick sequence of checks, the ‘err’ message on the camera’s LCD was soberingly clear: I had left the memory card out of the camera after downloading my last series of images the night before. Something I would have realised, had I completed my gear check before climbing into the dinghy.

We’d already dived Christmas Point early in the cruise but, nevertheless, this mistake would still cost me…

Or so I thought.

THE SIMILAN ISLANDS’ GRANITE PARADISE

The Similan Islands and associated sea mounts run up the west coast of Thailand. They are mainly composed of ‘intrusive granitoids’, rocks that formed between 250 and 150 million years ago as a result of plate tectonics that allowed magma to bubble up from deep within the Earth’s core to form protrusions and small mountains.

Aeons of weathering and erosion have left the islands smoothly contoured, creating a unique topography which is extremely
popular with tourists and divers.

There are 11 ko (the Thai word for ‘island’) in the Similan Archipelago, all of which are under Thailand’s protection as a national park. While each ko has a formal name, for the sake of simplicity they are more commonly known locally as Islands 1 through to 12.

During our seven-day cruise we visited dive sites along most of them, along with those at Ko Surin and Richelieu Rock.

We began our journey with an introductory dive at a shallow site called Anita’s Reef, between Islands 5 and 6, where classic coral bommies rise up from a shallow sandy plain.

The morning light was perfect for capturing colourful anthias and damselfish streaming over stony coral formations. I love shooting into the sun when it’s low on the horizon, and the conditions at Anita’s were ideal that day for cool sunbursts as backdrops against bommies that were teaming with life.

Our next dive, at Elephant Head Rock, between Islands 6 and 7, was a surprisingly different experience. This site, dominated by massive granite boulders, offers classic Similan diving. You might expect the boulders to be festooned with corals and sea fans – but actually most of the rocky surfaces are oddly devoid of encrusting life. Yet there are areas on every reef that offer an exception to the rule.

At these underwater oases, soft and stony corals, as well as massive sea fans, abound. This phenomenon of largely naked rock surface is apparently completely natural and not related to climate change or historical storm impacts – indeed, there are old growth tabling corals on the smooth granite, albeit few and far between.

Could it be that the windward facing sides of the islands, being more exposed seasonally, are less inclined to promote extensive coral or sea fan encrusting?

We also dived a number of sites which appeared to be within the seasonal lee of an island, and provide the conditions for much more typical massive coral bommies and linear reef structures to form.

At Ko Bon (Island 10), we got the best of both worlds. Having entered the water along a windward point, we let the current sweep us past the mostly barren rocky slopes, around a boulder-strewn point, to a protected lee-side shore where we found an astonishing developed coral reef.

Almost immediately, we encountered an enormous school of batfish hovering in the current, mid-water, which captivated half of our dive group.

I was drawn instead to shoot the massive shoals of golden and translucent sweepers, ever shape-shifting, like a single amorphous organism, in and around the stony coral structures.

MEETING THE ANDAMAN LOCALS

On the afternoon of our fifth day we left the Similan Islands for the five Surin Islands, an archipelago closer to the coast of Thailand but still within the Andaman Sea.

At Ko Surin Tai we made an afternoon sojourn to a village of Indigenous sea people called the Moken, a group also known as Sea Gypsies.

The Moken number in the hundreds, share everything communally and have their own language. As people of the sea, their mode of transportation is a longboat made of hardwood, colourfully painted and propelled by the most unusual engine I’ve ever seen, bearing a drive shaft at least 3m long that terminated in a double-bladed propeller.

After our visit to the Moken village we suited up for a sunset dive along the south shore of Surin Island. In the gloaming, my dive buddy and I were blown away by the underwater metropolis of stony coral, starting near the surface and sloping to around 20m.

The diversity was staggering and the coral was in surprisingly excellent health. Massive tabling corals, easily 2.5m in diameter, were complemented by forests of branching staghorn corals, lettuce corals and many other species of smaller plating corals.

Between the thickets of coral, an occasional magnificent anemone, replete with anemonefish, punctuated the dense seascape.

The dive was incredibl,e and it was only our inability to focus on subjects after twilight that ultimately drove us from the water. The surprising old-growth fringe reef at the south end of Surin Island left me perplexed about how this magnificent feat of nature could be evading the ever-encroaching threat of climate change.

