Ugly side of Thailand

[Sweaty sock]

The Gulf of Thailand is an environmental disaster zone.

Sad to say it’s not going to get better anytime soon.

On a recent fishing trip ran into massive area of plastic waste.

The boat had a serious back oil stain on the waterline.

The true amount of the recent oil spills offshore Rayong have not been truthfully reported.

Take care if you are eating seafood!

 

[Guest Isaanlife]

50 minutes ago, Tropicalevo said:

Actually it is similar on beaches across most of the world.

Why pick on only Thai ones?

I saw the same thing after a storm on Seychelles's beaches back in '89. Again in Bali etc etc

Because this is a Thai forum and the post is about a particular Thai beach.

 

What is so hard to understand the truth?

[sanuk711]

2 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

My wife however would see that rubbish as recycling money

Much the same in Issan---if a dustbin rattle happens to wake in the middle of the night---just turn over, its the recyclers going through your bin for treasure.

[cyril sneer]

beautiful 

[The Hammer2021]

Raw sewage has been pumped into the sea and washes up on beaches with tar and oil on many beaches  all over the world. Basically the oceans are the sewers of the world

[The Hammer2021]

27 minutes ago, Isaanlife said:

Because this is a Thai forum and the post is about a particular Thai beach.

 

What is so hard to understand the truth?

And people from all over the world contribute to this forum and bring their knowledge and experience of the outside world thus giving context to various submissions.

[The Hammer2021]

1 hour ago, shackleton said:

What happened to the tourists or foreigners who used to get organised and clean the beaches early morning 

Come back we need you  ????

It was more myth than reality

[khunPer]

4 hours ago, cheapcanuck said:

I went for my morning walk along Lamai Beach on Koh Samui and came across this...tragedy.  I almost started crying. It's not just tons of garbage_waste it is also the oil within this environmental catastrophe.

You are probably not used to Koh Samui during monsoon season, it's normal after windy weather with lots of currents in the sea.

 

Some small amounts of oil also comes to the beaches - darker sand - and it's not pollution but a natural phenomena from small amounts of oil leaking up fra the sea bottom, the natural oil is not laying deep down.

 

Normally monsoon season is from sometime in October until about the end of the year, sometimes before Xmas, sometimes the monsoon lasts till around mid of January. The beaches are cleaned after the storm, Lamai beach will also be cleaned. Often the local head-of-village will assemble volunteers to help cleaning the beaches, and the hotels will clean their own beachfront.

 

This is how the normally wonderful beaches on Samui looks like after a monsoon storm with cleaning in front of resorts...

 

 

 

The garbage is sorted and organic waste is dig down...

 

 

Also volunteers and resident expats cleaning a beach after monsoon...

 

 

Soon after the sea is calm, the beach again looks like this...

 

 

Scientific studies have concluded that 90 percent of garbage in the sea comes from rivers. That might be right, as after heavy rain when Samui's rivers are floating happily into the sea, the amount of plastic items and other garbage increase. However, after storms we also see some remains from fishing industry, i.e. like nets and fenders from boats; or the remains of a beachfront restaurant that disappeared in the storm.

 

I live on a Samui beach, so I see it every year for quite a number of years now...

 

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by khunPer

[khunPer]

1 hour ago, Sweaty sock said:

The Gulf of Thailand is an environmental disaster zone.

What about india...

[KhunLA]

4 hours ago, Will B Good said:

Industrial scale dumping of waste at sea.........hard to believe it is cheaper than taking it to a land fill????

Someone want to tell me again, why I shouldn't burn my trash at home vs the alternatives:

1. give to gov't to burn

2. give to gov't to add to landfill affecting water table

3. give to govt' to dump in the sea

 

#1 as best alternative, but if I burn it myself,  it eliminates 2 & 3 as options.   Quite happy about that, since I live surfside-ish.   Bad enough I don't swim in it because of bacterial levels, at least I can enjoy looking at & walking along it.

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by KhunLA

[Sametboy2019]

All over the gulf the last week

[itsari]

4 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

Considering the lack of tourists it would appear Thai made ! 

 

My wife however would see that rubbish as recycling money

My thoughts exactly concerning the value of the waste . Things cant be too bad in Thailand if the waste is not scooped up .

 

[itsari]

4 hours ago, EVENKEEL said:

I remember sailing and we chucked everything overboard. But times have changed for the better. Now we have strict rules implemented by IMO.

Shame that you needed laws in place to do the right thing .

 

[KhunLA]

17 minutes ago, Sametboy2019 said:

All over the gulf the last week

Not PKK municipality, as we have about 6+ km of trash free (almost) surf, and not counting the spotless RTAF Wing 5, Ao Manao, swimmer's beach, and a few more kms of surf, N & S of.

 

Ban Krut is fairly trash free also, as we visit frequently.  As was Thung Wua Laen, Chumphon, the last 5 or 6 visits during the last 18 months.  

[matchar]

4 hours ago, Denim said:

Lovely beaches here , just need to travel a bit

 

 

 

 

Where's that?

[Denim]

1 hour ago, matchar said:

Where's that?

First is Ventnor second is Ryde.  Really beautiful beaches but as I said.....need to travel a bit as a long way from Thailand.

 

My point being don't come to Thailand for the beaches as there are better ones at home without the problem of pollution and ferocious sun which , as I can testify , leads to skin cancer if you are not very careful. You don't see many Thais staked out in the sun !!

[The Hammer2021]

3 hours ago, itsari said:

Shame that you needed laws in place to do the right thing .

 

But they were not the "wrong" thing at the time.

