When photojournalist, Sirachai Arunrugstichai captured an aerial image of over-tourism at Maya Bay, the story went viral. Soon after, a crackdown on the issue allowed blacktip reef sharks to return, revealing a nursery and sparking research, reform, and a fragile model for sustainable tourism.
The first thing that welcomed me at Maya Bay was spit.
It was warm and sticky under my bare foot, half-hidden in the sand. I jerked back, wiped it off on an empty patch of the crowded beach, and looked up. More than 50 speedboats were coming in and out, in a clumsy choreography to drop and pick up visitors, engines roaring. Thousands of tourists were crammed onto a strip of sand only a few hundred metres wide. Cigarette butts were half-buried in the sand, plastic cups floated in the water, and an iridescent oily sheen from boat engines clung to the surface.
This was early December 2017, and I was there on assignment for National Geographic magazine, Thai edition, to photograph the state of Thailand’s marine national parks. As a city kid, I had grown up on glossy postcards and film stills of this place, the perfect little cove from The Beach, starring young Leonardo DiCaprio. From the air and on the screen, Maya Bay looked like an untouched paradise. Standing in that spit-stained, engine-choked sand, it felt less like a national park and more like a ferry terminal at low tide.
I put a drone up to get the wide shot we needed. From above, the scale of over-tourism was impossible to ignore. Speedboats were packed along the shore, bows pointing out, propellers still spinning in murky, milky shallow water. Behind them, a pale whitish-blue plume of suspended sand trailed out of the bay, cutting clear lines through the vibrant blue, while the crowd on the beach was packed so tightly you could barely see the sand.
That night, I sent the photo to Dr. Thon Thamrongnawasawat, one of Thailand’s most recognisable marine biologists and a leading voice pushing for reform in the Phi Phi archipelago and its national park. He posted it on his Facebook page as part of his campaign for the “Phi Phi model”, a plan to bring tourism back within the bay’s carrying capacity with support from local communities and conservationists. The image went viral. Outrage from netizens followed.
Not long after, in early 2018, Maya Bay was closed to visitors indefinitely.
More columns from Sirachai
“Cigarette butts were half-buried in the sand, plastic cups floated in the water, and an iridescent oily sheen from boat engines clung to the surface.”
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