Diving Burma

Rocky Peaks

12 km to the north of Western Rocky lies Rocky Peaks, one of the Mergui Archipelago's most colourful dive sites. Mountainous limestone rocks, capped with soft corals and black diadema sea urchins, rise to within 5 metres of the Andaman Sea surface at Rocky Peaks.

There is no mooring buoy and as currents can often be strong, a quick descent is required to get shelter behind the rocks. The pinnacle has the best sea fan and coral coverage at deeper depths so a typical dive profile starts deep and slowly circles the reef upto safety stop level at the end of the dive.

The north and east sides sport thick forests of huge orange and pink gorgonian sea fans, lined up in row after row. They are surrounded by lionfish as well as the usual schools of fish that you can see diving in Burma, such as blue-lined snapper, oriental sweetlips, red soldierfish and wrasses. Here you can also see schools of blacktail barracuda, jacks, yellowfin emporer and lone remoras. Often there's whitetip and leopard sharks resting in the day time. The north west corner has a small fishing boat wreck.

At the south side of Rocky Peaks is a cliff face. Undulated moray eels receive dental work from ghost cleaner shrimps, and the ugly devil scorpionfish waits for unsuspecting strays. In the far south west corner at 25 metres is a swim-through archway. Check out the gorgonian fans in this area, as there are often lime green harlequin ghost pipefish and tigertail seahorses hiding there.

In shallower areas pore corals, lettuce and star corals are just a few of the species mixing with feather stars, sea whips, long spined sea urchins and magnificent anemones. Moray eels and cuttlefish can be found here.

This site is also known as Fanforest Pinnacle by some of the Burma diving operators.

Rocky Peaks Reef Basics: Mountainous terrain and sea fans
Depth: 5 - >40m
Visibility: 15 - 30m
Currents: Can be strong
Surface conditions: Can be rough
Water temperature: 25 - 28°C
Experience level: Advanced
Number of dive sites: 2
Diving season: October to May
Distance: ~55 km west of Kawthaung (3 hours)
Access: Burma liveaboard diving from Phuket, Khao Lak and Ranong in Thailand

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