Tachai Pinnacle Dive Site
Koh Tachai is a small rocky island with a beautiful white sandy beach located about 20km north of Koh Bon or 40km from the Similan islands. The beach got very popular with day trippers in recent years, and starting 2017 day trips by speedboat have been banned. Liveaboard dive boats can still come here and dive at Tachai Pinnacle, a submerged reef just south of the island.
There are actually 2 pinnacles, the largest to the south where any dive will begin. The top is dome shaped and covered in hard corals at about 12 – 14 meters depth. The rocky pinnacle is surrounded by boulders, with a sandy bottom starting at about 30m. This is best dived as a deep dive. Some of the larger boulders form swimthroughs. The dive site covers a large area and is worth more than 1 dive. The second smaller pinnacle is reached across a sandy area at about 25 meters depth. The area features lots of large seafans and small coral gardens hiding in the shelter of giant boulders.
Marine life at Koh Tachai can be anything from the biggest to the smallest. Mantas cruise around the pinnacles, leopard sharks are sometimes found in deeper sandy areas, batfish cruise in the currents on top of the main pinnacle and often hang around divers doing their safety stops! It’s a quite spectacular dive site with a lot of schooling fish action.
