Koh Tao, Tanote Bay. About as good a snorkel bay as you'll find.
Within moments of putting mask in water, before even leaving wading depth, you're in coraled rocks and schools of fish.
Silver V-tailed skipjack are apparently in a busy hour commute except that their route doubles back on itself and around a coral head. They apparently like roundabouts.
A few of those gorgeous pink and teal parrotfish pass you on their way to bite on that other piece of coral, paying you no mind. A green-orange one, two.
Four inch long zebra fish seem curious about you - maybe other tourists feed them.
There's a big rock in the middle of the bay where snorkelers climp a rope up to jump off, maybe 25 feet high. That's the target for this leg of the swim, but there is no hurry. Hurrying is wrong.
The rocks are covered with hard and soft coral. Lots of clammy type things, displaying short slalomss of soft vulnerable flesh. Black spots in royal blue folds, or in the case of some giant clams (15-inches) not-yet ripe banana. Come too close and they close up.
Two inch fuzzy cones in orange or blue, like lttle christmas tress dissapear if you try to touch them. They decorate the hard coral.
Lots of parrotfish, the light-grey/dark-grey/orange. Giant fanned coral, it doesn't get more than 15 feet deep until you get over to the rock, where it startes to drop off (and clear out) to 30 feet or so.
Standing on a sandy head near the rock, 5-inch long parrot fish bite you feet. Two feet versus one fish is a fun game, and the fish let's you think you have a chance in touching him. You don't.
The jumble of rocks around the big jumping rock and the depth to its outside provide a sense of space the dense shallow interior does not. It's a nice contrast.
Day 2 has me on the same path, but I'm in even less of a hurry. The water is warm, clear, flat, with no detectable current. I just hover in 5 foot water. I didn't notice them yesterday, but at hover speed you can see the rockfish swimming above sand and you can see them settle to recline on coral which renders them invisible. Slow is good. Were they ubiquitous but unnoticed yesterday or did I stumble upon Rockfish Romper Room?
Today I head out to the foursome - rocks demarking the north boundary of the bay. Deeper here - 20 feet - and largely a dense broken mass of dead coral like elkhorn on the bottom. Again, fish rummaging about in the interstices.
The innermost northernmost of the quads isn't all that interesting, so I swim counterclockwise back to shore. Mostly the dead bottom thatchery. Interesting on its own, but not compared to the main part of the lagoon.
Day 3 we motorbike around the island hitting the various bays, heading clockwise from our home position at 3:30. Aow Leuk Bay has a couple of restaurants. The bay looks mostly clear, with no coral within 200 feet of shore. The wide beach has imported fine sand, so walking is comfortable. Someone forgot to tell the European girls that toplessness makes the Thai hosts (well the hostesses at least) uncomfortable.
We skip the snorkel and enjoy the beach for a bit. The 3-foot long black tip sharks along the shore are a hit.
Sae Daeng Beach has some very nice hotes on them backdropped by steep hills (steep enough to drop a motorbike when turning to extract a spouse from a guardrail), very tropical and chill. the westernmost resort looks recent but abandoned (tourism hasn't recovered to pre-COVID days).
Sai Daeng juts out to the southeast of the island and at least for today is catching the wind and current from the southwest. The first waves crashing on the beach we've seen, visibility is comparatively low. A couple more small blacktips amuse the dozen beachgoers.
Some refreshments and off to Thiang Og Bay (Shark Bay).
The key to circumnavigating the island clockwise, is ""Always turn left." So, on our second consecutive jaunt we start our journey by turning right. The penalty for getting lost is actually half the fun.
Our first stop in Shark Bay is "no beach only bay" so we backtrack to Rocky Point (via a bunch of right turns).
Rocky Point describes the path down to the restaurant that non-resort guests pass through (and the water they have to trod trough) to get to the beach. Shark Bay is known for its excellent snorkeling. Its beach is very wide and long tail skiffs litter the harbor. Looks like a nice place to hang and snorkel.
But we get hit up for 100 Baht each to stay, so we decide it's lunchtime and we'll eat at the next bay Chalok Baan Kao Bay (which I think means Refuge for those too petty to Pay Thirty Cents).
