PHUKET: A Thai Marine Police vessel and a dinghy abandoned the search this morning for an American diver who vanished from a dive boat off Phuket early on Saturday.



''This not a search,'' Tadsana Devine, wife of the missing man, Joshua Michael Devine, 36, said today. ''This is sight-seeing.



''I called the Marine Police today, expecting to get an update. But they told me they were returning to shore to take care of holidaymakers.''



With thousands of locals and tourists turning out today to celebrate Songkran, the Thai New Year festival, the Marine Police vessel returned to Phuket to patrol the coast, a senior Marine Police officer confirmed.



No aerial search has been mounted. The Marine Police and the dinghy have been the only vessels involved in the official search.



Hope is fading for Mr Devine, a former soldier in the US Army who now works in IT in Kuwait for the US military.



He and Tadsana boarded the dive liveaboard Chontara I at midnight on Friday on Phuket, looking forward to a break similar to a trip to the Similan islands they took three years ago.



Khun Tadsana said she went to bed and her husband stayed drinking with two newly-made male friends.



Sometime around 4am, Mr Devine's absence was noted. The captain was alerted and a thorough search of the dive boat failed to find Mr Devine.



He had appeared agitated earlier while drinking and at one stage, according to the two newly-made friends, asked to be alone.



''They told me they left Josh in the equipment room on the boat for 10 minutes,'' Khun Tadsana said. ''When they returned, Josh could not be found.''



Khun Tadsana said she and her husband - they married in 2010 - were looking forward to spending several days diving. A total of 24 people were on board the liveaboard.



The Superintendent of the Phuket Marine Police, Colonel Phanya Chaichana, told Phuketwan today: ''We searched yesterday around the spot where Mr Devine is believed to have gone overboard, 18 miles off Bang Tao beach.



''A dinghy containing members of the Kusoldharm Foundation [a rescue group] searched with us.



''We found no sign of the missing man.''



Thousands of additional Thais and tourists have flocked to Phuket and the Andaman coast to celebrate Songkran, so the Marine Police search is at an end.



Colonel Phanya said he would ask the Royal Thai Navy whether their vessels could take up the search.



Khun Tadsana said that she intended to return to Pattaya on Wednesday then fly back to Kuwait on April 17.



When the Dive Asia liveaboard capsized off Phuket in 2009, 23 people scrambled into liferafts. Seven people went down with the vessel.



The liferafts drifted and drifted. Eventually, survivors hailed a fishing trawler, and used the captain's telephone to call in their own rescue.



The searchers were looking in another part of the Andaman. No aerial search had been mounted.