Japanese Garden
Japanese
Garden is the whole bay east of Koh Nang Yuan. From the easier dive
sites of Koh Tao this is one of my favorites. It's underestimated by
many dive professionals but if you take your time to look around you will be
amazed what it has to offer. It's a beautiful dive site for first timers, courses, experienced divers, for snorkelers and even freedivers.
Some
instructors like to joke: it’s called Japanese Garden because there are
so many Japanese divers. But as far as I know this name was given
because the way they coral boulders are placed reminded the name giver
to a carefully organized Japanese Garden.
First
timers who are doing the Padi Discover Scuba Diving will find shallow
places to take their first breaths in a confined and safe area. There
they get already to see schools of rabbit fishes, sergeant major fishes
and the odd, curious red breasted wrasse. For their dives, there are
sandy areas between a beautiful collection of coral boulders. This is
important to ensure they won’t hurt themselves and wont damage any
marine life.
Open Water Diver students find easily sandy places to do their skills, learn
and improve their buoyancy skills and explore the reefs.
Experienced divers love this dive site for its beautiful underwater landscape. With
average depths of 12-15 m there is enough air to do long dives of an
hour or more. In my many years, I had so many very experienced divers
who said that their dive here was one of their best. Not because it is
the most amazing dive site but because diving is so relaxing like a
Sunday walk through a forest.
Snorkelers
have so much to explore here. I love snorkeling here. There are some
of the best coral gardens around, you can swim between huge boulders of
granite rock, if you have a guide who knows his way around, he can bring
you to caves, what makes snorkeling exciting. There is one cave, if
you are there at the right time of the day you can experience a
spectacular laser light show of sun light rays.
Freediver
who love to “sky dive” along beautiful reefs, explore countless cracks
and enjoy the occasional chat with a turtle, are just at the right
place.
The whole bay is called Japanese Garden. But you could divert the bay into three dive sites.
To
the north, you have a reef at a sloping wall. If you go outside the bay
you can reach up to 16-17m. At one place there is a very old tube
anemone, a very alien looking creature. I like to dive around 14-15m out
of the bay. Right at the corner of the bay at 15m there is this alien looking tube anemone. Its there for many years. I wonder how old those creatures can get.
You should look under the big coral boulders and look for stingrays and turtles. Be careful not to damage the many cable and spiral black corals. If you are very lucky you can find one of the very rare spider crabs at one of those corals. I usually turn around when the first diver reaches 120 bar and go a bit shallower. At around 8-12 m the reef is different than in the deeper area and has a more diverse coral life. Look out for porcupine and puffer fishes and banded sea snake.
You should look under the big coral boulders and look for stingrays and turtles. Be careful not to damage the many cable and spiral black corals. If you are very lucky you can find one of the very rare spider crabs at one of those corals. I usually turn around when the first diver reaches 120 bar and go a bit shallower. At around 8-12 m the reef is different than in the deeper area and has a more diverse coral life. Look out for porcupine and puffer fishes and banded sea snake.
Outside the bay here is a beautiful cave at around 13m depth. It's an about 12m long swim through with a few exit points.
Flooded with light rays this is something hard to forget. To go there
you have to be an experienced diver who can swim fast and has a good air
consumption, as it's quite far away.
Another option to get to the cave could be to drop off at Red Rock. You might be interested to read the article about Red Rock.
To
the south, again, there is a reef at a sloping wall with a huge coral
landscape around. Average depth 10-14m. The landscape is very different
compared to the north. When I dive there I feel like flying through a
landscape of mountains. If you go slow and check all the cracks and
holes you can find moray eels, crabs, flat worms and groupers. Go
outside the bay and you find a lot of fishes around the secret
pinnacles. On the way back in about 5-8 m there is a small cave. Diving
through there makes the end of the dive to something special.
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