Staying afloat

Watching her friend climb a rock tower on Krabi, a well-known beach and rock-climbing area in southern Thailand, Mary McAllister suddenly heard a climber yell.

“Big wave!”

McAllister, of San Francisco, reported the story in an e-mail to family and friends. A wave the length of the horizon sculpted itself out of the water, she wrote. “We saw a kayaker ride the first wave. It was about 2 to 3 meters high.... A man behind me yelled, ‘Now it’s time to go!’ ”

The tsunami that devastated 11 nations the day after Christmas also wrecked a hub of outdoors action. For years, rock climbers, surfers and scuba divers have flocked to the coasts, reefs and seas of Sumatra, Thailand, the Maldives, the Andaman Islands and other Indian Ocean spots. In 2004, 12 million tourists spent $9 billion in Thailand alone, according to the Thailand Visitors Bureau, an increase of 75% since 1996. Many came to climb rock towers, snorkel, dive and fish.

McAllister survived the tsunami by running to higher ground. A kayaker on the same beach was pulled from the water. Farther west, giant waves trapped more than 80 divers in the popular Emeral Cave on Thailand’s Ko Muk Island. Two died, but the rest were rescued, according to Agence France-Presse.

When adventurers eventually return to these areas, it is unclear what they will find. The extent of underwater damage from the tsunami is not yet known, but experts say it’s likely the ocean floor and marine life have suffered. Unlike surface waves, the tsunami’s force was created by a 9.0 underwater earthquake, which distributed the waves’ velocity evenly from top to bottom, according to Henry Yeh, an ocean engineer with Oregon State University. In 1960, an enormous tsunami that hit Japan lifted 30 feet of mud from the ocean’s bottom.

“All the coral surrounding Thailand was probably destroyed or seriously injured when this wave hit,” says Yeh. “Coral is used to wave action, but a tsunami is so different that nothing in the ocean is prepared for it.”

More immediately apparent is the loss of the hotels and dive shops along the Thai coast. “The beaches are gone, the resorts are gone, whole small islands are essentially underwater now,” says 12-year area resident Chip Pough, 64, via satellite phone from his boat near Phuket. “The guys who have dive shops near the beach, their compressors are underwater, and they don’t have any electricity. The entire Indian Ocean diving industry is kaput for a year until they can rebuild.”

Damage on the Maldives and the Andaman Islands, premier dive sites, is more extensive than in Thailand. The highest point on the Maldives doesn’t top 10 feet.

Preliminary reports on surf, diving and climbing websites focused primarily on the search for survivors. A popular discussion board on Surfing magazine’s website reported that three surf charter boats safely survived the storm and noted that the tragedy occurred during the wet season, when surfing tourism is minimal.

Witnesses say that, although the ocean was affected, popular rock climbing sites such as Krabi survived relatively unscathed.

“Krabi is back to relative normal, but it will take some time to reconstruct accommodations there,” wrote John Williams of Siam Dive n’ Sail via e-mail. “Climbing will not be affected.”

Other discussions have asked: How long before the region can support outdoor recreation?

The tsunami destroyed one of the Indian Ocean’s strongest selling points. “The neat thing about diving in the Maldives and Andaman is that it’s very pristine,” says Ken Kurtis, president of Reefseekers Dive Co. in Beverly Hills. “You might be the first person to dive a particular reef. It’s been untouched -- until now.”

Kurtis says a number of his clients have traveled in the past days to Thailand for long-planned diving trips.

“They are being reassured by dive operators everything is OK, but they have an interest in saying that,” he says, adding, “If you lose the tourism revenue, there will be problems on top of problems.”