Ayesha Cantrell, one of Thailand’s best-known technical divers due to her long list of published articles and photos, is back again, this time on the DSAT Chat blog with another look at Khao Sok National Park, which we talked about yesterday, and, in particular, the sunken villages there. (more…)

Although Aquanauts may be based in Pattaya, we do cavern, cave and rebreather courses for divers all over Thailand, including for some of the country’s highest-certified and experienced PADI professionals. For the past couple of months, ANDI Instructor Trainer (and PADI CD) Roger M. Smith has been training PADI Course Director Jonas Samuelsson of Bans Divers and Peter McCarthy PADI Trimix Instructor of Master Divers and other Koh Tao-area students first in cavern and, now, cave diving.

Below is an diary from Aquanauts’ own Tec Rec Instructor Dan Beldon about the group’s Intro to Cave course in August at Khao Sok national park. (more…)

Ayesha Cantrell, perhaps the best-known female technical dive instructor in Thailand, is giving diving in The Kingdom some more good press with a photo essay on the impressive caverns of Koh Sok National Park in the coming issue of Under Water Photography magazine.

Cantrell, who worked a number of jobs in the U.K. and abroad before discovering her diving passion, is a skilled photographer and videographer who has actively promoted tech diving — especially in Thailand and particularly for women. (more…)

Unbeknownst to many tech divers around the world, Thailand is speckled with caves and caverns from north to south, many of which have never been fully explored. Earlier this month Aquanauts’ Roger M. Smith and fellow ANDI Instructor Bruce Konefe tackled the vast Song Hong cave, accessed via a sinkhole in remote Trang province.

Dived by only a handful of people since its discovery in 2006, the cave, about 960 km southwest from Pattaya, was notorious for its hard-to-find location, but has now been plotted on Google maps. It’s believed to have two entrances, but the easier-to-access opening is about 12 meters down in the 110-meter deep sinkhole. It then opens up into a huge cave, so large a light beam will not reach the opposite cave wall. (more…)

We finally got our hands on the photos from Aquanauts’ Cavern Diver course last fall at Thailand’s Thong Pha Phom near Kanchanaburi and what a great surprise they were.

ANDI Instructor Roger M. Smith led the course for Aquanauts interns (and now PADI instructors) Greg Hannigan, A.J. Rankin and Scott Clark. Hannigan was behind the lens and shot a bundle of photos. The best ones were without the direct strobe, which too often illuminates the suspended particles in the cavern waters.

After a bit of Photoshop “channel mixing,” that restored proper color values and added luminence, what you see below is how things looked to the divers on the three-day course. (more…)

Thailand’s southern islands and coastline are dotted with cavern and cave systems tech divers are anxious to dive. Aquanauts has the advantage of being centrally located so we can dive the southern caves as well as those near Kanchanaburi. One we haven’t done yet is Khao Sok on the southern side of the Gulf of Thailand. The Internet today, however, brings us a trip report and photos from a group of divers who completed a cavern diver course there. (more…)

Leaving behind the hustle and bustle of Pattaya, a group of Aquanauts instructors and interns last month embarked on a four-day expedition to the scenic mountains of western Thailand’s Kanchanaburi region for the ANDI Cavern Diver course. The site was the network of caves and caverns at Thong Pha Phom. (more…)

In the previously mentioned article on the development of technical diving in Thailand, the Tourism Authority of Thailand gives a good, if basci, overview of not only reef and wreck diving, but the increasing prominence of cave and cavern diving in the Land of Smiles.

Divers experienced in the use of tri-mix can enjoy some major challenges here. Indeed two of the largest caves so far discovered in Asia are in the vicinity of Krabi province, on the mainland near the island province of Phuket.

Sre Keow was one of the first to be explored. It is accessed through a pond of about 15 metres in diameter that was once mainly used for washing elephants. A small entrance at a depth of ten metres leads into one of the deepest caves so far discovered in Thailand. (more…)