Andaman Sea tsunami fright

25 Apr 2011

When millions of tiny krill washed up on Phuket’s west coast on Friday afternoon, local residents believed that a tsunami was on its way. The crustaceans resemble small shrimps and the phenomenon of seeing them on beaches at Kata and Karon convinced locals and tourists that a repeat of the devastating tidal waves of 2004 was about to happen.

When the krill first landed on the beach at around 16:00 many were still alive, but died soon afterwards. Villagers tried to save some of the creatures by putting them in buckets of seawater, while tourists headed to the beaches to take a look.

At 19:00, the Phuket Marine Biological Centre’s Wararin Wongpanit and Prajuab Mokharat from the Thai Marine Resources Department arrived to examine the orange-coloured krill. Mr Mokharat said that there was no reason to worry about an impending tsunami and that the cause of the rare occurrence could probably be put down to climate change.

The officials collected specimens to take back to their departments’ laboratories for additional examinations. One resident told local newspaper reporters that he had never seen anything like this in almost 50 years of living on western Phuket.

The tsunami that hit countries around the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day 2004 claimed 230,000 lives, with an estimated 8,000 in the coastal areas on Thailand’s Andaman Sea alone.

Krill feature claws which are longer than their bodies and they are more usually found in deep-sea habitats.

Tags: Andaman tsunami fright