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…)

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…)