Junkyard Reef Dive Site, Koh Tao: Depth, Map & Marine Life

Junkyard Reef is Koh Tao's best-known community-built artificial reef. It sits on a sandy patch about 400 to 500 m off the west shoreline near Mae Haad beach, and started life as a place to sink old junk: gym equipment, toilets, a speedboat and a car. Local dive centres and the Eco Koh Tao conservation team have kept adding to it since.

Today Junkyard is a shallow, calm site at roughly 6 to 12 m, and a favourite for Discover Scuba, Open Water training and night dives. Expect a different look on every visit, because new structures and corals keep arriving.

Junkyard Reef dive site map

2The Car
3The Gym
4Coral nurseries
5Steel and concrete structures

Usual route: Descend the mooring line, loop through The Car, The Gym and the coral nurseries, and return staying shallow, using the surrounding sand for skills. Drawing based on local dive briefings: approximate, not to scale and not for navigation. Your guide's briefing on the day always comes first.

Diving Junkyard Reef: the route

Descend the mooring line and loop through the named structures, such as The Car and The Gym, plus the coral nurseries, then back. Stay shallow and take your time. The large clear areas of sand around the edge are used for skills and buoyancy practice.

Junkyard Reef Koh Tao is a short hop from the pier. Because everything sits within a small area at shallow depth, it is a relaxed place for newer divers to build confidence.

Underwater layout

The base is soft sand at about 6 to 12 m, with man-made structures scattered over it. Steel frames, domes and spider-shaped frames carry transplanted coral. Concrete units and recycled items, from gym equipment to an old car, a speedboat shade frame and toilet bowls, form shelters for fish. Coral nurseries sit among the structures and hold well over a thousand transplants.

No official plan of the site is published, and structures change over time, so follow your guide rather than a map.

Named structures include The Car and The Gym, and they make easy landmarks for finding your way. The steel designs hold coral transplants, so you are looking at a reef that people have built piece by piece.

Marine life at Junkyard Reef

Look for the small residents. Saddleback anemonefish families, masked porcupinefish, yellow boxfish, juvenile batfish, copper-banded butterflyfish, yellow-margin triggerfish and a resident lionfish are all easy to spot.

Macro: nudibranchs, seahorses, mantis shrimp, scribbled filefish and crabs.
Occasional guests: juvenile harlequin sweetlips, octopus and moray eels.

The artificial structures give small fish somewhere to shelter, which is why the site feels busy for such a shallow spot. At night the scene changes again, so many divers return after dark to see a different cast of animals.

How the reef was built

The reef began with a speedboat shade frame sunk on the sand in 2006, though some accounts give 2009. Dive businesses and Eco Koh Tao added donated junk, then steel and concrete designs. A coral nursery followed in 2011, and the Mazu concrete structure was added in 2018. Crystal Dive and the Coral Tribe have also contributed.

Conditions and best time to dive

Junkyard is normally calm and flat. Visibility is commonly 2 to 12 m and good for most of the year. Conditions can get rougher in the south-west monsoon, and visibility drops after storms.

Tips from local divers

Slow down and look for macro life.
Night dives here are excellent. Bring a torch.
Do not touch or stand on the structures. The coral is delicate.
It is a good place to work on buoyancy and photography before moving to deeper sites.

Safety notes

There is steel on the reef, so keep your buoyancy under control and avoid contact. Visibility can be reduced after storms or in the south-west monsoon.

It is an easy site, but newer divers should still stay a good distance above the sand and the frames, as silt kicks up easily and ruins visibility for everyone behind you.