PADI Advanced Course Koh Tao: Whale Sharks and Deep Dive adventures
Image: Whale Shark during the PADI Advanced Course Koh Tao
Congratulations to Kate, Kathy , Chris and Alvin on completing their PADI advanced course with Simple Life.
We had excellent deep dives at the Chumphon Pinnacles dive site, with the guys all experiencing nitrogen narcosis for the first time down at 30 meters!! And now the guys are hungry for more!
It's been a 'whale shark-tastic' few weeks of scuba diving and this little one came to say hello during our Chumphon Pinnacle dives!
Diving Koh Tao we're fortunate to see whale sharks all year round, but if you're diving here you do need to be a bit lucky to see the biggest fish in the ocean! Whale sharks aren't resident to the Koh Tao dive sites but are a pelagic species that migrate through the area, often sticking around the large pinnacle sites to feed on the nutrient rich waters stirred up by the current passing over the dive site.
Although you have a remote chance of seeing a whale shark all year round scuba diving Koh Tao, the frequency of whale shark sightings is increased during certain seasons, notably around May and towards the end of our peak season in September.
Whale sharks are most often seen on the more distant pinnacle dive sites such as the Chumphon Pinnacles and Southwest Pinnacle, plus also visit Sail Rock midway between Koh Tao and Koh Phangan. But they don't exclusively hang around the deeper distant dive sites - on many occasions they've made their way much closer to Koh Tao to dive sites such as White Rock and Twins.
Whale sharks have been recorded of up to 12 meters in length! Most our sightings around Koh Tao are smaller than that, ranging from juvenile whale sharks of two or three meters long, to larger, more mature whalesharks which can be eight or nine meters in length!
