This report is a continuation of Whale & Dolphin watching at Trincomalee which I published on Jan 31, 2012. Since I mentioned all the background story of organizing this trip and other details in previous report I’m not going to mention those things here. Simply this was our company annual trip for 2011.

One of my friends who has been to Trinco, recommended me to do snorkeling if I go there.

After having a successful tour in Whale & dolphin watching in the morning we came back to the hotel for lunch. Few of our friends who didn’t participate for Whale watching tour had gone for Snorkeling in the morning. They recommended this and after having lunch we also decided to go. Around 3.00PM in the evening we started our journey from hotel with 3 boats. It was a joyful and thrilling ride for every one of us. One boat went to Nilaweli beach to buy tickets for all and other 2 boats directly went to the Pigeon Island. First we walked around the Pigeon Island to visit the biodiversity of the recently declared national park. View from the island is fantastic.

Then we went to the other side of the island to start snorkeling. The Guide distributed the equipments among us and we had a 5 minute course of how to do snorkeling. We wore the equipment and got in to the water. Initially it was a bit uncomfortable to breath from the mouth when the nose was tightly fit in the face cover. But we forgot all those in few minutes after seeing the wonderful world under the water.

Simply we can say WOW…no words to explain the beauty. Things I watched in NAT GEO, Discovery are in front of my eyes. I couldn’t believe it for a few seconds.

Wow…	We could see thousands of Butterfly fish in different colors

Some areas were not deeper than 1 foot, but some areas were as deep as 10 – 15 feet. We could see mountains, valleys, etc. similar to the land. Suddenly there was a baby shark (of about 3 feet lenght) came towards us. We got scared and tried to swim away from him but our guide said no need to fear on him, because that specie is not dangerous.

Shark

Star fish

I’m here….

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Those who cannot swim or fear to water, guide personally took them a round holding their hands. Therefore ability to swim is not a must.

We…

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Sorry, I don’t know their names

Turtle

.	Another Star fish

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.	We saw different types of Butterfly fish

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Hello….

After having 2 hours of Snorkeling we turned back to the hotel. It was a life time experience. Some of our friends who went in the morning got a chance to have a one hour scuba diving session also free of charge!

Ready for Diving

Good Bye…

I have done snorkeling at ‘Bar Reef’ in Kalpitiya as well. Compared to that Pigeon Island is the best place, because in Pigeon Island you can see everything in a smaller area and it is safer. The reasons why Pigeon Island is better than the Bar Reef are:

• Bar Reef is located in the middle of the sea (about 10km away from land) and you tend to be carried away from the corals due to the currents. (These are not very strong currents, but strong enough to make you tired if you try to swim against them. If you do not swim, the current will take you away from the corals) The boat had to come pick us and drop us back near corals multiple times due to this reason.
• Corals are spread across a larger area
•  Sea is deeper than Pigeon Island
• Corals were more colorful in Pigeon Island

Thank you and will meet you with another exciting experience very soon.