Japanese Gardens is pretty and shallow dive site, perfect for beginners. With its large selection of corals, divers find it very beautiful. On the south side of this dive site, swim troughs can be found; these are great for testing your buoyancy control.
Koh Tao ( “Turtle Island”) is an island in Thailand located near the western shore of the Gulf of Thailand. It covers an area of about 21 km². Administratively it forms within the district Koh Phangan of Suratthani Province. As at end 2006 its official population is 1382. The main settlement is Ban Mae Hat. The whole island is surrounded by coral, which makes up for dozens of excellent dive sites, most of them close to the island and thus also suitable for excellent snorkeling.
The economy of the island is almost exclusively centered around tourism, especially scuba diving.
Koh Tao was named by its first settlers for the island’s turtle-like geographic shape. Coincidentally, the island is an important breeding ground for Hawksbill turtles and Green turtles. Development of tourism has negatively impacted the health of these grounds but a breeding program organized in 2004 by the Royal Thai Navy and KT-DOC, a coalition of local scuba diving centers has reintroduced hundreds of juvenile turtles to the island’s ecosystem. On June 18, 1899 King Chulalongkorn visited Ko Tao and left as evidence his monogram on a huge boulder at Jor Por Ror bay next to Sairee Beach. This place is still worshiped today.
In the 1980s the first travelers discovered Ko Tao and their special backpacker network quickly made it widely known and a popular destination. As a consequence, bigger, faster and safer boats were used to allow easier access to Ko Tao. In the 1990s the island finally became known as a diving site.
