The meeting has been delayed a week until August 8

A VITAL meeting on Racha Island on Friday, August 1, will be an important indication as to whether the remaining reefs around Phuket can be saved.

Many aspects of the industry need to change for the future of diving in the region to be assured.

In terms of the Andaman's natural attributes and future tourism, Friday's meeting could be the most important gathering the region has seen in many years.

Get it right, and diving tourism has a future.

Get it wrong, and everybody who relies on tourism will eventually suffer the consequences in some way.

Pakdee Kutanang will be at Friday's summit, representing about 10 diving companies.

As she told Phuketwan: ''The coral reefs have gone from Patong Bay. They have gone from Ha Island.

''We need to make sure that Racha is not the next to lose its precious coral.''

Pressure of numbers is what's doing the damage around Racha and other regional reefs, both in terms of diving and fishing.

Representatives from dive groups and fishing organisations are meeting on the island on Friday, together with local residents and resort managers.

Marine biologists will be there, too.

Khun Pakdee, of West Coast Diving, said her company alone* took 150 to 180 divers to the reefs off Racha each day during high season.

She still takes 80 to 100 a day during the low season.*

Phuketwan got the calculations for divers wrong. See the COMMENT below. Accurate, precise figures should be available on a day by day basis, all year long. It is because the diving and snorkelling industy is uncontrolled that the reefs are at risk.

Multiply that by 20 companies . . . it could even be more. Nobody really knows how many, and that's part of the problem.

Phuket marine biologists say the only certainty is that the reefs will definitely die off if the current unrelenting damage from diving and fishing does not cease.

Racha is the focus of Friday's talks because dive companies and fishermen both want to continue commercial use of the island's reefs.

But conservation also has to be a part of their thinking, just as it does at reefs around Phi Phi and elsewhere.

Racha's reefs are a desirable destination because a variety of depths are on offer to every kind of diver, from experts to beginners, from five metres to 30 metres.

And the reefs are just a short speedboat trip from Chalong on Phuket.

The combination of closeness and variety is what has assured the destruction of Racha's reefs, unless the divers and fishermen get it right.

On the island, garbage has also become a problem. Ever growing amounts are being buried but the toxic refuse is seeping into the sea, killing the nearby coral and other marine life.

All these potentially deadly symptoms are being noted at every reef and seagrass bed around the Andaman region.

Make no mistake, the future of the tourism industry is at stake.


WITH THE grounding of Nok Air's Phuket-Bangkok flights at the end of July, buses are, as it were, taking wings.

Phuketwan heard one traveller's tale involving a little old lady who usually flies, but decided this time to take the bus.

She and other passengers were horrified at the speed with which the bus driver took the vehicle around corners, barely clinging to the road surface.

Nobody slept. They were all on the edge of their seats.

The little old lady asked for an unscheduled toilet stop to steady her nerves, but the young driver was having none of that. He kept right on going.

In the end, so many passengers complained that the driver decided enough was enough.

When he reached Phuket, just across the Thepkasattri Bridge, he fought fire with fire.

He slowed the bus right down, as his passengers had requested, and took two hours to reach the bus station from the bridge at 20 kilometres per hour.

Several passengers had already made calls to the bus company through the telephone number on their tickets. They had plenty of time.

Before the bus arrived at the terminal in Phuket City, the driver was out of a job.

It is not known whether he flew back to Bangkok or caught the bus.


AT THE WEEKEND, a wedding gathering took place at the Thainaan Restaurant, opposite Central Festival, in advance of the ceremony.

Everything was going well. Various speakers extolled the virtues of the couple to a sizeable crowd of guests.

Then a stranger, a woman, took the microphone.

It turned out that she was from the groom's side. People listened attentively to what she might be able to tell them about the happy couple.

This man, she said, is my husband. We have two children, but he left us, and he left us to pay off his many debts, too.

He is no good. This wedding is another tragedy in the making.

And that, as they say, was that. We were left to wonder whether the gifts and cash tributes were returned.

Look for every day, Monday to Friday, at Phuketwan. It's essential reading.

To tell us your news, email bigislandmedia@gmail.com or telephone 081 6513489.

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