Phuket Corals and consciences now cleaner

THE sandy seafloor suddenly gave way to the wall  of wrecked coral skirting Coral Island. The forest of dead branching corals, which should have been a Mecca of sea life, was a ghost town. The site was haunting, but  further along the reef, the barren coral landscape gave way to signs of life as a volunteer-dive team carefully picked fishing net from a coral’s branches.

Sights like this are becoming more common in Thailand’s waters. In fact, the coral reefs of Thailand and the rest of the India and Pacific Ocean area are declining at a rate of nearly 1,553 square kilometers a year, twice the rate that the rainforest is disappearing.

On October 29^th the Thailand Diving Association (TDA) dug in to make a difference at Coral Island with their annual coral reef cleanup dive, which is part of “Save the Nature @ Phuket”, a marine awareness program tun by Tourism Authority of Thailand, Phuket Marine Biological Center and the TDA.

The TDA and its volunteers collected rubbish around Coral Island and did their best to raise awareness of the ecological and economical importance of the coral reefs around Phuket.

Ninety volunteer divers, aware of the importance of coral reefs boarded two different boats on Saturday, one provided by All4Diving company and the other from Dive Master Co Ltd.

Though only 95.22 kilograms of rubbish was collected during the cleanup dive, the TDA saw this as a positive sign for the area.

For TDA representative Varaporn Jittamonta the relatively small amount of the trash collected during the dive wasn’t a story of failure, but a story of promise.

“It was a very successful day. There wasn’t a lot of garbage collected, but that’s because local people have become more aware of the importance of conserving our natural marine areas,” she said.

“This year was different, be cause there were more Thai divers helping out; last year it was all foreigners,” she added.

Mrs Varaporn believes that the improvement is a result of educational programs, such as “Save the Nature @ Phuket,” which focus on creating an awareness of the importance of nature conservation, with the hope of eventually restoring the marine systems around Phuket to a healthy state.

“Tourism in Phuket is about our natural resources. If we destroy them, we destroy our cource of income,” she said.

Calude de Crissey, owner of All4Diving, was glad to be a part of the coral reef cleanup again. Claude is also planning to participate in the Patong Beach cleanup organized by the TDA and Patong Municipality, scheduled for December 16.

Tour Director of All4Diving, David McGuire, was also pleased with the outcome of the event.

“We want out and cleaned up some rubbish. We did some good and that’s what matters,” he said.

“the thing is.it [the cleanup project] is like being faced by a raging inferno and all you have is a bucket of water to throw on it doesn’t do much, but it’s better than doing nothing,” he said.