“Lost and Found-Legacy of the USS Lagarto,” the Emmy Award-winning documentary about the mission, sinking and — 60 years later — discovery of the USS Lagarto, will debut in Thailand at a Dec. 12 event in Koh Tao hosted by the MV Trident, the famed wreck hunters who found the U.S. submarine sunk by the Japanese during World War II in the Gulf of Thailand. (more…)

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 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…)

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…)