Torinla

The dive starts on the coral plateau off the east coast, a broad shelf of staghorn and massive porites corals that breaks the water's surface at low tide, so the shallowest ground is the top of the coral itself. Cardinalfish, humpnose bigeye bream and twin-spot and five-lined snappers sit over it in quantity. Just off the coast a long rocky ridge runs out into deeper water, and that is where the dive goes next.

The ridge is what draws Surin's fish life in. Whitetip reef sharks cruise the ridge top between 7 and 25 m or rest on the sand around it, and down at 30 m batfish and pickhandle barracuda are common, with Spanish mackerel and grey reef sharks paying fleeting visits. Blacktip reef sharks are regular visitors to the island's shallow reefs, which grow up to just below the surface and are as good from a snorkel as they are on scuba.

Getting back to the reef slope from the ridge means crossing an expanse of sand, and that crossing is the macro half of the dive. Eagle rays and shovelnose rays occasionally pass over it, mantis shrimps hold their burrows, and the endemic blue-spotted Andaman jawfish hovers above its rubble hole or peers out of it with a mouthful of eggs. The west side of the island is dived as a wall with heavy hard coral.