A Drop In The Ocean

With the establishment of locally managed marine areas around just a few of the Mergui Archipelago's 800 islands, the race to safeguard this jewel of the Andaman Sea faces a long uphill battle

- Ian Bongso-Seldrup

When a nominally civilian government was installed in Myanmar in 2011, and the ensuing years saw the country gradually opening up, there was cause for optimism. The Southeast Asian nation was hailed as the “last frontier” by foreign business leaders eager to secure a share of a promising emerging market. There was huge potential for investment in infrastructure and manufacturing, a youthful population of 60 million, poised to become consumers, and of course, vast untapped natural resources.

A lucky few had already caught a glimpse of some of these rich natural resources as early as 1997, when the Mergui Archipelago, an immense region comprising hundreds of tropical islands stretched out along Myanmar’s Andaman Sea coast, opened to divers travelling in boats from Thailand. Dozens of world-class dive sites began to be catalogued, including offshore sites such as “Black Rock” and “Western Rocky”. International dive magazines reported bustling reefs festooned with soft corals, abundant fish life, and big animals like sharks and many different species of rays, including mantas.

The archipelago’s “sea gypsies” – the Moken – completed the idyllic picture. We read about the self-sufficient, nomadic way of life they had led along the Andaman coast for hundreds of years. We learned of their subsistence lifestyle on small, wooden boats, foraging for food using spears – enough to feed their families with a little left over to trade for necessities. Numbering in only the thousands, these seafaring nomads had found a way to live in harmony with the ocean.