The HTMS Chang, formerly known as the USS Lincoln County, was a WWII landing craft carrier that was sunk in November 2012 to form the largest recreational shipwreck in Thailand. Over the years HTMS Chang has turned into a thriving artificial reef and haven for all sorts of marine life.
The propellers are 32m deep, the main deck is 24m, the captain’s cabin 12m and the crows nest sits only 5m deep making it perfect for your safety stop.
You can dive inside the wrecks deep cargo holds, mess and corridors which are between 25 and 29 meters deep as part of your Advanced Wreck Specialty!
The HTMS Chang is home to a diverse range of marine life, including batfish, filefish, scorpionfish, marbled groupers, trevally, fusiliers, snapper, large yellow-tail barracudas, giant trevally and more.
Whale Sharks also visit regularly, providing an exciting surprise for divers.
Yak Yai is the bigger brother of the nearby Koh Yak Lek. This stunning reef has so much variation from the sloping hard corals on the south, the coral whip garden on the east, anemones to the north and blue staghorn plantation to the west. This site is beginner friendly but still offers great views for the more experienced diver.
Expect to see blue spot grouper, bannerfish, butterflyfish, many colourful wrasse and blue-spotted stingrays. Remember to ask your instructor to take you to ‘puffer-rock’ to look for cobia and huge jenkins whiprays!
Koh Yak Lek is the smaller of the two Koh Yaks when you look from the surface but once underwater you will see how vast it really is with a curious outcropping for the north where you can find whiptail stingrays hiding in the sand and beautiful flatworms. You will find a beautiful terrace of hard corals including large tabletop corals that meet vibrant purple whip corals. This site is known for its massive school of yellow fusiliers that you can spend up to 10 minutes swimming through. Home to many nudibranchs, lionfish, pink skunk clownfish, goatfish, batfish and even a turtle.
Koh Mapring is one of the smaller islands in the marine park. It is a great site to begin your ‘Try Dive’ experience. Here you can start at the beach and slowly work your way to the main reef. The life is quite astounding for such a small island, you can find schools of small yellowtail barracuda, blue spotted stingrays, fusiliers, flatworms, tusk fish and if you spend some time over the sand in a special area you’ll see jenkins whip rays and even the chance of a seahorse!
It’s best not go all the way around the island as one part is very shallow and rocky.
We consider this the best reef in the Marine Park. 3 Finger Reef is a large rock formation with 3 large bays on the east, a stunning 10m deep wall on the south and stunning coral fields everywhere in between!
It is the largest reef in the area and certainly not one to miss out on. This reef bring in all sorts of marine life but our highlight is the wall on the south. It is covered in stunning hard and soft corals. The local Nudis love this wall as does a resident yellow box fish.
Because of its location on the west side of the marine park facing open ocean Koh Tien is a vastly different reef to all others at the marine park. It has a shallow side which is wonderful for snorkels with a huge array of corals and fish. The other side has many large rocky formations that rays and larger fish like to hide in and around.
This site will bring out the Indiana Jones in you, exploring this large rock formation with huge canyons will make you feel like you are in a different world. Because this site is located on the outside of the marine park it draws in much larger fish and larger schools of fish. It’s common to find yourself surrounded by thousands of trevally at a time here!
If you head east over a beautiful outcropping you will find some amazing individual pinnaces and a small cave that can be entered if you wish.
Blueberry Hill is an entirely submerged pinnacle site with winding canyons home to a resident sweetlips and full of coral. Once out of the canyons there is a vast coral field rich in life, keep an eye out here for turtles and even small octopus!
Often you will be followed by a school of curious yellow tail barracuda and get to swim through a massive school of yellow fusiliers as you make your way to a maximum depth of 18 meters when you venture to the outer drop off
The dive will eventually lead you back into the canyon where you started, where you can level up to the top of the pinnacle and spend some time searching the walls for durban dancing shrimp. The top of the pinnacle also serves as the perfect depth for the safety stop before returning to the boat.
Hin Rua Tek also is a triangle shaped rock just south of Bang Bao. The site has a stunning wall on the west, home to a few small caves, many fan corals and a vibrant, vast reef to the east. Finishing the dive in the shallows on top of the reef at 5m-6m will let you spend time enjoying nudibranch, many different shrimp and a beautiful array of corals.
This is one site that due to being dived less frequently has a higher chance of black tip reef sharks!
It’s best to dive this site in high season due to strong currents and poor visibility at times. If you happen to dive here with 20m+ vis you will quickly fall in love
Hin Luk Bat is highly regarded as the best dive site the island has to offer and our personal favourite reef due its topography, swim-thrus and vast array of corals. The site is a pinnacle that is surrounded by giant boulders, covered with many varieties of hard, soft corals and the biggest anemone field Koh Chang has to offer! You can often find yellow box fish, bent stick pipefish and stunning nudibranch here, but remember to also look away from the pinnacle to see vast schools of barracudas and trevally. One a good day you may be joined by a spotted eagle ray or two!
Hin Raab South is a rocky, coral rich dive site with an abundance of hard and soft corals, including fields of leather coral and whip coral gardens.
The dive starts over a shallow reef where you can swim along the main wall and see many scorpion fish, magnificent anemones, barrel sponges, and beautiful blue stag-horn corals.
As you continue to descend to around 12 meters, you can follow the reef to a small rock where there are 4 old gunship bullets located (The Thai Navy used to use this island for target practice!)
You can often find blue spotted rays, marbled sea cucumbers white-eyed moray eels, hawksbill turtles, glass cleaner shrimp, filefish, marbled grouper and the occasional yet mostly friendly trigger fish.
The T11 Wreck is a 30m coastal patrol gun ship. It was sunk off Koh Chang on 17 December 2013, lying in 16 meters of water. The wreck is no longer in one complete piece, as it has been blown apart and broken in half, now resting slightly to one side with the crow’s nest standing on the sandy bottom.
Despite its condition, the T11 is a popular dive site with some very interesting artificial blocks located nearby. Divers have two options when exploring the site. One is to spend some time exploring the ship after taking a heading to Hin Raab South, Secret Reef. The other option is to take a heading out to some concrete blocks not far away and have fun playing around, diving through the blocks to test your buoyancy skills.
The wreck and blocks are home to large schools of trevally,tusk fish, yellow tail barracuda and snapper. If you swim off the bow of the wreck you can also find a super cute family of clarke’s anemonefish.
Secret Reef is located next to Hin Raab South. It is a rock formation with a maximum depth of 12 meters, and a buoy line leads down to a depth between 5 to 6 meters at the center. Divers can explore a canyon that takes them over the reef, then head to the coral outcroppings in search of turtles. Along the way, divers may spot barracudas, moray eels, blue-spotted stingrays, angelfish, groupers, anemone fish, and parrotfish.
This site has the most varied collection of soft corals of any dive sites in the area!
Secret reef is one of our favourite places for a night dive!!
Line
Line
Copyright © 2022 Thai Ocean Academy