Another broad beach lined with hotels, wooden boats and no tourists.
We stumble upon The Happy Monk, a restaurant on stilts with a lovely view and decent food and we actually plan the next destinations. The main strip is a long strectch of beach facing west - catching the brunt of the waves and swell - and no dive spots.
This gets us to 11:00p on the island. A long-tail skiff is an option to Nang Yuan Island. We'll likely do that when we do the whole island over again, this time by boat. Mango Bay, in the twelve-o'clock position, is not really accessible by Motorbike, so we'll defer that as well.
This leaves us Hin Wong Bay, at the 2:30 position on the island. We'll rent snorkel gear there and stay for a while.
The whole cove is pinched close by a jungly ampitheater of giant boulders tumbling into the water. Wong Bay's beach is tiny, crammed with 30 chaise lounges on it with about umbrellas ten low tables. 15 people make the place seem somewhat happening.
Two bars bookcasing the beach with sem-tropical music add to the hipster smuggler feel.
Underwater continues the tumbling boulder feel as the coral is definitely boulder-based. It provides and interesting contrast to Tanote Bay. Far fewer coral, fewer fish. But worth a stay.
Day 4, back to our homestead. We head straight to the quads. Well, I don't. I'm distracted by the skipjack commute. They look like they're swimming with an unhurried purpose, but they it's hard to divine.
A river of baitfish...
Parrotfish.
The outside of the quads feel like open ocean; there's some chop and swell and the aura of protection is gone. Still comparitvely sparse compared to the shallows. The boulders are split as with a giant saw. Twelve to eighteen inch gap in a plane hosting soft coral and two-foot long white sea slugs with black spots and "feet."
Heading in, i hover to watch the representatives of each of the coral-eating fish (one from each species for some reason), I'm startled by a school of about a thousand 18-inch to 24-inch streamlined silver fish with an the most dominant feature on their fuselage. They surround me and eventually all start schooling around me in a torus about two feet from my reach if I were to extend my hand. I float fingers laced together watching as a thousand mobile eyeballs stare me down for five minutes. Me and my thousand friends in a whirl in clear water for 100 feet. Like being inside a disco ball of eyeballs.
Eventually they broke orbit, we intersected a few times more, but no dance.
Day 5
Circumnavigate via longtail skiff.
Picked up at the beach, we head to the little twin island to the northwest (11:00 position).
A nice resort area on the only lowland, and huts sprinkled on the south mound. Boardwalks connect everything.
The stretch of beach betwen the two islands has chairs for hire strong 2/3 of the way. The larger island has some partially complete huts, but seems unwelcomig. We sit on the beatch for a while.
We get back on the boat and are taken to Japanese Gardens, which happens to be 200 feet from where we were sitting. Anenome, Anenome, Anenome! Dirty pink. 3-inch tendrils will a bulb at the end. Anenome colored fish hiding in the fronds. Lots of other soft coral. Some had a roayal purple base. A decent amount of coral-eating fish.
We head clockwise, skipping Mango Bay and stopping at the next one. There's a light house. Rocks, anenomes, not a lot of fish. A couple big rock outcroppings with overhanges. Like giant mushroom caps (but droopier). Some blue-ish hard coral.
Since we wer passing our bay, we stopped for lunch there.
Next up was Shark Bay, which for coral and fish pretty much sucked. It did, however, have turtles. We watched a little guy chomping on the bottom for some time before gettting waved over towards "a big one".
Sure enough, it was a big one, big enough to have three large remora hitching a ride. Folled this guy for a while until he intercepted another turtle of three-remora size. I folled the closet which was the new one - distinguishable because the third rmoral was on this turtle's head. At one ppoint he came in my direction and passed within a couple of feet. He eyed me a bit but wasn't impressed. A cool encounter.
By this time a couple of large snorkel dive boats pulled up.
Soon enough it was like fish feeding on a loaf of bread, Poor turtle...
Final stop before the rain was AnLoek for the 3-foot blacktip sharks. Good rocks and a decent amount of fish, plus the blacktips.