Tourist Divers Help Clean Up Debris Around Phuket

[george]

Tourist divers help clean up Thai resort

BANGKOK: -- Around 300 volunteer divers, including foreign tourists, scoured the sea floor to clear debris around Phuket on Saturday as the Thai resort began to rebuild in the hope of reviving a tourism industry ravaged by the tsunami.

Two Buddhist monks sailed out on one of two dozen boats to bless the divers and say prayers to bring peace to the spirits of the victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami, which killed more than 5,300 people, half of them foreign tourists, in Thailand.

Video footage shot by one of the divers showed metal sheets nestling in coral reefs, a major attraction for divers and snorkellers, completely covered in silt.

"I saw many, many plastic bottles and fishing nets, which were very heavy," said Reinhtal Doll, a diving tourist from Germany, who ran onto a small hill from Patong beach on Phuket, where 260 people died, when he saw the tsunami waves approaching.

Although the damage to the Andaman Sea reefs around the Thai coast and islands was not as bad as first feared, the clean-up job is urgent.

"If we leave this for too long, big pieces of logs and trees can damage the coral reefs," said Maitree Duangsawasdi, the top official at the government's Marine and Coastal Resources Department.

"We have limited divers, so we asked for volunteer divers," he said, estimating that about 500 tonnes of debris were on the seabed in the area.

Motorised carts retrieved debris brought ashore by the boats, including sheets of tin roofing, tree roots, aluminium bowls, kitchen pots, beer bottles and logs.

Tourists have all but disappeared from Phuket, shunning the island's beaches and bars because they assume it suffered devastation on the same scale as Khao Lak, 130 km (80 miles) to the north, or like Indonesia's Aceh or Sri Lanka.

Hotels say they have guests in just 10 percent of their rooms, compared to a 90 percent occupancy rate normally at this time of year. And aid workers, embassy staff and journalists are boosting visiting numbers.

Only a few people ventured onto the usually crowded Patong beach on Saturday morning, sunbathing while an earth mover pushed around mounds of sand swept up by the giant waves. One Western woman walked a dog.

Most of the shops and restaurants packed onto the seafront road were lashed hard by the waves.

Some shopowners were trying to patch up walls with plywood, workers painted the facades of bank branches, while opticians and shoe and bag stores offered big discounts on "tsunami products" damaged by sea water.

Glum waitresses sat in largely empty open-air restaurants.

The Thai government has promised 60 billion baht ($1.53 billion) in aid for survivors and businesses affected by the tsunami, including 37 billion baht earmarked for soft loans.

Phuket hotel and tour operators have launched a range of cut-price hotel and flight deals to try and pull tourists back.

--Reuters 2005-01-15

[damnaam]

Tourist divers help clean up Thai resort

BANGKOK: --  Around 300 volunteer divers, including foreign tourists, scoured the sea floor to clear debris around Phuket on Saturday as the Thai resort began to rebuild in the hope of reviving a tourism industry ravaged by the tsunami.

Two Buddhist monks sailed out on one of two dozen boats to bless the divers and say prayers to bring peace to the spirits of the victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami, which killed more than 5,300 people, half of them foreign tourists, in Thailand.

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I was on the diveboat - 'MV Discovery' - with the two monks - one of whom was world renowned, as you can see from this excerpt from Santana Dive website:

"Today we participated in a clean-up dive at Patong Beach. The reknowned Buddhist monk Bhikkhu Buddha Dhatu was on board to pray and to bless divers as they entered the water. This remarkable man was born in Vietnam. As a child during the Vietnam war 70% of his body was burned with Napalm. He survived and became a Buddhist monk at 13. He joined the Barefoot World Peace Walk with the Dalai Lama, covering over 9.000 kilometers through 19 countries in 3 years. At the Sydney Olympic he released 3000 doves. More pictures soon!"

Of course we didn't find out how revered he is until he had left the boat...

I'm pleased to report the sea bed and coral at Patong, Kata and Kata Noi are now free of a whole load of debris which not only look a mess but theatened further damage as it crashes back and forth during heavier currents. The majority of stuff recovered consisted of beach umbrellas, chairs, tables, broken up wood, awnings, glass bottles and sheet metal along with a sh*t load of fishing nets.