A Stunning Island With Lots To See
In the interest of variety we don’t dive Koh Bida Nai very often. It’s very similar to it’s sister island Koh Bida Nok which we consider to be a better dive site. It was on a par but since we lost the beautiful staghorn fields to coral bleaching it’s lost a little of it’s lustre.
Still it’s an interesting dive site with lots of hard corals, boulders and swim throughs. The swim through at the south west corner is particular nice. It forms an almost perfect triangle and always has a school of yellow snapper and occasionally colourful ribbon eels. On the sand around the deeper part of the swim through we can find kuhl’s stingrays and cuttlefish. On the shallower exit we sometimes find hawksbill turtles and yellow lipped banded sea kraits.
Chance of The Larger Animals At Koh Bida Nai
A nice pinnacle covered in whip and hard corals sits at the south east corner and usually attracts a school of chevron barracuda as well bluefin and golden trevally’s. There’s also a chance of a leopard shark hiding behind the boulders. Any passing whale sharks seem to like this area so look up and you might get lucky. Look closely at the whip corals and you may find whip coral shrimps and gobies.
A hard coral garden on the west side attracts lots of reef fish including the saddleback clownfish which is quite rare for this area. On the larger rocks you will find some unusual and colourful nudibranch’s feeding on hydroids.
Blacktip reef sharks are also usually found skimming over the corals in the very shallow areas and make a nice end to the dive. Overall a nice dive site that gets a little less attention than it’s more attractive sister. We can’t always promise to visit this site but it’s a nice change when we do. We visit Phi Phi on Wednesday and Saturday.
