Who better to tell us about technical diving than John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, the History Channel's Deep Sea Detectives. The short film below was a spontaneous little presentation which they did just for us, at the end of a spectacular trip to film the USS Lagarto, the American submarine sunk by the Hatsutaka, a Japanese mine layer in World War II. The boys were here diving with the MV Trident to make a film about the Lagarto for the Wisconsin Navy Museum. All the footage below was shot by our very own cameraman, Chris Clark, with MV Trident's Stewart Oehl lending a hand with the sound recording!

The USS Lagarto was sunk by a depth charge and discovered by the crew of MV Trident on their maiden voyage. She was lost with all 87 hands and now sits upright, intact, in 75 meters of water! The Trident reunited the missing war heroes with their surviving family members after 60 years of not knowing what happened to them, a truly historical breakthrough. The Lagarto is a wargrave and is treated with the greatest respect.

Since her discovery the Trident have pushed continually outward into the Gulf of Thailand, discovering many more shipwrecks, all virgins, never before dived. Some the victims of storms, many others of World War II origins, including several Japanese Marus, sunk by American torpedoes.

Since the Trident emerged in 2003 as the pioneers of technical diving in the Gulf of Thailand, the area has become one of the world's best wreck diving locations for the more experienced techies from all over the world. It has indeed become a regular spot on Richie and John's trip lists!

As well as the Trident there are now several other technical operations on Koh Tao offering technical training, all of them work in cahoots with the MV Trident as she is the only vessel capable of the long hauls out to the deeper sites. If you would like to get into underwater phtography or underwater video at depth then our underwater video training and underwater photography courses will be just the ticket.

Big Blue Tech is also offering cave diving trips to Khao Sok National Park on the mainland as well as local tech training.