Can a tourist ban save DiCaprio’s coral paradise from destruction?
South-east Asian idylls – from Philippine islands to the Thai bay made famous in The Beach – plan to turn tourists away so that devastated coral reefs have some time to recover. Will it be enough?
Sun 25 Feb 2018 06.00 GMT

Our Thai tour guide, Spicey, takes a drag on her cigarette and gestures sadly towards the beach. “The problem with people is that they are too greedy. They see a beautiful place and they want it. They take, take, take from nature. And then they destroy it.”

The golden sands of Maya Bay where Spicey stands are some of the most famous in the world. This once-idyllic cove, on the tiny Thai island of Koh Phi Phi Leh, was the paradise location of The Beach, Danny Boyle’s 2000 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It was then pushed by tourism officials in advertising campaigns to entice more wealthy visitors to Thailand.

But mass tourism has since taken a vast toll on the fragile coral reefs here: 80% of the coral around the bay has been destroyed, the result of millions of boats dropping anchor on it, tourists treading on and picking it, or poisoning by rubbish and suncream.

It is a sad tale replicated across the once-unspoilt bays and beaches of south-east Asia. It was here that the world’s greatest diversity of coral and marine life used to occur, but the reefs are now the most threatened on the planet, with 80% of what remains at high risk. Human pollution has combined with overfishing and the lucrative tourist trade to deliver appalling environmental destruction.

“What we are seeing now with coastal tourism in Boracay [in the Philippines], Maya Bay and Koh Phi Phi Leh is not new, but what is surprising is that this story is still very real today,” said Dr Loke Ming Chou, a tropical marine science professor at the University of Singapore, who said that “frenetic, makeshift and ad-hoc development driven only by profit” was a curse for these pristine beaches.

“After so many lessons of overwhelmed beach locations, the rush to make money still ignores the environment, which is what attracts tourists in the first place. This is not sustainable and such places will collapse when tourists stay away to avoid swimming in their own muck.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... es-boracay

What, unregulated capitalism bad? Impossible!

Someone call Shylock!

coral reefs take 1000s of years to regrow

Environmentalists that smoke, complain people are greedy and exploit the environment, only in Thailand. Anyways, there is an interesting article regarding the great barrier reef and the surprising results real environmentalists have gotten from transplanting them.

Our Thai tour guide, Spicey, takes a drag on her cigarette and gestures sadly towards the beach. “The problem with people is that they are too greedy. They see a beautiful place and they want it. They take, take, take from nature. And then they destroy it.”

8 years to juvenile reef

https://www.google.com.mm/amp/s/www.pri ... reef%3famp

In Gardiguy's link, they say the method of regenerating coral growth has already been tried in the Philippines. And it works !
This could be good for Australia's Great Barrier Reef. And it should also work elsewhere.

Harrison said his mass larval-restoration approach contrasts with the current "coral gardening" method of breaking up healthy coral and sticking healthy branches on reefs in the hope they will regrow, or growing coral in nurseries before transplantation.
He was optimistic his approach, which was earlier successfully trialled in the Philippines in an area of reef highly degraded by blast fishing, could help reefs recover on a larger scale.

But the main problem for all the South East Asia countries concerned is that they're really reluctant to close off lucrative tourist sites, even for a temporary period to repair reefs and give the coral some respite.
Then they need to get tough on protection. There's no point in reconstructing coral reefs if they are not going to protect them afterwards.

they close the Similan islands ever May-Oct and are going to start closing Maya bay in Phuket as well.

It works but takes a dam long time. Lived in Freeport Bahamas back in the 70's and they were successful using old cars to regenerate coral growth and repopulate the fish.

I'm jealous, someone is making more babies than me