Koh Lipe Diving: The Park Calendar, the Night Dive Ban and a Reef After 2024

Stonehenge and the other Koh Talang sites off Koh Lipe close from 1 October to 31 December 2026

Once a year the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation publishes a schedule of which tourist sites in which parks close, and when. The one for 2026 is an annex to a department announcement dated 18 December 2025. Entry 58 is Tarutao, Satun province, and it is the document that decides where a Koh Lipe dive boat can go.

Its second block covers the last quarter of the year. From 1 October to 31 December 2026 it closes the north and east sides of Koh Adang, Koh Talang (Stonehenge), Koh Talang (Step), Koh Talang (Wall), and the east and west sides of Koh Hin Ru. The names in brackets are dive sites, written into the Thai annex as transliterations of their English names.

So in 2026 Stonehenge is shut in October, November and December, just as the monsoon closures lift elsewhere in the archipelago. The annex gives no reason for any single entry. When the 2024 edition came out, the Tarutao park chief described the schedule as a way to match each site to the weather of its season and to what the resource can carry, to let it recover, and to keep visitors safe.

Koh Talang was in good condition the last time the park wrote about it in public. A marine SMART patrol on 28 December 2021 cleared rubbish from the reef there and at Laem Son beach and reported the coral still abundant, with no threat found. Nothing published since suggests the 2026 closure is a rescue rather than a rest.

Chabang, south Hin Ngam and Rawi’s Hat Sai Khao near Koh Lipe close from 1 June to 30 September 2026

The first block of the same entry covers the monsoon months. From 1 June to 30 September 2026 the park closes Chabang off Koh Adang, Koh Yang, Koh Rawi at Hat Sai Khao, the south side of Koh Hin Ngam, Koh Phueng Noi and Koh Phueng Yai, Koh Dong at Ao Ling and at Ao Pa Nan, Koh Phai, Ao Ruea Bai on Koh Adang, Koh Sawang, Koh Palai, Koh Rok Loi and Hin Son.

The park’s own lodging goes with them. The accommodation and campsite at Laem Son on Koh Adang are closed for the same four months. Read the scope closely: only the south side of Hin Ngam is listed, and only named bays of Koh Dong and Koh Adang. The rest of those islands is not in the annex.

The weather behind the dates is ordinary Andaman monsoon. A 2007 UNESCO study of the Adang archipelago puts the monsoon season from May through October and the dry season from November to April, and records the park’s 1996 rainfall at 2,628 millimeters. The 2026 annex lists no Tarutao closure at all between January and May.

Put the two blocks together and the year has a shape. January to May, everything named is open. June to September, the Chabang and Rawi group is shut. October to December, those reopen and the Koh Talang group shuts. After May, no month in 2026 has every named site open at once.

The Koh Lipe closure calendar has changed since 2019, and mid-May to mid-October is out of date

Most descriptions of diving here repeat one rule of thumb: the park closes from mid-May to mid-October, or mid-November. That was true once. In May 2019 the park chief announced that the Adang-Rawi group would close from 16 May to 14 October 2019, and added that Koh Lipe itself and Koh Tarutao stayed open all year.

By 2024 the calendar had already split. A park announcement dated 9 May 2024, issued under section 20 of the National Park Act 2019, closed the lodging from 16 May to 30 September, Koh Lek, Koh Bissi, Koh Talang and the north and east of Koh Adang from 1 June to 31 July, and Chabang, Koh Rawi and the west of Koh Adang among others from 1 August to 30 September.

Compare Koh Talang across the two years. In 2024 it closed in June and July, inside the monsoon. In 2026 it closes from October to December, as the other group reopens. Nothing in the 2026 annex starts in May. The consensus dates are not a rule; the annex is, and it is reissued every year.

The practical consequence is simple. Before paying a deposit for a Koh Lipe trip that hangs on one site, find that year’s schedule and look for entry 58. The Tourism Authority of Thailand republished the 2026 annex in its announcements section, which is where it was read for this page.

The department treats Koh Lipe as part of Tarutao National Park

Travel pages often describe Koh Lipe as sitting outside the national park, or on its border. The department does not. In January 2023 its spokesman described the land disputes on “Koh Lipe, Tarutao National Park” as disputes over land overlapping the park, and reported that the park had brought 44 encroachment cases on Koh Lipe since 2014: 22 concluded, 18 with prosecutors and 4 in court.

The same statement described one surveyed plot of about 81 rai that overlaps homes of the original Urak Lawoi community, found two resorts operating outside it, and said buildings under final court judgments would be removed from the park area.

The history explains the tangle. The park was established in 1974, covers 1,490 square kilometers of which 85 percent is sea, and has 51 islands. The UNESCO study records that park offices opened in the Adang archipelago in 1977, and that in the 1980s the park authority pressed Urak Lawoi families on Koh Adang and Koh Rawi to move to Koh Lipe.

Land titles were still issued on Koh Lipe after the 1974 declaration. By 1998 the Satun land office counted nearly 40 percent of the island as privately owned. For a diver the point is narrower: the department treats the island and the water around it as park, so its rules on sunscreen, night diving and fishing are the ones to plan around.

What Tarutao has said Koh Lipe dive boats may not do: night dives, plankton trips, snorkeling at Koh Talang

When the marine season opened in October 2018, the Tarutao park chief issued visitor limits for each site in the Adang-Rawi group. Scuba sites were capped per time slot: 20 divers at the island the report spells Koh Tarang, 20 on the east side of Koh Yang, 30 at Koh Talu, 30 at Koh Sawang and Koh Palai, 20 at Koh Phueng and 20 at Ao Ruea Bai, every boat tied to a red mooring buoy.

