The website of one development company, Singapore's Zochwell Group, advertises the island it hopes to develop as "The Next Phuket." Zochwell is negotiating a lease to build a marina, casino, hotels and a golf course to be designed by the company of golfing legend Jack Nicklaus.
Visitors, almost all travelling aboard yachts or dive boats, invariably fall under Mergui's spell.
"There was no infrastructure, no towns, no streets, nothing . a maritime Shangri-La. Nobody in our group had seen anything like it. We were absolutely enchanted," said Christoph Schwanitz, editor of a China business magazine who came a year ago and now is part owner of Meta IV, a $1 million yacht offering cruises.
Last September, a super-yacht carried a Russian couple to a "unique Robinson Crusoe setting" together with harps, xylophones and chanting Buddhist monks imported for a deserted-island wedding.
Myanmar's minister of hotels and tourism, Htay Aung, said the islands will be promoted, but that protecting the environment and "minimizing unethical practices" are top priorities.
For the time being, however, the region remains a free-for-all, with no overall management plan for tourism or the environment. Nor is there a known blueprint for the precarious future of the Moken, whom French anthropologist Jacques Ivanoff describes as "the soul of the archipelago."
For centuries they roamed the islands, worshipping spirits and reciting long epics of a mythical past. They collected mollusks, crabs and sea cucumbers, speared fish, hunted and dove deep to find valuable pearl oysters.
Today, most have been moved into settlements by the government or driven to find work on the mainland, where they are sometimes forced to labour on mines and farms. Their hand-hewn "kabangs," built as symbolic representations of humans, complete with mouth, anus and other organs, are becoming museum pieces.
About 2,000 Moken are believed to inhabit the archipelago, significantly reduced through migration, intermarriage with Burmese and deaths of males from rampant alcohol and drug abuse.
"In 20, 30 years the Burmese will dominate Moken culture. Only a little of it may remain," said Khin Maung Htwe, a Burmese married to a Moken, in Ma Kyone Galet village. The village, located within Lampi National Park on the islands, is home to 480 Burmese and other ethnic groups, 280 Moken and 146 from Moken-Burmese marriages, as of a 2012 count.
From a distance, the village is a tropical idyll. But its streets and beaches are piled high with trash by villagers who in the past simply discarded their natural refuse. A dip below the surface off nearby beaches reveals a world of dead coral and very few fish.
Though tourism is just getting started here, industry has already taken a heavy toll, including dynamite fishing, illegal loggings and wildlife poaching. On army-controlled Jar Lann Island, reporters easily located an illegal logging camp not far from a military outpost.
Trawlers have depleted the shallow fishing grounds of the Moken, who cannot compete with better equipped Burmese divers in search of sea cucumbers and oysters. Instead, they catch small squid, often hooked by cheap plastic bait, while Thai and Burmese fishermen use powerful kerosene lamps to attract larger squid species in vast quantities.
http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/fate-of-sea-gypsies-environment-hang-in-balance-as-myanmars-lost-world-2/
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