Koh Samet (or Samet Island) is a small island in the gulf of Thailand (not far from Bangkok). This island used to be a hidden gem. Captions and Photo source: ©© Nate2b
Excerpts;
Black waves of crude oil washed up on a beach at a popular tourist island in Thailand’s eastern sea despite attempts to clean up the oil up over the weekend after it leaked from a pipeline, officials said Monday.
Tourists on Samet island were warned to stay away from the once-serene beach, marred by inky globs as hundreds of workers in white jumpsuits labored to scrape the sand clean and remove oil from the water…
Postcard from Thailand – a polluted paradise, Greenpeace
The tiny island of Koh Samet is home to long pale beaches, forests and beautiful geography, but the fine, white sands of this Thai island and the clear blue waters that surround it have been turned sticky and black by crude oil spilled from a pipeline operated by PTT Global Chemical. For a region identified by Greenpeace Southeast Asia Thailand Programme Manager Ply Pirom as the “nation’s food basket”, this news is bleak. Bleaker still when you realise that this spill is just one of more than 200 spills that have happened in Thai waters in the past three decades, effectively putting the region’s ecosystem in the crossfire of big oil companies and meagre oil spill mitigation resources…
