Koh Tao Underwater - We found some Turtles on the Turtle Island

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(Edited)

Hello again fellow travelers! In my last post I shared the place we stayed at and the surroundings. Today is time to dive deep underwater (maybe not so deep..) and explore the marine life up close.

Full day trip

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We were lucky it didn’t rain on the day we decided to do the full day trip. The weather predictions were all against us but we had at least that one thing on our side. The sea however wasn’t on our side and just as the previous day the wind and waves were huge. We were close to the island so it wasn’t so bad but the weather limited us when it came to snorkeling areas.

Koh Tao is one of the best if not the best spot to see Whale Sharks at. Right now is the season they show up and I was super excited we may see them. Nat’s dad had a friend come here a week before us and he was so close. For 3 years I’ve been dreaming of swimming amongst these beautiful creatures.

Before we did any snorkeling we were supposed to go to Koh Nang Yuan. It is a place I've written a post about that is definitely worth seeing. It has a great viewpoint we didn't go to last time and we were excited to see the view from the top this time around. The weather made it impossible to coast though so we had to turn back right after we reached the island.

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On the very top is where the viewpoint would be.

On the day we went pretty much around the whole island. Most areas we snorkeled at were in pretty calm waters. There was so much fish here and many species I was seeing for the first time. We did snorkel here once before but not for a whole day. The corals are quite different here too with some exceptions.

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After lunch everyone was being lazy. We stopped the boat pretty far away from the snorkeling area so if you wanted to go see some fish and corals, you had to swim quite far. It seemed I was the only one from our group that was keen on going there and that was a great thing. Being alone I saw massive schools of fish and so many interesting things. When there’s no one else to scare them away, they aren’t as bothered by just one person it seems.

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I know the color balance looks off and different on every photo but the weather was ever so changing and the light was totally different from minute to minute. On top of that the Go Pros unedited photos looked like they've been taken with a microwave instead of a camera and after some heavy editing to push contrast and fix colors I ended up with a bit of a mess. Hope it isn't too distracting.

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As the day progressed the chances of seeing sharks were getting slimmer and slimmer. We had one last stop before we went back and I didn’t even know about it but it turned into one of the best experiences I’ve had in Thailand. I’ve seen that there are sea turtles in Koh Tao before but never knew of their size.

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I hope you enjoyed the big blob of photos from today. Koh Tao is a place we'll definitely visit again in the future. We just have to pick time with better weather. The waves make the water less clear and it's hard to see and take good photos underwater when there's no sun out. Thanks for reading once again and have an awesome week!



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Oh man this post made me miss snorkeling so bad... But when looking at photos like these, I cannot help but imagine how beautiful and colorful the reefs must have been before they got bleached :( Quite heartbreaking to see them like this in so many different parts of the world these days. At least there still the fish, turtles and other creatures to make the place look more vivid.

@tipu curate

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Yeah.. it's still beautiful and I think a bit deeper where divers go is a bit more vivid. I do remember these amazing colorful reefs on TV as a kid and I've only seen a fraction of that in the real world. Hope with tourism being semi dead for awhile reefs recover a bit. I'm not sure tourism is the main issue bothering the sea waters though.. but you can't really fight the big polluters. We'll just be swimming in plastic and rubbish at some point.

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Yeah, I don´t think that mass tourism was the main factor in this either. But fewer people around the reefs can surely give them some little extra chance to recover a bit...

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