Snorkel sites had their own numbers: 100 at a time at the Chabang pinnacle with every boat on a buoy, and 200 on the east side of Hin Ngam with boats kept off the beach. On Hin Ngam itself, stacking stones is forbidden. The notice banned spearfishing and fishing anywhere in the park, snorkeling at Koh Talang, every kind of dive at night, plankton-watching trips and sunset trips, and said diving businesses need a department permit.

The ban on night diving was not a one-off. When the park reopened on 1 October 2022, its chief repeated the list: no fishing, no snorkeling at Koh Talang, no diving at night and no night plankton viewing, on pain of prosecution under the National Park Act 2019.

The park’s current rule sheet could not be read directly, so treat the 2022 statement as the latest public version and ask the operator whether it still stands. If a night dive is the reason you are going, the night diving guide is better used somewhere else.

The Tarutao fee for Koh Lipe diving is the band-two rate of 200 baht

A department regulation on national park charges, published in the Royal Gazette on 9 December 2021 and in force from 7 June 2022, sorted every Thai national park into four price bands. The department’s own summary puts Tarutao in band two, alongside Mu Ko Lanta and Hat Noppharat Thara – Mu Ko Phi Phi.

Band two is 40 baht for a Thai adult and 20 for a Thai child, 200 baht for a foreign adult and 100 for a foreign child. Band four, the top one, holds only the Similan and Surin islands, at 500 baht for a foreign adult.

The band comes from the department’s announcement; the regulation text sits on the Royal Gazette server, which refused automated requests. Where on the route to Koh Lipe the fee is collected, and how long a ticket lasts, is in no source read here, so ask the operator. The Phi Phi diving guide shows how an older, higher rate can sit on top of a band.

Sunscreen on a Koh Lipe dive boat: four chemicals banned in every national park since 4 August 2021

The department announced a ban on bringing in and using sunscreen containing four chemicals that harm coral: oxybenzone (benzophenone-3), octinoxate (ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate), 4-methylbenzylidene camphor and butylparaben. It appeared in the Royal Gazette on 3 August 2021 and took effect the following day.

It rests on section 20 of the National Park Act 2019, and a breach falls under section 47, with a fine of up to 100,000 baht. The ban covers national parks, not the whole country, which is exactly why the park question in the section above matters for Koh Lipe.

The wording is a ban on bringing the product in as well as on applying it, so checking the label before you pack is the whole of compliance. Our reef-safe sunscreen guide sets the Thai rule next to the Hawaiian and Palauan ones, which ban different acts.

Every hard coral off Koh Lipe is a protected wild animal, and keeping a dead piece is barred too

Thailand’s list of protected wild animals was reissued as a ministerial regulation of 2024, published in the Royal Gazette on 24 September 2024 under the Wildlife Preservation and Protection Act 2019. Its schedule of protected aquatic invertebrates is short and sweeping.

It lists every species in the order Scleractinia, the hard corals, and all soft corals (Alcyonacea), sea fans (Gorgonacea), black corals (Antipatharia), sea anemones (Actiniaria), the fire corals of the genus Millepora, Stylasterina, the blue coral order Helioporacea, every giant clam in the subfamily Tridacninae and the triton’s trumpet, Charonia tritonis.

The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources sets out what follows from that listing. Section 12 of the Act bars hunting a protected wild animal and section 17 bars possessing one or its carcass, so a dead fragment of coral picked up on a Koh Lipe beach falls under section 17. For hunting or trading in a protected animal, section 89 sets up to ten years in prison, a fine of up to one million baht, or both.

Mantas are on the same regulation’s list of protected fish, as are several devil rays, three hammerheads and the leopard shark.

Koh Lipe’s province, Satun, had no damaged reef in 2023 and 3,695 rai of it after the 2024 bleaching

The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources publishes a reef status table by province each year. Satun has 13,426 rai of reef, about 21 square kilometers. In the 2023 survey 12,154 rai rated good, 1,272 moderate and none damaged, and the department named the south and east of Koh Adang among the Andaman reefs that had improved.

Then came the heat. Between April and July 2024 the department recorded mass coral bleaching across both the Gulf and the Andaman coasts. The 2024 table for Satun reads 7,819 rai good, 1,912 moderate and 3,695 damaged, which is about 28 percent of the province’s reef. Its average live coral cover was still 52 percent, second on the Andaman side after Phuket at 53.

That table is for the whole province, including the Tarutao and Phetra island groups, not for Koh Lipe alone. Recovery has a local record, though. After the 2010 bleaching the department measured live cover in the Adang-Rawi group growing about 4.7 percent a year on average, and about 9 percent a year at Koh Hin Ngam.

The reef type sets expectations as well. The UNESCO study, citing a 1987 survey, describes fringing reefs mostly within 50 to 300 meters of the shore at depths of three to twelve meters, with 137 of Thailand’s roughly 280 coral species and 288 fish species in the archipelago. It also records minimal damage from the 2004 tsunami. Good buoyancy control matters more on shallow reef than on a wall.

Three Koh Lipe dive centers in the SSI register, one of them filed under Satun

Our Koh Lipe operator list holds 3 dive businesses, read on 25 September 2026. All three are published by SSI in its register of affiliated centers. Two are filed under Koh Lipe and one under Satun, the province, which is the register’s own town field and not necessarily where the boat leaves from.

All three publish a website in the register, and one of those is a Facebook page. None of the three was assessed by anybody for the list, and a register entry says nothing about whether a center holds the department permit the park requires or is open this season. That is the question to put to them, alongside which sites the boat can reach in the month you are there. Which registers can be read explains what each source can and cannot show.

For the paperwork around a long stay, the Thailand digital nomad visa guide covers the DTV, and the dive insurance guide covers what a policy reaches on a remote island. For another Andaman park run by the same department, see Koh Lanta diving.