Boonsung Wreck

The Boonsung Wreck is a former tin dredger barge off Khao Lak, in Thailand, just outside the port at Tap Lamu. She sank in 1984, from bad weather or bad maintenance, and lay intact on the seabed at 18 metres until the tsunami of Boxing Day 2004 ripped her open. The maximum depth is 19 metres and the site is friendly to beginners.

Day and night dives are dramatically different. By day it is fish soup: huge schools of snapper, fusiliers, bluefin trevally and juvenile barracuda fill the view and often make the wreck hard to make out. At night those fish drift away and make room for large numbers of lionfish, scorpionfish and porcupine pufferfish.

Look for macro life on the wreck itself, including nudibranchs, frogfish, decorator crabs and hermit crabs. Honeycomb morays also live here. The season runs from October to May.