Tsunami: Stories from below

Imagine being on your first “big money dive” of the day when a current sucks you down to 120 feet and the blue waters become a “milky stirred-up miso soup”. This what happened to two Californian divers as the tsunami hit Koh Phi Phi Island last year. The two claim they owe their lives to diving. Had they stayed ashore that day they would have been crushed by the 150 mph waves that hit the beach or would have been wiped out along with their hotel. Scuba Diving magazine features an article of tsunami survivors, most of who were diving at the time the catastrophe hit. With the exception of a divemaster, most were infrequent or new divers during the whipping surge the divers experienced along Thailand’s reefs. Many of the divers weren’t aware of what was happening a mile or so inland until they returned to the docks later in the afternoon only to find debris and bodies floating in the water.

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