Exploration & Research Trip

The Dive Shop Cambodia has just been exploring the far away islands together with Shallow Waters Conservation by running a trip to the most unknown divesites in Cambodia. Also we have been happy to host Kath Kelly and her team from Thailand conducting survey dives and taking water samples with the idea to found a large marine protected area in the Gulf of Thailand. Also Jelena, the PADI instructor from Koh Song Saa private island has been invidet to join the trip. After picking up the Shallow Waters staff as well as Kath and her team at Koh Sdach, we went straight to Koh Kong. This island close to the border to Thailand has been hardly dived so we took the plunge and went for some dives straight away. As expected, the visibility was not too great but we did find some sites rich of marine life.

We spent two days exploring Koh Kong before we went to dive one of the highlights of the trip: Shark Island, a very small island far off the coast which has been a premiere for The Dive Shop's staff as well. Diving at Shark Island was superior, visibility of around 25m made the survey dives easy and the fundives more than enjoyable. The highlights at Shark Island were the enormous amount of purple soft corals found at a pinnacle close to the island as well as the Bullshark which Jelena spotted close to the shore of Shark Island. Apart from the pelagics, the amount of different nudibranch species around the island were remarkable.

After dropping the scientists off at the Shallow Waters base at Koh Sdach, we could not resist to also visit Condor Reef, an offshore pinnacle west of Koh Rong. This site is famous for the excellent visibility, we have had up to 40m during our dives. Searching for a shipwreck which must be located close to Condor Reef did not end with gold and tresure but instead we have seen a turtle and we managed to find the cargo of the sunken ship, thousands of bags of concrete piling up almost like a reef.