Song Hong Cave, Trang, Thailand.
Technical Divers Mathew Partridge and Dr Michael Gadd have successfully located and dived the Song Hong Sink located in the Trang region of southern Thailand. The expedition started on Sunday 7th October with blending, logistics and dive planning taking up the first part of the day. We then took a further two days to locate the sink, The location is somewhat remote and not on any maps locally found locally or on the internet, We visited several areas over a 48 hrs period were we believed the site maybe but to no avail. Finally on our last day of this planned trip we gained knowledge from a local source who provided us with rough directions. Having already searched around in this area we had high hopes that we would find the site and we did. The pool is located in a very remote part of Trang around 2hrs from Krabi were nobody speaks English, No English road signs but lots of Police boxes, schools and yellow bus stops (a personal joke to remind me of the struggle to locate this place). On arriving at the destination we were greeted by locals who described as best they could through mixed communication were the caves entrances were. The main entrance is located directly in font of were we managed to park the pickup enabling us to enter without to much difficulty. A second entrance is believed to be only a short distance away leading into the main cave entrance. Locals spoke of a river around 2 km away being the source so linear penetration of the cave could be extensive
Our dive plans were to 130m with a bottom time of 26min including decent. Mike
was the first to dive the cave as I provided support and then we switched roles. Our goal for this trip was to locate and gain an orientation of the cave for a future Expedition sometime early 2008. Mike descended to the bottom of the pool at the caves entrance to a maximum depth of 105m using his Ouroborous Rebreather, Mathew penetrated the cave to a maximum depth of 74m using an ISC Megalodon Rebreather. The visibility all the way down and inside the entrance is excellent and conditions are good, the passage way leading into the cave started around 26m and is extremely wide. Water temperature is an excellent 26 degrees in the deep and 29 degrees in the shallows. Our dives finished just as it started to get dark on the last day of our trip so all round a successful, stressful and eventful few days leaving us craving for more.
We plan to return to this site equipped with scooters a support team, and extensive logistics early 2008 with a view to survey the cave and its second entrance.
We would like to thank One- stop- dive, Krabi Thailand and the staff at Pro-Tech Dive College in Phuket for all their help with blending and logistics.
