Purple Rock is also called Hin Muang in Thai named after its enormous amounts of purple soft coral that lives on the steep pinnacle.

Name Dive Site:	Hin Muang or Purple Rock
Depth:	8-40m (26-131ft)
Accessibility:	Live-aboard
Inserted/Added by:	lars, © Author: Lars Hemel
Rated:	Rated 4.6, 10 votes
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Purple Rock or Hin Muang consists out of a series of about five submerged pinnacles heading in a southwest direction and having a maximum depth of more than sixty meters. This live-aboard dive site one hundred kilometres southeast of Phuket and thirty five south of Koh Lanta is one of the best known dive sites in the world. This limestone pinnacle has a length of more than two hundred meters and its width in some places is less than twenty meters. The name represents the enormous amount of purple and pink soft coral that covers its walls, especially fully covered in the shallower areas. Its walls, caves, caverns and variety in depth and currents provide such a divers amount of coral and life that almost all species in Asian waters can be found at this spectacular dive site. At less than five hundred meters away you will dive at Hin Daeng, its red sister.

Purple rock is famous for its bigger fish and schools of pelagic. You will see snappers, fusiliers, barracuda, rainbow runners, jacks and travellies. Giant morays hide in the cracks and big leopard sharks can be found at a depth of about forty meters. This place is in open sea, often plankton rich and therefore one of the best places in Thailand to see huge manta rays, whale sharks and other big sharks. Its huge plankton blooms have destroyed parts of the soft coral in 2007 but this has not substantially ruined the diving; many say it looks even better now. Don't forget its beautiful anemone carpets, soft corals and gorgonians, which are already worth the trip.

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Name: palmbeachdivers

Between October and end of April the weather is best to go here, it will take around 3,5 hours by big boat though. Shortest distance from Koh Lanta in the south of Thailand. Need to be an Advanced diver, currents are mostly strong, deep dive sites, but top 10 in the world!

Beautiful purple soft corals. The top of Hin Muang starts around 12 meter (you need to descend in the area of the buoyline, else you are lost forever), massive morray eels, but also some hawk fish and ghost pipe fish. Most people come here for the manta's or whale sharks. But otherwise always there are: big schools of barrakuda and bog schools of jacks, travelly and batfish.

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