Post-tsunami Similans movie online

I have uploaded a short underwater movie shot at East of Eden in the Similan Islands on 4th January 2005. The video includes hard corals in great condition along with other marine life including reef fish, octopus, stingray and a green turtle. See our underwater video page.

What about the damage to the hard corals? I was just there and the table corals were all over the place in a section of the site? The good thing is there are enough dive sites not badly affected by the tsunami in the similans and surins. Good luck with the oncoming season.

Looks like bubbles blurr the vision !. ( or $$$$ , or lack there of ). I am sure there are plenty of un-touched dive sites in and around Phuket, but lets face the facts....... tons of volunteer divers have been asked to go down to phuket to help clean up the mess... possibly stretching for the whole season.

I'm one of them... and yes straightening up coral is not an easy task. But it is a good effort.

I do believe that people are overreacting with the conditions. I've seen it and it's not as bad as many have said. Fish life is still decent. Nothing wrong with defending your income though. I'm going to shoot video of the area and post it soon.

Since the tsunami I've still only done the one dive in the Similans proper at East of Eden. So I'm no expert. My video is an attempt to counter inaccurate tales of total devastation with a bit of hard evidence. I can only video what I see!

To redress the balance a bit, here's the WORST still I could find from my one-hour dive. And I'm not totally convinced these table corals got like that from the tsunami. I'm no expert but I would say that has a good chance of recovering. What do you think?

They actually stopped the uprighting of coral idea since it was doing more damage than good.

Caveman, the clean up is mostly for the mainland dive sites where a lot of debris from the mainland was washed on the the shallows of the reefs. It will be a long cleanup process as you say.

BubbleV, the damage is pretty much consistent with strong surge/storm damage. I'll be going out again next week (this time fun diving) Will see how it goes.

Who are you diving with? Off to Burma via Similans myself from 3rd to 11th Feb with Santana from Phuket.