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Exciting revelations The book put together by marine biologist Dr Thon Thamrongnawasawat and his team of expert divers and scholars, Pakarang. Phangnga. Tsunami is not an ordinary title. Rather, it's a monumental undertaking whose objective is to provide readers with an entertaining and well-researched account of marine life found in the Andaman Sea. Apart from some interesting revelations, the newly-launched book, the first of the Andaman Guide series - a joint project between the Agricultural Research Development Agency and three universities namely, Kasetsart, Burapha and Prince of Songkhla - offers an insight into the various forms of life that flourish in the depths of the sea around Thailand's western coast backed by full-colour photographs and maps. With contributions from 18 marine biologists and several dive specialists who made more than 10,000 dives over a three-year period, it's perhaps the most expensive book on marine environment ever put together in Thailand. The cost ran into millions, good enough to produce a feature film, because apart from the cost incurred from dive trips, it involved underwater photography and satellite imaging. "We were looking for answers to some simple questions like how deep was the sea and what forms of life it held in its embrace. Yes, they were simple questions but very difficult to answer," said Dr Thon. One of the most difficult chapters to compile was about the coral and its most important moment, the spawning. The team had to wait long for the right moment which came one night when corals in an entire reef simultaneously released millions of eggs and sperms. "It's amazing to learn that egg and sperm from the same coral avoid each other. How could such tiny things know where the other came from," he said. Among the outstanding photos illustrating the book are those taken with the electron microscope show readers what the zooxanthellae, the symbiotic algae that live with corals actually look like. A costly part of the book involved the hunt for a mollusc, a very rare one. The team wanted to photograph it live. So they scoured fish markets in Phuket for months on end until they found a specimen. The team then traced the specimen to the fishing boat that had caught it and obtained from its owner the cordinates for the area where it was snared. A helicopter was hired to rush divers to the location because this mollusc species is quite agile and known to be on the move constantly. The mollusc in question is the Paper nautilus. It has a round body, eight tentacles. The species roams most of the seas including the Andaman Sea, but only a handful of people have seen it alive. The 300-page book is priced at 400 baht. Five thousands copies have been printed. They are available at major Thai bookstores. For more information, call the Agricultural Research Development Agency at 02-579-7435. |