The chairman of the scientific advisors to the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI) recently returned from Thailand where he completed a two-week survey of the damage caused to the surrounding coral by the Tsunamis which destroyed the coastlines of more than four countries.

Dr. Greg Stone, who is also the vice-president of Global Marine Programs at the New England Aquarium in Boston, said up to 15 percent of the coral reef in the area was completely destroyed.

Some 35 percent of the coral was moderately damaged ? some of this damage could have occurred before the Tsunamis hit last December which might explain why Thailand was so severely affected by the sudden rise in sea level. Dr. Stone said scientists expect it will take hundreds of years for some of the coral to recover and believe that what they saw in Thailand may prove that an event such as the Asian Tsunamis of December last year, was practically unprecedented.

The survey was sponsored by the National Geographic Society and an article written by Dr. Stone will be featured in the December issue of the National Geographic magazine.

Dr. Stone said after the Tsunamis hit, scientists were curious to see what effect of the waves had on the coral reefs.

?Coral reefs are the most diverse eco-systems on the planet and the most diverse in the sea and Thailand is near the centre of the highest diversity of coral reefs in the ocean,? he said.

He said they waited months before undertaking the expedition because they did not want to go in when the humanitarian disaster was still being dealt with.

?So we assembled a group of the top scientists and specialists in coral and went in,? he said.

Dr. Stone said they surveyed the hardest hit areas, which included Phuket, and they found that half of the sites visited displayed no damage whatsoever.

But further investigation found the coral reefs has been massively disrupted.

?In a sense our effort was foreign aid as most of these people depend on the reefs for food, tourism and income,? he said.

One of of five people in the world get their daily source of protein from the sea.

?While half of the reefs were fine, about 35 percent were moderately damaged and would recover within ten years, but 15 percent were absolutely devastated,? he said.

This meant they were either buried under tonnes of silt and sediment moved around by the three or four Tsunamis that hit this part of the world. It was first thought only two Tsunamis hit this area after the earthquake, but Dr. Stone said it was now clear that Phuket and other areas were hit by at least four Tsunamis that day.

?Large coral heads had also been rolled over and over,? he said, adding that up to 50 percent of these sites would take centuries to recover to what they were like before the Tsunamis.

Dr. Stone said this damage was proof that nothing like this happened in thousands of years in this area of the world.

This will be Dr. Stone?s fourth article with National Geographic.

And he and fellow advisor to BUEI, Bruce Rovison, will be going on another expedition in a few weeks time to Indonesia where they will use an ROV ? remote operated vehicle ? to survey ocean life from the surface to the very bottom of the deep water basins in Indonesia.

Indonesia and the surrounding area is known as the cradle of marine bio-diversity in the world.

?No one has ever looked down deep to see if the deep water fauna is just as diverse as it is in shallow waters,? he said.

Dr. Stone said very little deep down exploration has ever been done due to the challenges of temperature and pressure and they were overcoming these challenges with the use of the ROV.

?The age of exploration is just beginning in the oceans and it?s clearly here in Bermuda where you go just off the be,ach into unexplored waters and BUEI plays a big part in this,? he said.