Phuket And Phi Phi’s Premier Site For Diving With Turtles
If you want to go diving with turtles then Turtle Rock is the dive site for you. It’s very rare that we don’t see hawksbill turtles and usually more than one. They feed on the shallow shelves that run along the wall at Koh Phi Phi Ley. So shallow that snorkelers can usually see them. Quite often your safety stop is spent observing the turtles munching away on the bubble corals. They’ve got pretty used to divers over the years and seem to be completely unperturbed by our presence.
More Than Just Turtles
Even without the turtles it’s quite a nice dive site. At the north end there’s some interesting swim throughs and coral bommies. They attract glimmering schools of glassfish and their accompaniment of hungry lionfish. Ornate ghost pipefish and seahorses hide in the bush corals and sometimes harlequin shrimp are tucked away in rocky crevices.
The dive site has a simple plan to follow, you either keep the wall on your left or right. The shallow ledge drops off to 15m where it reaches the sandy bottom. It slopes off very, very slowly to such an extent that reaching a depth of 20m would take you the whole dive. Most of the wildlife is concentrated around the reef wall but out on the sand we can find bent stick pipefish, kuhl’s stingrays, mantis shrimp and the occasional leopard shark.
Although an easy dive site it’s important to stay close to your guide so that you’ll surface in a safe zone. Speedboat traffic entering the famous Maya Bay which is just to the south of the dive site is a major hazard. Current is not usually strong so staying safe is not difficult.
All in all a very nice dive site that virtually guarantees a turtle and can throw up plenty of nice surprises. We can’t always guarantee that we’ll visit here on our Phi Phi trips but it’s one of our preferred options. We visit Phi Phi every Sunday and Wednesday. You can check out our schedules here or click the button below to send us an enquiry and get all of your questions answered.
