PHUKET, Thailand (17 Jan 2005) -- Long before the tsunami hit south Asia and despite all the hype and hoopla about Thailand's "spectacular, pristine dive sites", most of the coral reefs surrounding Phuket Island were already dying or dead, victims of another kind of tsunami: Hundreds of beach-front resorts and mostly foreign-owned dive shops that destroyed coastal ecosystems in the rush to cash in on the tidal wave of tourists that now exceeds 10 million per year. Sewage from seaside resorts, sludge from never-ending coastal construction projects, overfishing and thousands upon thousands of bargain-hunting scuba diving tourists - 300,000 a year to be precise - are the primary factors responsible for the reef destruction, according to Nipon Pongsuwan of the Phuket Marine Biological Centre. Even as Pongsuwan, fellow scientists and environmental groups belatedly sounded the alarm and urged officials to act immediately to prevent total devastation of crashing coastal ecosystems, Thailand's government proudly rolled out a new plan to double tourism to over 20 million annual visitors by pushing Phuket's ruinous development schemes into adjacent coastal areas. Predictably, PADI and other major dive industry players that aggressively lobby for unsustainable tourism development and harassment of marine wildlife, exuberantly celebrated the announcement as they calculated the increased profits bubbling up from hundreds of new dive shops and resorts churning out thousands of new dive consumers gorging on the environmental disaster Phuket dive shops promote as one of "the world's top 10 scuba diving destinations". PADI marketing maestro Terry Cummins praised Thailand's booming tourism industry including the many new PADI dive shops that line its beaches, and gushed about Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand becoming another Cairns, the ugly, overdeveloped and not-so-charming tourism gateway to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, another environmental disaster in the making. As one marine ecologist remarked at the time, "...you can't beat greed and stupidity." But you can throw water at it. On December 26, 2004, nature reclaimed much of Thailand's overcrowded and overdeveloped coastline as a giant tsunami generated by a 9.0 earthquake crashed into the clutter of seaside resorts and beach-front dive shops reducing much of the eco-unfriendly and over-commercialized tourism claptrap to rubble. Now that rubble - the resort and dive shop flotsam that once lured hordes of tourists on bargain holiday packages to "discover Phuket's world-class (sic) reefs" - has worsened an environmental disaster that dates all the way back to the 1980s when the growth of Thailand's tourism industry started to accelerate. Getting thousands of tons of rubble and debris off coral reefs that are already crashing is one of many urgent priorities that confront officials overwhelmed by the nightmare of thousands of dead and missing. | | Among the rubble that once was a dive shop, employees find plastic scuba gear, televisions, refrigerators, computers, car parts, motorcycles and dead bodies. Despite the crisis, or perhaps because of it, many in Thailand are now calling for a reassessment of government schemes to grow the tourism industry. In addition to a ban on the reconstruction of beach-front resorts and dive shops, marine experts are calling for fully protected marine reserves that would ban diving in areas that have been severely damaged by Phuket's dive industry. "The tsunami is a big tragedy but it may help check the deterioration of our reefs," said Maitree Duangsawasdi, Thailand's marine and coastal resources department director general. While many see the tsunami crisis as an opportunity and perhaps Thailand's last chance to exert control over tourism developers and protect its coastal resources, just days after the tsunami hit, angry and impatient "farangs" (foreigners) who own Thailand's money-mad dive shops launched a strident media-bashing campaign aimed at getting tourists back into their dive boats. Despite the fact that media reports of death and devastation caused by the tsunami were accurate, and even as military and civilian search teams were pulling thousands of dead bodies out from the rubble of collapsed beach-front resorts, Andrea Hinrichs, a 44-year-old "farang" from Germany who owns a dive shop in Phuket, blasted the media for exaggerating the tsunami "desaster (sic), blood and horror". "The whole Phuket diving industry is working," Hinrichs told CDNN and than added some exaggeration of her own. "(but) if we don't get divers over here now, (the media) will be responsible for millions of jobless employees and their families." [EDITOR'S NOTE: While there are millions of people living in Thailand and millions of annual tourists, in Phuket there are about 100 mostly foreign-owned dive shops that employ less than 10 staff on average, many of whom are exploited as day laborers.] © CDNN - CYBER DIVER NEWS NETWORK |
