Scuba Dive Thailand - Dive Sites
Thailand Scuba Diving - Hin Deng / Hin Muang
Hin Daeng
An hours speedboat ride from Lao Liang and mere five hundred meters separates this scuba dive site from Hin Muang. Unlike
its neighbour, Hin Deng, or in English Red Rock slightly breaks the
water's surface, but only at low tide. Its name comes courtesy of the
hues of red Dendronephthya Soft Corals blanketing its upper slopes and
walls.
There are regiments of charging Titan Trigger Fish in the shallower
waters best to be avoided! It´s as if they have taken over the
duty of guarding the rock keeping out intruders who want to disturb
or cause damage. Further along the rock continues as a series of walls
with intermittent shelves at varying depths. These descend to a sand
substrate floor averaging thirty five meters and in some places dropping
well beyond reach of any sensible, safety concious diver!
The diversity of everyday reef life is grand and includes Tiny Invertebrates,
many of which tend to a variety of Moray Eels, picking out trapped Scraps
of food from between their teeth; others concentrate on removing unwanted
parasitical intruders. Sweeping schools of Red, Yellow and White Snappers.
Resident juvenile Nurse Sharks can be occasionally observed by scuba divers in a small
cave at a depth of ten meters in the southwest wall.
Other Sharks seen
around the rock, especially the shallower southern section, include
Leopard Sharks. Small groups tend to chase after one another, cat and
mouse-style around and between the pinnacles. A good concentration of
Invertebrates and Cephalopods also share this somewhat restricted area
including a variety of Moray Eels, Mantis Shrimps and Cuttlefish.
Hin Muang
The best way to describe this rocky mass, which translated into English
means purple rock, is as the submerged sister of Ayres Rock, Australia.
A series of six pinnacles is interconnected in depths ranging between
sixteen and eighty meters. Beneath the surface a rich garden of Purple
Sea Anemones carpets the top of the predominant pinnacle which not only
gives this rock its name, but makes it one of the most beautiful
areas of the scuba dive dive site.
Hin Muang is renowned as being one of the best scuba diving destinations in
the country and also the deepest. A sheer wall descends to
reach a narrow platform at forty meters below the waters surface before
it plummets down further, to more than seventy meters. The walls themselves
are fairly barren and are really highlighted by scattered sea fans and
orange encrusting sponges.
There are a number of narrow valleys breaking
the otherwise solid infrastructure, where the rocks' appearance changes
for the better, as the walls are almost completely obscured by Soft
Corals and Sea Fans which take advantage of these narrow avenues of
current by extracting a higher quantity of nutrients from the flowing
waters. The Corals are not without their attractions, the likes of Long
Nose Hawk Fish, Dendronephthya Crabs and in deeper waters Black Coral
Shrimps all abound.
A prominent cavern measuring around fifty meters is found about halfway
along the center and longest section of the structure. This does not
cut the through the rock as the others do, but it follows along its
length, splitting the infrastructure, rather than dividing it.
Mooring lines can be secured to this point which can serve as helpful
descent lines in the stronger currents which are often encountered here.
Scuba divers like this part of the scuba diving site most because of the marine life and
the corals found in the gorge, especially at night. Painted Rock Lobsters
guard Narrow Shelves and tunnels in the walls, and the eyes of Cleaner
Shrimps and Minute Reef Crabs throw back the light in the form of tiny
red dots. On a larger, or more accurately, longer scale, Giant Morays
cause a temporary increase in scuba divers' air consumption as they abandon
their lairs to participate, along with the motionless Bearded Scorpion
Fish when hunting nocturnaly .
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