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If you have dived in Thailand at places like Chumporn Pinnacle, near Koh Tao or Richelieu Rock in the Andaman Sea, you will know what it is like to be surrounded by dozens of other dive boats dropping off god knows how many divers, all crashing into each other and the coral!!  If, on the other hand, you choose to dive in Burma, you will get a feeling of almost isolation, which in itself can be a little unnerving. As your dive boat will probably be the only vessel around for miles with hardly a fishing boat to keep you company, this can conjure up such thoughts as “what if the captain just sailed off and left us here. What if the current drags me away and nobody finds me. Or, how close was that last dynamite explosion and do the fishermen care if they blow me up as well as all the fish”.  The advantage here is that you do get the dive sites to yourself and you know that nobody has scared off those ever elusive pelagics, so if they are not there, they are just not there!! We did encounter a couple of other liveaboards at the most popular site “Shark Cave”, and we did barter Coke and cigarettes with sea gypsies in exchange for fresh fish and lobster, so we were never quite on our own all the time, but very close to it.  Top

Immigration is based at Victoria Point, or Kaw Thaung as it is now called since Burma became Myanmar. Here you have to deal with immigration! The thing is that you do not pass through Thai immigration at all, there are no stamps in the passport. You are basically leaving Thailand illegally, and entering Burma illegally. The procedure then, is to leave your passport with Burmese immigration and give them a healthy wad of US dollars. This is the biggest con of all to unknowing customers. The dive centres ask the customers for US$150 each to pay for the Burmese “entry fee”. In fact, Burmese immigration only takes US$100 per passenger. On an average trip there would be 12 customers, so the dive shop gets a tidy little profit of US$600 without even trying!!! This actually worked out to our advantage, from a selfish point of view because at the end of the trip, we could pay our wages from this money. If we had waited for the office to pay us we would never had got paid, which seemed to be the case of all the other employees.

On leaving Victoria Point, you get the feeling you are entering into another world. The sea is emerald green and full of huge “Lions Mane” jellyfish floating gracefully by. You are surrounded by hundreds of craggy granite islands in all shapes and sizes as far as the eye can see.  Our first trip to Burma was full of expectant wonder. We’d read the write-ups of the guaranteed shark encounters etc, etc. You can imagine then how grateful we were that we had not paid to do this trip (unlike the customers who paid in the region of US$1600 each + the US$150 “entry fee”). It became abundantly clear that the diving was not was it was cracked up to be by the greedy dive shops that sold the packages! Although one or two of the sites were undoubtedly “nice”, there was nothing exceptional and certainly a lot FEWER sharks than we had encountered in Similan!  With each dive on each trip it became more difficult for us to give briefings to excite the customers. We stopped saying things like, “look out for sharks here”, and instead would say something like, “if you are lucky, you might….”.  The final blow was on our last trip to Burma. None of the customers wanted to go to Burma Banks, I think at least here people now realise that it is not the shark fest it has been made out to be. They all wanted to go to Shark Cave, which on previous trips had been the only dive where we could guarantee sharks. Not this time. We did 4 dives there and the highlight was a pair of mating cuttlefish and some ornate ghost pipefish. Not one shark.  The whole trip, not one shark.  Top

The Burmese fishermen have extensively dynamited every dive site reducing them to shadows of their former beauty. In a way, who can blame them. They are so poor and have to feed and cloth their families and will never be privileged enough to dive. They do not see anything of the money that the dive shops coin in or that the government charges as an entrance fee. Another strange thing on the trips was the fact that all our divers complained about the state of the reefs and lack of marine life, yet they were quite prepared to eat fish and lobster traded to us by the sea gypsies; probably the same people who were exploding dynamite as we were diving.

We soon learned how to interpret such phrases as, ”a good site for macro life”, which either meant “look for the small stuff as all the fish have been taken”, or “ the visibility is so bad that there is no point straying off the reef as you will never find your way back”. Another phrase is “interesting topography”. This translated as “there are no fish here so enjoy the rock formation or destroyed corals”.

