Inside the HTMS Pangan. (Photo: Ayesha at Big Buddha Diving via Thai Wreck Diver)

The wreck hunters at the MV Trident will sail again July 2 for the HTMS Pangan on a 3-day, 3-night tech liveaboard trip.

Rediscovered in August 2005,  the Pangan is Royal Thai Navy ship bult in Japan before World War II. Carrying ammunition and gunpowder for disposal, she reportedy sunk in a storm in 1961. Fire damage on the superstructiure indicates a fire, however. There was no loss of life.

This wreck is about 60 nautical miles from Koh Tao, an easy 6 hour run. She lies on her port side in 60 meters of clear water, the top of the wreck is at 48 meters. Length is about 60 meters, beam 10 meters and weight approximately 3,000 tons.  The Pangan is very well appointed with twin screws, lots of portholes, telegraphs and deck machinery. (more…)

The following is a trip report by Lance Robb of Closed-Circuit Divers in Australia which last month chartered Koh Tao’s MV Trident for a week-long tech liveaboard. If you’ve got a great Thailand tech diving trip report, use the Contact form to let us know.

Stuey next to the forward deck gun USS Lagarto

The MV Trident usually operates out of Koh Tao and considering the distance we had to travel to get to these wreck sites the boys decided to take the boat to Koh Samui, so we all made our way there to join the boat.

That afternoon had us assembling our equipment pumping tanks and generally settling in for the week ahead. That evening around 7.00pm we slipped the lines and we were on our way and motored all night and into mid morning before we arrived at our first mark. We arrived on the position all very excited with most of us in the wheelhouse glued to the sounder looking for the big red lump protruding from the normally flat sandy bottom of the Gulf. (more…)

Southeast Asia’s oceans are full of ancient wrecks, many of which contained beutiful and rare pottery. Technical divers around Thailand, with the folks at the MV Trident in Koh Tao at the forefront, have found and explored many of these wrecks. But in Vietnam, underwater archeology is still in its infancy.

In a post today on the ArcheologyWorld blog, Nguyen Dinh Chien, chief curator of the National Museum of Vietnamese History in Hanoi, looks back at the first three major wreck finds, including one containing a treasure trove of 15th century Thai pottery.

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A large wooden ferry that shuttled goods between Koh Tao Island and Chumphon Pier sunk one night in late April. The crew was recovered, but the Save Koh Tao group wanted to find the wreck. So they contacted Big Blue Tech on the island to do a survey and environmental assessment.

The problem is, Big Blue can’t find the wreck.

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American public television this weekend will debut a documentary about the mission, sinking and — 60 years later — discovery of the USS Lagarto, a U.S. submarine sunk by the Japanese during World War II in the Gulf of Thailand and found by Jamie Macleod and the crew of Koh Tao’s MV Trident.

“Lost and Found: The Legacy of the USS Lagarto” will air on Public Broadcasting System channels in Chicago, Milwaukee, Wisc.; and Indianapolis, Ind. to mark the annual Memorial Day holiday.  Airing times can be found here. The one-hour film was made by Chicago filmmakers Harvey Moshman and Chuck Coppola, who produced the Emmy Award-winning local documentary “The Eastland Disaster.”

The Lagarto was one of 28 submarines built by the Wisconsin’s Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. during World War II. Weeks before the end of the war in May 1945, it sank in the Gulf of Thailand. The sub was lost for more than sixty years, until May 2005, when it was discovered  sitting upright in 225 ft. of water. (more…)

Thailand’s pre-eminent technical wreck divers, the MV Trident, will embark on their next expedition May 18. The “Closed-Circuit Divers Australia” group has booked many of the spaces on the tech liveaboard, but more spaces are still available.

The Trident’s Jamie Macleod says the trip will be both a mix of wreck-hunting and diving known wrecks as far south as the Malaysian border.

The trip runs out of the Trident’s home port of Koh Tao between May 18-26. The price is 75,000 all-inclusive except for helium. Booking details and contact information can be found on the Trident’s website.

A good overview of the development of Thailand’s dive industry — particularly technical diving — was recently published by the Tourism Authority of Thailand. A bit basic for experienced tech divers, the article nonetheless offers interesting background on the Gulf of Thailand’s many wrecks accessible to technical divers.

Two of the most popular new activities in Thailand are wreck diving, mostly in the Gulf of Thailand, and cave diving, mostly along the Andaman Sea coastline. The Gulf of Thailand falls well short of being an Asian Bermuda Triangle, but is rich in sunken wrecks resulting from misadventures in trading, piracy and war. Many stories have been lost in the mists of time but, according to one list, there are at least 179 sunken Japanese ships – or marus, as some divers prefer to call them.

Some of the biggest recent discoveries date from the Second World War. In mid-2005, a group of technical divers from Koh Tao came across a US submarine that had been sunk in 72 metres of water by the IJN Hatsutaka, a Japanese minelayer that recorded an anti-submarine action with depth charges at the time…. (more…)