The Snorkeling Guide to Pulau Payar Marine Park

Jan 06, 2020

Undersea exploration in Langkawi
The Snorkeling Guide to Pulau Payar Marine Park
30 Dec 2019

Pulau Payar Marine Park

Featuring beautiful tropical fishes, fascinating coral garden and nice emerald green water, Pulau Payar Marine Park is the Langkawi’s answer to snorkeling and diving.

With its marine park status, marine park have been strictly regulated by Fisheries Department of Kedah to preserve their pristine conditions. It is situated in between Penang Island and Langkawi Island, and just about ±40 km south of Langkawi. Visitors can get to the island with approximately an hour ferry journey. Comprising four islands in the marine park, the largest of which is Pulau Payar, is surrounded by three small isles namely Pulau Kaca, Pulau Lembu and Pulau Segantang, and none of these islands are inhabited. Generally, the Pulau Payar Marine Park Packages offered by most of the operators can be classified into 3 categories, which is beach side, platform and diving.

Beach Side

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The beach of Payar Island

Once visitor arrived at Pulau Payar Marine Park, there is an offshore floating pontoon that leads to the beach area. With a good visibility of water, visitors can indulge in the experience of approaching baby blacktip reef shark in the shallow water. Although the sharks are naturally shy, but do remember they have real teeth. It is advisable not to feed and touch the shark as such actions will affect the marine ecosystem and even accidentally injured yourself. Apart from that, there are also a wide range of fish can be found in the waters, such as parrot fish, angel fish, butterflyfish, anemonefish etc. Visitors can snorkel around the reefs and marine fishes, and relax on the park’s white-sand beaches prior to the free packed lunch included in the package.

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The visitors are heading to the beach area via the floating pontoon.

Snorkelling with the baby sharks

Facilities available on the Payar Island include toilets, changing rooms, benches and tables. Nonetheless, there are no fresh water supply at the changing room due to conservation objective as waste water can possibly pollute the places by enabling bacteria to oxidize the organic matter with treatment plant.

Platform

There is a Floating Reef Platform located in the Pulau Payar Marine Park namely Langkawi Coral. It has been shaped to preserve the pristine beauty of the marine park and to have a less effect on the diversified marine life including colorful fishes and coral garden. The platform can accommodate up to 400 people, and facilitated with 33 tables, 2 open showers for rising, 4 showers for guest use, and 2 toilets for staff use. Besides that, the dive operator on the Platform provides about 200 marks and snorkels for guests and also has 80 sets of dive gear.

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Visitors are snorkeling around the platform.

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Buffet available on the Langkawi Coral platfrom

Not to mention, Langkawi Coral Platform also has an underwater observatory chamber and two glass-bottom boats which allow a capacity of 20 passengers per boat. With its fully equipped, Langkawi Coral platform has facilitated all the activities done with comfortable staring from scuba diving, snorkeling, fish watching as well as coral viewing and sunbathing.

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Underwater Observatory Chamber

Visitors are observing the marine life on the glass-bottom boat.

Diving Experiences

Pulau Payar Marine Park is recognized as one of the best dive sites in Langkawi. The popular dive sites at the Marine park include Japanese Garden, House Reef, Grouper Farm, etc. These destinations can be reach out by a separate dive boat from the Marine Park Beach or the Langkawi Coral Platform. Currently, there are two type of diving packages offered by the local operators - Introductory Dive or Fun Dive. Visitors who have chosen the packages can either depart from the beach side or the Langkawi Coral Platform. Do remind that the price would be different depending on the departure point.

Introductory Dive

As the name suggested, introductory dive is a trial dive designed for visitors who have no diver training or certification to do scuba diving and explore the multi-colored colors and exotic marine life in Pulau Payar Marine Park. In other words, it means visitors have enable the opportunity for wonderful underwater discovery under the guidance of a recreational diving instructor on one-on-one basis. It is an opportunity for interested people to find out by practical experience if they would be interested in greater involvement in scuba diving. The only requirement for this package is a sense of adventure. Don't worry if you don't know how to swim as the diving instructor will guide you all the time during the scuba diving discovery.

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The professional diving guide is briefing about the safety instruction before the scuba diving.

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Explore the exotic marine life with a professional diving instructor.

Fun Dive

It is mainly designed for visitor who have possess a certified diving license. Under this dive packages, experience divers who are eagle to explore more about the preserved coral garden will be able to participate in two Certified Dives per day. It will usually be one dive on arrival and one after lunch. A separate dive boat will bring you to the nearby reef sites once you arrived the Marine Park. Subsequently, the professional certified diver will bring you to see the incredible array of aquatic species of the Marine park, including giant groupers, black-tipped reef sharks and the fast swimming barracudas and many other exotic marine species.

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Clownfish which has hiding behind the aquatic plants.

Diving Course

Last but not least, diving enthusiasts can also get their certified diving license in Langkawi! There are plenty local dive schools offered Short SSI and PADI Open Water courses in Langkawi. Most of these courses have designed to meet the international criteria and graduates can dive anyway in the world with the certificate obtained. Don’t hesitate to contact our assistants for more information about the dive courses! :)

Click here for more details:
Beach Snorkeling ⬇️
https://eticket.xqholidays.com.my/product/20/OUR-PICK's:-Pulau-Payar-Beach-Snorkeling-Full-Day-Tour/

Platform Snorkeling ⬇️
https://eticket.xqholidays.com.my/product/22/Pulau-Payar-Platform-Snorkeling-Full-Day-Tour-(With-Buffet-Lunch)/

- Addition -

There’s couple things you should note while heading to Payar Island:

Fishing is strictly prohibited.
Do not throw any waste to the sea or beach.
Kindly wear a life jacket and swim without flippers to prevent yourself from standing on the coral.
Weather in Langkawi do not generally disrupt the vacation plan to Payar Island since the weather is very localized. This means that if it is raining in Langkawi, there is possibly that a sunny spot to be found at Payar Island, vice versa.
According to Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI), it is recommended to take a minimum preflight surface interval of at least 18 hours after a scuba diving. If not, decompression sickness due to evolved gas absorbed during diving can occur when exposure to low altitude and create a serious in-flight emergency.