JOHN Gray is a man on a mission. He wants to clean up Phuket’s waterways.

For the past 20 years, the self-styled eco-warrior and his team of tour guides have been taking tourists out on their SeaCanoes to paddle through Phang Nga Bay, while he tells them about the geological history and about the wildlife on the bay’s 42 islands.

And every time he goes out in his kayak, Mr Gray collects any rubbish and litter he sees along the way.

“I’ve been doing this three times a week for about 20 years, so that’s around 3000 trips,” he said.

“I usually get two or three black plastic bags full of rubbish every time I go out, which means I have pulled about 8000 bags of rubbish out of the water.

“There is so much styro-foam out there which has broken off shrimp farms and tour boats,” he said.

“I’ve pulled a lot of plastic bottles out of the water with tour companies’ names on them, which is a pretty good indication that a lot of the rubbish in the water is tourist-related.

“One company had plastic bags with their company’s name and logo on it in big blue letters, and the plastic was so thick, it would have taken hundreds of years to disintegrate,” he said.

Mr Gray is currently organising a week-long clean up of the bay, which he has dubbed the Phang Nga Bay Clean-up Trip.

The clean-up will officially begin on January 14, his 64th birthday and the 25th anniversary of when he first started running historical sea kayak tours in Hawaii.

Mr Gray, who teaches coastal tourism management at the Phuket campus of the Prince of Songkla University, said pollution in the bay was getting worse, fuelled by what he estimates could as much as six times the national park website’s figure of 48,000 visitors a year.

“We did a field study trip recently to the Phuket Marine Biological Centre in Laem Panwa in the south of the island, and I explained what happens when a speedboat runs over a sea turtle or when a whale eats too many plastic bags.

“I told the students ‘this is your future. If you want a career in tourism you have to be aware of this’.

“Sadly, a lot of people just talk about increasing the number of tourists who come here,” he said.

“Instead, we should be cutting back on the numbers.”

This wildlife warrior lives without air conditioning in a traditional wooden Thai-style home in the Phuket jungle, which is supplied by well water.

He says over-crowding on the waterways, and a lack of training is also contributing to safety issues.

He said he had been forced to rescue a number of tourists from drowning as a result of inexperienced tour operators.

“I view paddling into tidal sea caves as a very serious matter and there have been fatalities,” he said.

“I once helped rescue 38 people who would have drowned because too many kayaks entered a cave when it was almost full of water.

“None of their guides spoke English and their training was poor.

“They didn’t know what they were doing, and I had to explain to the group why the guides needed to pull them out of their canoes by their arms and legs to save them from drowning.”

Whether it is sea kayaking or protecting the environment, Gray believes educating people is answer.

He said he chose Asia to promote sustainable tourism after an incident in Hawaii.

“I was following an Asian tour bus and all this fast food rubbish kept coming out of the window and onto my windshield,” he said.

“I started looking at Asia’s tiger economies and their lack of environmental ethics, and I realised that South East Asia was where we were going to win or lose the battle for the planet’s environment.”

Mr Gray is currently in talks with the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and is trying to stop operators’ boats playing loud ‘disco’ music around Phang Nga Bay’s limestone hongs, or sea caves.

He says the loud music disrupts the habitat of the indigenous animals and destroys the serenity of the islands.

“I’m trying to implement a professional standards program, because some operators are turning the trips into a Patong-style parties,” he said.

“There will be several thousand people out there laughing and joking and making a lot of noise, and feeding the monkeys bananas when bananas don’t even grow on the islands.

Earlier this month, Mr Gray picked up the prestigious eco-tourism award at the Skal International sustainable awards ceremony in Taipei for his work in promoting pollution-free trips to the island’s heritage hot spots.

“The Skal award was pretty special because we didn’t apply for it,” he said.
“Somebody nominated us.

“But our guides, many of whom have more than 12 years experience, are the true winners.
“They capture our guests’ hearts and imagination day in and day out.”

Mr Gray objects to being called a tour operator.

“What we do is natural history education,” he said.

“We don’t run city bus tours, and we don’t run speed boat tours to Phi Phi island or James Bond island.

“That’s what tour operators do.

“Ours is a fun way of learning science and evolution.

“We have wildlife here going back more than a billion years and we put graphic examples of step by step evolution in front of your eyes, from pre-historic times all the way up to the present.”

As he approaches his 64th birthday, Mr Gray can look back on an illustrious career as an eco-tourism promoter and filmmaker.

In 1976, he co-founded and named ‘Keep The Country Country’, a Honolulu-based organization promoting sustainable planning on Oahu’s North Shore.

Seven years later, he founded Natural History by Sea Kayak, in Hawai, to promote nature conservation, and over the next five years explored the islands of Fiji, Tahiti, Samoa, Rarotonga, Vanuatu and New Caledonia by sea kayak.

He has also won a prestigious regional Emmy and a Teddy award for a documentary he made about Hawaiian archipelago island, Molokai, entitled ‘Molokai’s Forgotten Frontier’.

And drawing from his experience of how Puerto Princessa, the capital of Phillipine island, Palawan, was rejuvenated by a mass clean up operation, Gray has laid down the gauntlet to Phuket’s politicians.

“I dare the city’s fathers, the mayor, and the director of planning to go and see how it’s done so they can do the same for Phuket and Phang Nga Bay,” he said.

“I will organise the trip.”