We’re sorry if you’ve had to battle through similarly named websites to find us.

This site should make it easy for you to organise your own technical diving training and trips for the future. Please feel free to contact the team if you have any questions.

Trident’s wrecks  are laid out on the sites page - there’s also a ‘Rubbish Wrecks’  page; some of these wrecks are highly rated elsewhere, but only because they are close-by. We won’t be going to any of  them, promise.

Have a look at our ‘Divers’ Trip Report’ page and see what our divers say and then look at ‘Schedule’ page to see when we’re organising trips, we did 20 live-aboard expeditions in 2007 so I’m sure we’ll have a date to suit you.

As soon as I learn how we’ll have a couple of Galleries too, one for diving, one for artifacts.

If you’re unsure of how to get to us, see the ‘Getting Here ‘ page

 

Our first crew were from New Jersey - used to diving cold water and strong currents so Thailand was going be  easy for them.

We started with a wreck we knew, the Nanmei No5 Maru and then moved on to a mark we hoped was going to be the Araosan Maru. We found a large freighter sitting upright but she was a bit too new to be a WW2 maru.

Dan Bartone, skipper of Independence II, an Atlantic wreck diving boat, lifted the telegraph which after cleaning revealed it was made in a Dutch yard in the 1950’s. Evan , Deep Sea Detective cameraman,found the bell marked ‘Akela’ - his first. According to the NJ divers it’s tradition to kiss the captain’s arse if you want to keep a bell - a tradition which MV Trident will try and preserve- see above.

After 4 dives on the Akela ,pictured above, we moved on to one of our favourite wrecks , the Tottori Maru for 4 more dives and one more telegraph,  and then back overnight to Samui.

Two days later we picked up our second charter, a group of divers mostly from the Great Lakes, and Alberto- all the way from Mexico.

After an overnight steam we arrived at our newly found Seacrest wreck, and tied into the moon pool at 50m an easy entry in to the wreck. After only one dive on a ‘nearly virgin ‘ wreck, the group decided to gamble and try a new mark 50nm futher east - a ‘real virgin’, but a good chance of missing a lot of dives if it turned out to be nothing.

This mark was nearer to the Hardhead’s position of Araosan Maru, the farthest we’ve been east and the first time into Cambodian waters.

We arrived at 8pm and after a brief search hit a large target on the sounder. First  thing in the morning we tied onto a huge upright  freighter, wheelhouse amidships, five levels of accommodation, telegraph, helm all in place - but again, post war, very post war, less than 20 years in the water- hardly an historical find.
 We have no ID for this one so we’re going to call her SS Carrie, after Carrie Kohler . Yet another telegraph told us this was an Asian vessel, I think made in Japan, operated by Taiwan or Hong Kong.

After two days here we dropped into see the Tottori Maru again and had some great dives. Richie and Evan made a positive ID of the Tottori by finding the name on the bow.On the last day we were visited by a very friendly whale shark to help break up the deco - a first for the Great Lakes lads.

In total we completed 260 deco dives, all 70m plus, mostly CCR. We steamed 560nmiles, breathed 90,000L of Helium, 120,000L of Oxygen, used 200K of sorb and drank 40 cases of Heineken.

On the last day we picked up two new marks for the Araosan, one of them only a few miles from Hardhead’s mark, next time we’ll get her, I’m sure.

Recently we’ve attracted some bad press about the  above trips, it’s quite good reading and hopefully we’ll get some exposure out of it. I especally like the bits about lots of divers paying big money to dive with us.

The issue of artifact recovery has been around for ages and there’s no right or wrong. For example I understand exactly that  wrecks in the Great Lakes are well preserved and should be protected, but a wreck in warm salt water doesn’t last long - a lot of our wrecks will only be piles of steel plates in the next few years, and also a lot of our wrecks are non-descript 20 year freighters, hardly historical.

The one subject that has been mentioned that is clearly incorrect is our treatment of the USS Lagarto. Anyone that has been on one of our very special Lagarto trips know that artifact recovery is forbidden, and do you know what? no-one has ever expressed an interest in doing so.

Feel free to leave comments.

The Trident has just returned from the yard, the ‘brief refit’ turned into three weeks but at least we can see where some of the money’s gone this time.

The paint job’s new, new roof and weather blinds, new cushions, overhauled generator, some welding in the bow and a new dive platform.

We’ve also converted two cabins from three berth to two berth , perfect for the seven footers we had last year.

The rest of the work was all regular maintainance, prop and rudder seals, anti-fouling etc

We’ve had some good publicity lately, an article by Ayessha in the PADI Undersea Journal and another in Wreck Diving Magazine by Richie Kohler. There’s also an article in Diver  (UK) in the Febuary issue, also by Ayeesha 

For those of you that want to keep in touch with each other after trips or courses, we’ve formed an ‘MV Trident’ group on www.Facebook.com.

Also have a look at the  ’Divers’ Trip Reports’ on this website, there’s some good stories.

Lastly, now You-Tube is back, you can also see our Kohler and Chatterton Documentary Preview by clicking here

We found our first new wreck in  March this year, the Seacrest Drilling ship sunk in 1989.  We thought we had found this one   last year but it’s a nearly identical sister ship . see our wrecks page for details. The ‘real’ Seacreast is a great dive, she lies upside down in 74m but easily penetrated through the moon pool at 50m . The other wreck is on her port side in 48m.

 In 2008 we’ll be looking for the Arosan Maru, pictured above. she was a ‘2A Class Japanese Cargo Ship’, one of 131 built badly in as little as 35 days and easy prey for Allied submarines

This one was torpedoed by USS Hardhead, another Manitwoc submarine, in April 1945.

We’ve got several very promising marks  that line up nicely with the Hardhead’s. At 6886 tons and  140m x 18m she’ll be a great new dive in  50-70m.

On our latest search (in April 08) for the Araosan we found two new wrecks, the Akela and a wreck nicknamed the SS Carrie. both nice big virgin wrecks but not WW2 marus

We still haven’t dived the Kinrei Maru, a   fleet tanker sunk by USS Hammerhead, although we have a mark less than a mile from the submarine’s co-ordinate - we’ll get round to it this year hopefully.

We have over 90,000 square miles of water in the Gulf, all less than 80m so it’ll be a while before we run out of new wrecks, I’m sure.

A long term project is to find the I-351 Japanese submarine, sunk by USS Bluefish. she’s a long way out and a long way down but perhaps one day we can put an expedition together, any CCR divers want to try?

The Navy dived surface supplied Heliox with in/water and chamber decompression.

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The story was told on National TV on Memorial weekend, see CBS News

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see the preview

We are expecting both of them back very soon and we look forward to it. Model customers and a bunch of great guys!