Our Big Blue Diving Resort.

At Big Blue Diving Resort you will be hard-pressed to find a better location for your Thailand holiday, where we are located towards the northern end of Sairee Beach.

Is an all in one dive holiday experience offering awesome diving, great food, a large selection of accommodation options, a good crowd and friendly bar, relaxing massages on the beach and of course sun baking all at the same place! Big Blue Diving Resort offers a beachfront alfresco bar and restaurant, serving the best pizzas and Thai food on Koh Tao! We have a selection of varying accommodation options from upscale AC bungalows on the beach, as well as budget bungalows on the beach, sea view private rooms and budget dorms. Our purpose-built divers swimming pool is the perfect environment in which to learn the basics of scuba diving. And our Dive boats are moored just off the front of our resort so its just a quick shuttle service from the beach straight to the dive boat.  We are the best there is at what we do and if you have doubts then please read on.

Big Blue Diving Resort was the second ever Dive center to open on Koh Tao and now there are over 60 Dive resorts and centers scattered all over Koh Tao So competition is fierce & to be the best we have had to ensure that not only is our customer service & professionalism is the best that we can aspire to be but also that our facilities don’t let us down. It’s just too easy to sit back get comfortable and believe that we can stay on top of our game with reputation alone. We need to prove it too!

So let’s focus on every area of our operation and make sure we aren’t cutting corners anywhere.  Let’s start with what I believe to be the most important criteria.

Every member of Big Blue Dive Team is a fully certified Diving professional with up to date health & accident insurance as well as full Dive professional insurance with DAN the Divers Alert Network. Each Instructor & Divemaster has their membership with SSI or PADI renewed every year & every member of staff must be a fully certified DAN Oxygen Provider & current in 1st Aid & CPR Training. We also have a Dive Medic on Team with Sonia Scott who is also an active member of the Koh Tao Rescue Team and as a Dive center, we are a sponsor of the SubAquatic Safety Services Recompression Network and have been since it started in 1999.

We have 4 dive boats and 3 shuttle boats to ferry you out directly from our resort straight to you Dive boat. Our boats, Banzai, Waverunner & Enzo, are all purpose-built dive boats- none of this converted fishing boat nonsense, which means we have a top deck with tables & benches for relaxing, chatting, briefings & on full-day trips somewhere to sit and eat comfortably. These 3 boats also have a sundeck on the roof for all you sun worshippers out there. Then on the dive deck, we have tank spaces for over 80 tanks but only have a maximum space for 50 divers so there is plenty of room for cat swinging if that’s what grabs your fancy. Each boat also holds 2 Bauer Mariner 250 Compressors so can supply all the air we need consequently ensuring your tanks are always full and more importantly for the staff we can avoid all the back-breaking lugging tanks back and forward from the beach to the boat every day. Each boat also has 2 boat crew in addition to the captain to help you get in and out of the water and if you want can also help you get in and out of your equipment. Then we also have Big Blue boat. We’ve had her since we opened back in the day and still have the same captain who has been with us since he was 16 years old back in 1991. A quarter the size of our other boats Big Blue boat is dedicated to our Tech and Freediving teams. The Freedivers tend to go out in the mornings wherever they want & our Techies like heading out for their more adventurous trips just after lunch.

As one of the highest scuba certifying Dive Centers in the world and with an equally large operation specializing in Liveaboards to the Similan & Surin Islands there isn’t a Scuba retailer or manufacturer out there who wouldn’t like an exclusive deal with Big Blue & we have been offered a number of extremely attractive deals but we ain’t in this for them! We’re doing this for us & for you! We choose the equipment we feel is the best for the conditions we are presented with here in Thailand. We choose to use Aqualung BCD’s & Aqualung regulators, though we also hold a selection of ScubaPro BCD’s whose durability & shelf life are unsurpassed in our experience. We use Mares and Technisub fins and masks & we purchase all our wetsuits here in Thailand to help the local economy. We employ a 4 person team to maintain, clean & store our equipment, all of whom are fully certified Mares & Aqualung Service Technicians. We also have a compressor room with a Bauer K14 Industrial compressor to service all our tanks on land especially for the confined water sessions we hold every day in our purpose-built swimming pool. We also operate our Nitrox membrane system from here and rent Nitrox out to most other Dive centers on the island who aren’t able to operate such a system.

