Sustainability

Back in 2010, the seawater temperature stayed over 30.5 degrees Celsius for a long period of time resulted in widespread coral bleaching under the Thai seas.

The warmer seawater and dead corals had a chain effect on other marine lives. Coral reefs serve as nursery and sanctuary for young sea animals from predators for grown ones. Their health is inherently tied to that of the marine ecosystem and the livelihood of the local communities depending on the sea to provide them with food and income from fishery and tourism.

At marine scientists' meeting organized by the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources to deliberate on how to tackle the situation, one recommendation was to build "Man-made dive sites". Because studies had found that when a natural coral reef becomes popular among divers, it tends to heavily be affected. However, closing a natural dive site or forbidding people from visiting the coral reefs would affect the local people's income in the tourism industry. In this situation, creating alternative dive sites would reduce the negative impact on natural coral reefs and allow them time to recover from bleaching.

As an operator of petroleum E&P projects in Thailand, PTTEP threw its support behind "the H.T.M.S. Underwater Learning Site Project" by studying and developing methods to transform former battleships to be underwater tourist attractions in Chumphon and Surat Thani Provinces. The project is a collaborative effort with various agencies including the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources, Chumphon and Surat Thani administrations, local business operators and communities as well as the Royal Thai Navy and Kasetsart University's Department of Fishery served as the project's major driving force.

For this project, the Navy offered two suitably sized decommissioned ships for the project, namely H.T.M.S. Prab and H.T.M.S. Sattakut. Their histories themselves are impressive destinations for divers as wreck dive sites.

The important criterion for the man-made dive site is the location: it must reduce impacts on the coral reef. That means the chosen location must be conveniently accessible to divers, and not too far from natural coral reefs which are known tourist attractions either.

Hence, before two former battleships were scuttled on the seabed, discussion was held with various agencies and stakeholders. To find out the most suitable place to rest the ships, the studies on the underwater ecology and marine life diversity were conducted before and after sinking and studied the sea currents, visibility, topography and the number of marine animals. Koh Tao, Surat Thani Province and Koh Ngam Noi, Chumporn Province fit all the criteria.

At Koh Tao, the team chose a location close to Hin Khao (White Rock) formation, which is a major diving spot in the west of the island, an important habitat of sessile organisms such as corals, mushroom anemones, sea anemones, coralline algae, black coral and sea sponges. Meanwhile, this is a swallow's nests concession island, Koh Ngam Noi – is also a popular diving site, which is characterized by a steep limestone cliff.

Another major aspect of the operation is preparing the battleships for their last mission to ensure that the ships would have a minimal impact on the marine ecology, which included cleaning and re-painting the hulls with lead-free paint, removing materials that may harm marine animals such as fiber, etc. Removing the structures and elements that might cause harm and hook the divers and installing signs to inform site-specific area for wreck diver.