Our advice is to avoid diving in Burma!!! At least until dynamite fishing is banned or the Mergui Peninsular is declared a World Heritage Site – which will probably never happen. Save your money and dive the Similans in Thailand instead. Having said that, there are a couple of good dive sites, but these really don’t warrant the expense of going there. Detailed below is the current state of the well known dive sites, not what is written in dive books from ten years ago. A lot can change even in a short time to a dive site. Top

BURMA BANKS

We were told that the long trip out to these isolated plateau’s was well worth the effort. As soon as we descended we would be surrounded by sharks of all descriptions which lived amongst the beautiful corals and feed on the bountiful amount of fish. It was with great trepidation that we submerged, only to be astounded at the scene of devastation which confronted us. Hardly a coral left in tact, a handful of fish desperately clinging on to life and not a shark to be seen. We did have a very brief encounter with a bull shark (much to Tracy’s horror) on our second dive, but it was very brief!  We did three dives on the Banks and never returned on subsequent trips. It was such a time wasting journey to get out there. We found out that it has been dynamited and heavily drift netted illegally by Taiwanese and Chinese factory ships that capture virtually every living creature. So, don’t bother going there, it is definitely not how the guide books describe it!  Top

HIGH ROCK

A solitary granite outcrop rising about 30m out of the water with a single tree atop. It was always our first dive of the trip and soon got people ready for what was in store for the weeks diving ahead.  Low visibility and generally strong currents made this “a good macro dive”. Saying that, it has some nice hard and soft corals clinging to it, and is home to quite a few Ghost Pipefish, morays (including Dragon Morays) and hundreds of Scorpion Fish (another thing the guide books fail to mention), which can make holding onto or staying close to the site a touch hazardous, especially in the ripping currents!  Top

CAVERN ISLAND

This site was generally done as a sunset­/night dive. Once again poor visibility and strong currents making it another “macro” dive!

WESTERN ROCKIES

A staging post for Burma Banks, and being the last islands before open seas, the visibility here is good but the currents can be fierce. The highlight of these rocky outcrops (home to a family of white bellied eagles) is the hug cave running through the main island. It’s entrance starts at 22m and rises to about 15m and proceeds to taper off to the other side of the island into two small tunnels full of lobsters. The best thing to do on exiting the tunnels is to turn left (current permitting) as this brings you into some beautiful soft coral dropping off to about 40m and a very large archway, often with quite a few fish, jewel anemones and some rather vicious “brown daisy corals” (which are actually green and look like soft corals but are hard and very sharp as terry found out during a strong current on a night dive. He still has the scars on his arms and legs as proof!!). This can be a beautiful site in the right conditions as there are three rock formations other than the cave to explore.  Top

NORTH & SOUTH TWIN

Very disappointing sites. These two islands feature pinnacles, plateau’s and reefs, all of which are pretty much destroyed, apart from some gorgonian fans in the depths at North Twin Pinnacle and some soft corals at the northern tip of North Twin Island itself. There is also extensive coral growth on the northern end of South Twin, but absolutely no fish, which would make it an “interesting topography” dive. This, of course, caused more glum faces amongst our divers.  Top

SHARK CAVE

These small islands (rocky outcrops) also go by the names “Bishop’s Fancy” and “Three Islets”. This should be another highlight of the Burma trip and so they were on our first 2 excursions. The main island is split with a submerged channel which turns into a cave and is home to resident grey reef and silvertip sharks. Well, it was! On our last trip, all the sharks had gone, to who knows where. They may have migrated or their fins may now adorn a Chinese banquet table. We can see little point in bothering to go there now. The reef on the southern end of the island is very pretty and the caves in the island are now home to several marbled rays, but everyone goes to Burma to see sharks, if they are not there anymore, why bother?

STEWARD ISLAND

Some very nice swim throughs but prone to extremely strong currents, low visibility and excessive dynamite fishing. On one trip there were dead fish floating on the surface and decomposing on the bottom. Such a shame.

McCARTHY ISLAND

A medium sized pinnacle rising out of the sea at the end of a much larger island. This site is also prone to strong currents due to it’s exposed position. It is worth the effort as it has a wall covered in soft corals, a lot of fish including Barramundi Cod and Jenkins Whiptail rays. This was always the last dive of a Burma trip and generally a good one.  Top