Big Blue Diving Resort comprises of a wide selection of accommodation options including 10 air-conditioned dormitories with 4 or 6 people to a room. We also have 7 private fan rooms and 7 private AC rooms. All private rooms come with hot water shower and a balcony overlooking the pool. (Please refer to our accommodation page for more details). Big Blue Restaurant and Bar- my favorite location on the whole of Koh Tao. The food is fantastic especially the pizza which is famed on Koh Tao for being the best on the island. The Bar sells every tipple you can think of & is the perfect setting for sunset drinks & après diving socializing. It’s also a reasonable sporting venue too with regular beach football or volleyball every night & all the big games shown on the big screen at the bar as well as all the daily dive videos get aired here too. Our pool is 12 meters long by 3 meters wide. The shallow side is 120 cm deep & the deep side is 2.5 meters deep. It has been designed to hold 4 groups in training at any one time, though we rarely have more than 2 groups in at 1 time. It is a saltwater pool and maintained by our dive operations Manager to ensure excellent maintenance & care.  We also have a beachfront massage parlor here at Big Blue. Not many Dive centers in the world can offer that!

We pride ourselves on being the best in the business with centers & resorts on both coasts of Thailand in Koh Tao & Khao Lak where we operate the flagship Liveaboard MV Hallelujah to the Similan & Surin Islands. We are pioneers & innovators & have proved ourselves to be leaders in the industry over & over again.

We were among the very first Dive centers to open an Ecological branch within our Dive center which we called Big Blue Conservation and were one of the founding partners in the Save Koh Tao movement & the Koh Tao Dive Operators Club and our Manager at Big Blue Conservation, Rachel Linarts, is a University graduate in Marine Biology so we have our own in house Marine Biologist who has been an integral part of many eco projects on Koh Tao including Bio Rock, artificial reefs, mooring lines, beach and dive site clean ups & charity work. Dr. Jennifer Matthews Big Blue Conservations’ first Manager is also a published author in coral research & wrote the outlines for the BSAC Marine Conservation course.

Andy Campbell Manager at Big Blue Tech has been awarded 3 years in succession the TDI award for most certifications in Tech Diving, as a Twin Tank, Sidemount & Rebreather Instructor and has organized many offshore unexplored dive sites and wrecks in the Gulf of Thailand and in the Philippines. Big Blue Tech is also the longest established Tech Diving Center in Thailand having been started over 15 years ago before Tech diving was even regarded as a recreational sport. In those days we were pioneering cave exploration & Tech dives in the Khao Sok National Park until the government closed it down for being too dangerous! Which of course it was for those who didn’t know what they were doing, which must be stressed- wasn’t us!

It’s not every dive center that can claim to hold the best Instructor in the Industry on their books so we are very proud to have Simon Garrity charging up Big Blue Pro for us. Simon has been an Instructor for 20 years and an Instructor Trainer for the last 10 years. He has certified more SSI Instructors & Divemasters than anyone else in the world and is also responsible for training most of the International Team at SSI as well. He has a 100% pass rate among his candidates & knows the rules of scuba training better than anyone in the Industry. Together with his team at Big Blue Pro Simon is responsible for having certified over 10000 Diving professionals and if you are looking to get yourself a foot in the door in the Scuba Industry there is no name worth more credibility in the industry than SSImon himself.

Has been in operation for almost 5 years now and responsible for training aspiring photographers & cinematographers alike. Our employed Spielberg’s & James Cameron’s are then tasked with filming the final dives of our Open Water Courses, our full-day trips & our Try Divers as well as updating all our media outlets.

Finally, we are extremely proud of our clothing line & retail outlet at the Drift store in Koh Tao’s busiest high street Sairee Village. Managed by Robin Holloway at Drift we design our own t-shirts shorts & bikinis and sell all Scuba paraphernalia you can think of. We are also Koh Tao’s first point of call for all Go Pro cameras and accessories & the leading dealer in Suunto computers & Feel Free Drybags.

It is by no means easy to stay on top of your game for as many years as we have in the Scuba Diving Industry but with the right direction & the appropriate guidance but most importantly the right people doing the right jobs Big Blue has grown from strength to strength & will continue to be a pioneer & leader in the Industry & the benchmark to whom most centers aspire to be. Our job is to continue to be the best & make your Thailand holiday here on Koh Tao the best and as stress-free and as enjoyable as possible… in between Mango Shakes and Massages!