Almost Half Of Thailand's Coral Reefs Damaged

[george]

Almost half of Thailand's coral reefs damaged

PHUKET: -- About 40 per cent of the coral reefs in Thailand's coastal waters have sustained significant damage and have deteriorated, according to a senior natural resources official, raising concern that more must be done to protect the kingdom's once abundant varieties of marine life.

Department of Marine and Coastal Resources director-general Nisakorn Kositrat said that the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) resolution designated 2008 as the International Year of the Coral Reef (IYOR) to raise awareness of the value and importance of coral reefs in the marine ecology system and threats to their sustainability so that people will take action to protect them.

Thailand encompasses about 36,000 acres of coral reefs and about 40 per cent of the reefs have been damaged both by natural action and human activity, she said.

Global warming has caused coral bleaching, Ms. Nisakorn indicated.

A research plan has been laid out to cushion the effects on coral reefs, marine resources, and the communities along Thailand's coastal areas.

--TNA 2008-03-15

[siamkiwi]

Maybe the national park people could spend some of their time protecting the reefs, or educating Thai's not to walk on them or take pieces of it home with them. Maybe they could even stop commercial fishing boats from fishing in so called marine national parks. I think the only reason they call them national parks is so they can charge Farang four hundred baht to visit them.

[KireB]

It's not just the reef is it? In the past when I used to go to Samet (8-10 years ago) , you could actually see an abundance of marine life while snorkeling. Went back there two years ago and it was misery. Both the reef and fishes were gone. An empty sea.

But the seafood was delicious!

[Ijustwannateach]

Last time I was at Samet, the coral on the snorkelling day trip was half-bleached from the top down- including some trunk-sized brain corals that must have taken hundreds of years to grow to that size. A bad, bad sign.

[Seneque]

Wrong title :

Almost all of Thailand's coral reef damaged

[Payboy]

Global warming has caused coral bleaching, Ms. Nisakorn indicated.

and statement here by another "expert" last year...

'The climate change panel's projection was wrongly accepted to apply to the Gulf of Thailand,' Suphat told The Nation newspaper. 'We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets.'

[barky]

Global warming has caused coral bleaching, Ms. Nisakorn indicated.

and statement here by another "expert" last year...

'The climate change panel's projection was wrongly accepted to apply to the Gulf of Thailand,' Suphat told The Nation newspaper. 'We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets.'

I seems these experts don't have a clue. When they have made all the money they can from their natural resourses and destroyed it along the way, what are they gonna do then? I know, blame the aliens, cry poor mouth to the west and squeeze funding from the (mainly western) international community.

[meadish_sweetball]

Global warming has caused coral bleaching, Ms. Nisakorn indicated.

and statement here by another "expert" last year...

'The climate change panel's projection was wrongly accepted to apply to the Gulf of Thailand,' Suphat told The Nation newspaper. 'We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets.'

As I recall, that article and statement referred to rising sea levels, not to the bleaching of corals.

Contrary to what one might think, the sea level of different seas and oceans is not the same all over the globe, but varies. I am no oceanologist or climate expert so I won't comment further as I don't know if their statement is just daft as one might think at first glance and applying everyday physics; or if it actually makes sense, based on factors most people are not aware of.

[plachon]

Global warming has caused coral bleaching, Ms. Nisakorn indicated.

and statement here by another "expert" last year...

'The climate change panel's projection was wrongly accepted to apply to the Gulf of Thailand,' Suphat told The Nation newspaper. 'We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets.'

As I recall, that article and statement referred to rising sea levels, not to the bleaching of corals.

Contrary to what one might think, the sea level of different seas and oceans is not the same all over the globe, but varies. I am no oceanologist or climate expert so I won't comment further as I don't know if their statement is just daft as one might think at first glance and applying everyday physics; or if it actually makes sense, based on factors most people are not aware of.

Rest assured Meadish, both at the time and in retrospect, it was as daft as it appears now. The so-called "expert" of AIT and a Thai consultancy company famous for making flawed assessments (like the Pak Mun Dam will be "good for fisheries") was uttering nonsense, that he probably never realised would be widely quoted in the media and internet forums. This is one of the benefits of the Net, in that b.s. is more likely to be exposed than in the past when it was accessible to a relative few persons, often working to the same hymn sheet and unlikely to ever see an openly debated forum. Many so-called "scientific experts" do not work for expansion of scientific understanding per se, but purely the profits of the company that employ them to make certain foregone conclusions which support a particular worldview. That was the case with Dr Suphat, I suspect.

Edited March 17, 2008 by plachon

[Payboy]

Global warming has caused coral bleaching, Ms. Nisakorn indicated.

and statement here by another "expert" last year...

'The climate change panel's projection was wrongly accepted to apply to the Gulf of Thailand,' Suphat told The Nation newspaper. 'We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets.'

As I recall, that article and statement referred to rising sea levels, not to the bleaching of corals.

Contrary to what one might think, the sea level of different seas and oceans is not the same all over the globe, but varies. I am no oceanologist or climate expert so I won't comment further as I don't know if their statement is just daft as one might think at first glance and applying everyday physics; or if it actually makes sense, based on factors most people are not aware of.

Rest assured Meadish, both at the time and in retrospect, it was as daft as it appears now. The so-called "expert" of AIT and a Thai consultancy company famous for making flawed assessments (like the Pak Mun Dam will be "good for fisheries") was uttering nonsense, that he probably never realised would be widely quoted in the media and internet forums. This is one of the benefits of the Net, in that b.s. is more likely to be exposed than in the past when it was accessible to a relative few persons, often working to the same hymn sheet and unlikely to ever see an openly debated forum. Many so-called "scientific experts" do not work for expansion of scientific understanding per se, but purely the profits of the company that employ them to make certain foregone conclusions which support a particular worldview. That was the case with Dr Suphat, I suspect.

well said plachon - one thing we can certainly attribute to global warning is the rise in bullshit level through the world.

the quoted example just demonstrates how the "global warning" argument is used to play opposite sides of the same drum....

'We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets.

and defnintely too far from reality here....

[siamkiwi]

The whole tourist boom is out of controll. It's a vicious circle. The local people want more tourists because its good for bussiness, but the more tourists means more inexperienced people on the reefs, more rubbish, more toilets (and who knows where that goes on some islands). Some resorts even offer fishing trips in national parks! I've even had locals tell me that it doesn't matter because fish move around and more fish will come. It's all about education. How much rubbish do you think gets generated on some of these small islands and how much do you see leaving the island! It goes without saying that all the so called experts are spouting the rubbish that they're getting paid to promote, and relying on the ignorance of the common people to get away with it. Its only when it gets published in english that they get riddiculed.

[rstone]

A quite informative document about the status of the Thai coastal ecosystem from the World Bank you can find here:

Thailand Environment Monitor 2006

(Size of the pdf-file about 11 Mb!)

[Tony Clifton]

At this rate, Thailand's ecosystem will mostly be gone in 20 years from now.

Even forestry and park rangers are involved in illegal logging, animal trade etc. Fishermen still use explosives and illegal nets.

The Gulf coast and many other areas are being saturated with plastic bags and pesticides.

My father in law had a fleet of fishing boats, he is retired now but says the Gulf is suffocating and that fish is rapidly getting scarce.