Marine National Parks

Chumphon Island Group National Park

Topography
Chumphon is a popular tourist place on the bank of Gulf of Thailand. It offers good beaches, over 40 limestone islands at sea, dive sites, waterfalls and caves, holy shrines and so on.

Mu Koh Chumphon national park covers an area of 317 square kilometers.

Beach forest is a characteristic of the more exposed beachfronts around the coast of Thailand and is dominated by Casurina pines. Tree density and diversity of species is low compared to other forest types. This forest type has a moderately rich bird fauna.

Limestone forest is found on the exposed cliff faces and in the very shallow soils on top of the limestone hills. Most of the plants found here are small and highly adapted to survive in this severe environment.

Mangrove forest is an evergreen forest type. It is restricted to the area where freshwater and seawater mix, and they can not survive in pure freshwater or pure seawater.

Dive sites
Diving is concentrated around the outer islands and rocky outcrops in the area north and southeast of Chumphon sea. The islands close to the main land are greatly effected by freshwater run-off, and thus have unhealthy corals and little marine life.
The plankton-rich waters attract a healthy diversity of marine life around the islands far from the main land.
Visibility range form 3 m (10 feet) to over 20 m (66 feet) and currents are moderate enough for divers of any level. In calm conditions night diving around the islands could be very pleasant. The diving season is from April to October.
Dive sites in the park are: Ngam Yai island, Ngam Noi island, Hin Lak, Ngam, Kalok island, Thalu island, Lak Ngam island, Mattra island, I raet island.

How to get there
Mu Koh Chumphon national park headquarters is 21 km from Chumphon town. Chumphon is 500 km south of Bangkok.