[RafPinto]

3 hours ago, matchar said:

Where's that?

Pattaya south

[itsari]

58 minutes ago, The Hammer2021 said:

But they were not the "wrong" thing at the time.

Not legally

[Sametboy2019]

5 hours ago, KhunLA said:

Not PKK municipality, as we have about 6+ km of trash free (almost) surf, and not counting the spotless RTAF Wing 5, Ao Manao, swimmer's beach, and a few more kms of surf, N & S of.

 

Ban Krut is fairly trash free also, as we visit frequently.  As was Thung Wua Laen, Chumphon, the last 5 or 6 visits during the last 18 months.  

All over Eastern gulf Rayong to Trat. 

[Guest Isaanlife]

11 hours ago, The Hammer2021 said:

And people from all over the world contribute to this forum and bring their knowledge and experience of the outside world thus giving context to various submissions.

What does that have to do with a photo of a polluted Thai beach?

 

Ignoring the fact that this is polluted beach is happening right now in Thailand?

 

People are just in denial instead of accepting the fact there is a massive amount of pollution shown.

[Tropicalevo]

14 hours ago, Isaanlife said:

Ignoring the fact that this is polluted beach is happening right now in Thailand?

Ignoring the fact that these polluted beaches are happening the world over, but hey - lets just bitch about Thailand or whatever.

This happens every time that there is a storm at sea. It is not garbage left on a beach by locals or tourists.

Not denial - just nothing that one can do. It is everywhere.

Clean the beach today and it will be back after the next storm. And the next one. And the next one ad infinitum.

[Guest Isaanlife]

9 hours ago, Tropicalevo said:

Ignoring the fact that these polluted beaches are happening the world over, but hey - lets just bitch about Thailand or whatever.

This happens every time that there is a storm at sea. It is not garbage left on a beach by locals or tourists.

Not denial - just nothing that one can do. It is everywhere.

Clean the beach today and it will be back after the next storm. And the next one. And the next one ad infinitum.

Why do you think there is so much plastic and trash in the water at that beach?

 

 

[it is what it is]

On 3/2/2022 at 12:58 AM, thaibeachlovers said:

Always been so, but when the tourists came they cleaned it up. Probably can't be bothered now with few tourists.

 

I used to go for a morning walk along Chaweng beach with a bag and pick up the rubbish, so what is to stop the OP doing same if it's that upsetting.

 

hasn't always been like this, i was there early 2000s, lovely beach, lovely place. i guess not anymore.

[gearbox]

51 minutes ago, it is what it is said:

 

hasn't always been like this, i was there early 2000s, lovely beach, lovely place. i guess not anymore.

It is always like this...the eastern winds bring rubbish to the eastern Samui beaches. The rubbish comes from everywhere, I often see Vietnamese stuff on the east side of Samui and Koh Phangan. Of course when the wind changes in April some of the Thai rubbish probably ends in the Philippines.

Most likely this is not rubbish produced by the locals, but in the end everyone is guilty in SE Asia, even the rubbish thrown in Mekong thousand of kilometres from the sea may end up one day on one of the Samui beaches.

[Tropicalevo]

19 hours ago, it is what it is said:

 

hasn't always been like this, i was there early 2000s, lovely beach, lovely place. i guess not anymore.

You were probably here in the dry season. How long were you here? Weeks, months, years?

Monsoon season is when beaches everywhere are littered - which beaches is dependent upon whether is is easterly monsoons, or the westerly ones.

Hotels have clean ups after every big storm.

No hotels (or no guests) - no clean ups.

One of the beaches near me was a mess - just like those photos, after the monsoon season. Six Senses organised a beach clean up with local volunteers.

Since then - the beach is perfect - until the next monsoons.

Most people do not come to the tropics in monsoon season.

The OP 's photos were taken after a week of rain and strong winds.There were storms out at sea.

We can tell because the fishing boats all came into the sheltered bays for 3 or 4 days.

[Thunglom]

On 3/2/2022 at 12:51 AM, RichardColeman said:

Considering the lack of tourists it would appear Thai made ! 

 

My wife however would see that rubbish as recycling money

Why a Toal bit of nonsense.

Firstly the rubbish washed up on beaches doesn't necessarily come from this locality - it is washed around the gulf of Siam by currents wind and tide.

It's often a good idea to look at the garbage itself and read th language of the labels.

 

Secondly - Samui has a huge population of residential foreigners and long-term tourists, hotels etc are still disgorging waste into the sea. which joins the rest of the stuff floating around the Gulf.

[Thunglom]

On 3/2/2022 at 3:32 AM, Isaanlife said:

Because this is a Thai forum and the post is about a particular Thai beach.

 

What is so hard to understand the truth?

Actually focusing on one Bech shows a lack of understanding of the problem and its causes.

[khunPer]

These pebbles on Maenam's beach are lava stones, they have floated to Samui from quite far away, probably from a recent eruption in Malaysia og Philippines some 2,500 kilometers away...

 

 

Lava pebbles originating from when hot lava, filled with gas and mainly carbon-dioxide (CO2), hit the cold sea – so yes, they are like polystyrene foam and can float in the sea for years before they get filled with water and sinks – says little about from how far away debris on beaches can originate, which is the point with the comment here.

 

There are said to be a lot more of these pebbles right now on the eastern beaches like Chaweng than Maenam that face north, which makes sense as the lava stones floats in from east or south. I haven't been on Chaweng's beach the last few weeks, perhaps others have noticed if there are any there...????

[FrankMCG]

I'd like to say thanks to all volunteers who still try to take care!