Chumphon Pinnacle is a huge pinnacle dive site being one of the most northerly located dive sites reachable from Ko Tao.

Name Dive Site:	Chumphon Pinnacle
Depth:	8-35m (26-114ft)
Accessibility:	Boat, Speedboat
Inserted/Added by:	lars, © Author: Lars Hemel
Rated:	Rated 5.0, 2 votes
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Chumphon Pinnacle is named as one of the best dive sites in the southern gulf of Thailand. It is one huge granite pinnacle that starts at fifteen meters and drops down all the way below thirty meters. There you will find several smaller pinnacles which are well covered in hard and soft corals as well but lack its enormous size. To the west of the descent line you can find a narrow gorge often filled with batfish. Northeast are two small pinnacles one having a large overhang at twenty meter deep which often houses some enormous groupers.

It is not an easy dive site and we recommend being at least an advanced open water diver. Tours from Ko Tau and Ko Samui can be booked to this famous dive destination, but from the latter it takes at least two hours with a fast speedboat. It is a world renowned dive site so try to avoid the crowds that dive here during midday. You can find bull sharks, groupers, remoras, grey reef sharks, leopard sharks and other large fish in the deeper areas. Gamefish such as sailfish, swordfish and cobias are regularly spotted as well. The shallower area's of the pinnacle is covered in purple, pink and red anemones. Clownfish, schools of bannerfish, yellow box fish and surgeonfish will greet you when you are doing your safety stop at eight meters deep.

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Name: andrew_taylor

One of the best dive sites around. Always used to look forward going there in the mornings when I worked on Koh Tao. Always hoping that we might jump in and see whale sharks.

Name: andrew_dutton

There can be a current here, but it's rare, and certainly you shouldn't plan a dive here as a drift dive. There are no leopard sharks here, but you might also find black tip sharks, and black tip reef sharks. There are no sailfish or swordfish, but there are normally batfish (although they are on top of the pinnacle normally), and large shoals of barracuda and giant barracuda can be seen at Barracuda rock. Master Divers visits this site from Koh Tao (note the spelling!) in their regular dive boat (taking 45 minutes) and in their ultra-fast RIB (taking 7 minutes). Best time to dive is at dawn or sunset, when sharks are most active, and it's sometimes possible to see black tip sharks breaching the surface, spinning as they do so with prey in their mouths. It's the most likely site to spot the rare and endangered Whale Shark normally between October and May. Definitely a World Class dive site! www.masterdivers.co.uk

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