Happily, at least for now, there are still places on the planet that are defying the odds of human-caused degradation.

DIVING RICHELIEU ROCK

The following morning we travelled before dawn to reach one of six mooring buoys off fabled Richelieu Rock, a massive underwater pinnacle barely reaching the surface between the Similan and Surin islands.

‘The Rock’ is one of the most popular dive sites on the planet, visited daily by dozens of boats and hundreds of divers – and for good reason.

As an isolated pinnacle in the open ocean, the Rock is swept by unimpeded currents that support an astounding abundance of life. Signature species include a myriad pastel-coloured carnation corals, giant sea fans and more magnificent anemones than I’ve ever seen in one place.

When the current is raging at Richelieu Rock, it’s the side receiving the brunt of the current where everything happens.

Shoals of glass fish are under continuous assault from schools of predator jackfish, long-nose emperor fish, groupers and snappers. Carnation corals covering every available surface swell in the tidal flow.

At the crown of the pinnacle, anemonefish in thousands of magnificent anemones fight to keep from being swept away from their hosts.

We make the penultimate dive of our trip at the Rock as the sun is going down. The day boats are gone and divers from the few other liveaboards still moored on fixed buoys have all left the water.

We have the place to ourselves in the waning light. Magnificent anemones often fold up into the shape of an onion at twilight. Seeing this phenomenon, with thousands of anemones in action at once, left me shooting continuously until it was time to go topside.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

I had a lot of images to process after four dives at Richelieu, which might explain why I had forgotten to put my memory card back in the camera immediately after completing the download.

Thus it was that I found myself at Christmas Point completing my last dive yet unable to shoot any more. Rather than regretting my foolish error, though, I was ultimately glad of it.

I’d been shooting Similan’s granite-based reefs for the better part of a week, and it was only on that final dive, without the burden of searching for viable scenes to photograph, that my eyes and mind were opened to the surprising, spectacular underwater vista that is Thailand’s Andaman Sea

THAILAND AGGRESSOR

The Thailand Aggressor was recommissioned in October 2024, so facilities are excellent. Meals include Thai lunches and dinners, and western breakfasts.

The vessel offers two routes, season-dependent. I selected the North Andaman Sea voyage, which covers dive sites in the Similan Islands, Surin Islands and Richelieu Rock, and departs from Tap Lamu Pier, 60-90 minutes by road from Phuket International Airport.

The divemasters and cruise director gave wide latitude on every dive, something photographers will appreciate. As long as we were paired with a buddy and carried an SMB, we were free to dive each site as we liked.

We were offered five dives per day on three occasions.

For more information, visit www.aggressor.com

More great reads from our magazine

• Painting with Light – an interview with Catherine Holmes
• Artificial Intelligence – good or bad for underwater photography?
• Liveaboard safety – how divers can change it and when to walk away
• Luxury resort versus budget homestay in Raja Ampat
• The National Lobster Hatchery – giving lobsters a helping hand

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A huge haul of 402 shark fins weighing in at 102 kilograms has been seized by Thai customs officials at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport.

The seizure was conducted during a joint operation between Thailand’s Customs Department and Chinese anti-smuggling authorities on Saturday, 3 May.

Thai customs officials were reportedly tipped off in advance by the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of China’s General Administration of Customs (GACC), which had notified them that goods violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) were scheduled to pass through the airport.

The Thai Fisheries Department coordinated an inspection with Thai Airways International and found the fins – worth over 2 million Thai baht (£46,000/$62,000) – contained in packages labelled as ‘dried fish’, which had originating in Trinidad and Tobago and were en route to China.

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The discovery was announced by Thai Customs spokesperson Phantong Loykulnanta, who said it was part of an ongoing effort to enforce strict bans on the passage of illegal goods through Thailand, particularly those violating CITES regulations.

‘This seizure sends a clear message that Thailand will not be a transit point for illegal wildlife trade,’ said Phantong. The case has been handed over to the police, who have launched an investigation to identify those responsible for the smuggling operation.

Shark fins are highly prized across Asian markets, particularly in China, where they are used to make shark fin soup, a luxury menu item which is said to have health-boosting properties, including increased virility in men.

There are no scientifically proven benefits that eating shark fins has any beneficial effects, and since the flesh of sharks is known to contain high levels of mercury, consuming shark fin soup may have the exact opposite of its intended effect.

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