In this article we’re going to highlight the most versatile dive site in Phuket: Kata Beach House Reef! See also our general guide to diving in Phuket: A Guide to Scuba Diving in Phuket
Why Dive at Kata Beach?
At the North end of Kata beach, there is a hidden gem of a dive site. It’s a little away from the shore, so the families playing in the shallow surf are completely unaware of its existence. Unaware, that is, until a group of divers emerges from the water! They are all sporting huge smiles and chattering excitedly about the fish life they’ve encountered just metres from the shore.
There are plenty of reasons why a dive at Kata beach house reef, or even around the headland at Karon beach house reef, might be the perfect option for you.
Are you short on time?
Maybe you have non-diving family, or small children that you need to consider. That would make a full day trip impractical. The perfect solution is a morning or afternoon beach dive! If you’re staying locally in Kata or Karon, we can pick you up, or you can simply walk to our shop, as we are in the heart of Kata, close to the most popular hotels and guesthouses. Up to you, as they say in Thailand!
Is it a long time since your last dive?
Kata Beach House reef makes for the perfect diving refresher. It’s a very easy dive: shallow, so your air will last a good hour, and the current is very mild, but there’s still plenty to see.
Is it your first ever diving experience?
Then Kata house reef is the best possible place to start. And it’s especially good if you’re a little nervous. There’s no need to jump into deep water, like you would have to on a boat dive. We simply walk into the water with our gear on, giving you plenty of time to get comfortable before we go under.
Do you have new equipment that you’d like to try out?
The easy conditions make Kata beach house reef the ideal dive for trying out new equipment, or equipment that hasn’t been in the water for a few months. Maybe you just bought a new camera and would like to get used to it before you go on a liveaboard trip. You can put it through its paces on a nice long dive, even on the morning of the trip sometimes!
For certified divers, the time needed to complete a single fun dive will be around two and half hours, from start to finish. We fit your equipment at the shop before your dive. We have an extensive range of new and well maintained makes, models and sizes of masks, fins, BCDs, regulators, wet suits & rash vests to choose from.
Then we give you a pre-dive briefing. After that, we assemble the equipment, and off we go scuba diving. We drive down to Kata beach or Karon beach in our truck in a couple of minutes, and straight into the ocean.
Try Scuba Diving, Discover Scuba Dive, Fun Dive, Refresher Dive Or Night Dive Anytime.
Phuket & Phi Phi have many day trip dive sites that are only available by dive boat, but very few local beach dive sites. We consider Kata beach to be the best, and conveniently, it’s the closest to Oceanic Dive Center.
Try Scuba Diving at Kata Beach
It’s a perfect dive site for beginner scuba divers, especially first-time divers, or nervous divers, because we simply walk into the water, and we have time for you to get comfortable before we go out of your depth. Even at a depth of 2 or 3 metres (6 to 9 feet) we see beautiful corals and anemones, with lots of fish to see. We offer SSI Try Scuba Diving or PADI Discover Scuba Diving at Kata beach throughout the dry season, from November to May. To read more about what to expect on your first scuba experience, click here.
Kata Beach Diving for Certified Divers
Certified divers love diving at Kata beach house reef. It’s shallow, maximum 12m and that gives us some great advantages over deeper sites.
- Longer bottom times, because air consumption is slow at shallower depths, and we don’t come close to our No Decompression Limit, even on a 90 minute dive!
- Excellent photos, because the shallow water allows so much more light in than on deeper dives.
- Really good buoyancy practice because the pressure difference is so much greater in the shallows. This means that it’s a fantastic place to fine tune your buoyancy before heading on to more difficult sites.
If those reasons weren’t enough, you’ll be blown away by the marine life that we see down there. And, finally, for now, it’s simply the best Night Dive location in the region!
Marine Life on Kata Beach
Kata house reef is a collection of mostly hard coral with a few soft corals like leafy soft corals, and anemones.
Fish life on the reef is abundant and varied. The corals shelter many schools of glass fish and juveniles, as well as schools of snapper and fusiliers, which all attract hunters like small trevally, barracuda, and young tuna.
Trigger fish, surgeon fish, and parrot fish patrol the reef in good numbers and we have a healthy population of scorpion fish and lion fish. Between December and April, ornate ghostpipefish visit the reef on their annual breeding cycles, and we have resident indian ocean walkmen, harlequin shrimp and seahorses.
Dive Amongst Some Amazing Artificial Reefs
The reef itself is quite shallow, and lends itself perfectly to snorkelers as well as divers. We dive around the edges of the reef and also venture out into the sand towards Koh Pu, where we have some magnificent artificial reefs. Made up of concrete cubes that have been dropped randomly in a pile around 5m high provide fantastic shelter for all reef life, but contained in a small area, making it quite a spectacular sight.
There’s a paritcularly well-staffed cleaning station there, with durban dancers, coral banded and white striped cleaner shrimps all providing a cleanup service to the resident giant morays. The site also attracts regular visitors: this week we’ve sighted a school of rainbow runners, a family of longfin batfish, from juvenile to adult, the biggest cuttlefish anyone here has ever seen, a zebra moray, sweetlips and an array of chromodoris nudibranchs.
Even out in the sand you never know what you might stumble across: there’s a colony of blue-spotted sting rays, and many anemones who have chosen to live away from the corals harbour anemone fish, shrimps and crabs.
With a maximum depth of 12m, air consumption and no-decompression limits are not an issue, so our divers regularly get more than 60 minutes of bottom time. And it’s a perfect environment for photography, as the depth change is so gradual there’s no need to reset the white-balance every few minutes.
But don’t take our word for it! Booking your place is as easy as sending us an email. You could be diving with us tomorrow…
Oceanic Dive Center – The Best SCUBA Diving Shop In Phuket For All Of Your Diving Needs
Our Phuket SCUBA diving training centre & retail shop is conveniently situated on the main road that runs through Kata and Karon. Find us at 143/3 Patak Rd, near the local fresh market. We are 10 minutes’ walk from Karon beach & 7 minutes’ walk from Kata beach, surrounded by local Thai restaurants, serving authentic dishes to the local Thais. Drop in on your way to dinner!
