Shakila Hariyah-Permadi, research director at the Andaman Littoral Research Centre, said she would leave her post on 1 November, moments after presenting results showing seagrass shoot density had risen 22% across eight monitored sites near Koh Libong. The announcement in Trang caught colleagues by surprise: she had not signalled an exit before the briefing.
The four-year survey compared restored plots with nearby areas where no restoration work was done. Researchers also recorded a net expansion of 14 hectares of seagrass across the monitored coves. The centre said it was the clearest sustained improvement in its records, while stressing that the data do not prove one single intervention caused the recovery.
A recovery visible from the shallows
The team counted shoots in fixed underwater plots and checked the edges of each meadow during repeated field visits. Trainees helped collect samples and map changes, using simple quadrats and GPS units. Researchers linked the strongest gains to coves where temporary mooring buoys had reduced boat anchoring, but said shifts in water quality and weather may also have played a part.
“We cannot ask the sea to recover on a timetable if we train the people watching it only for a season,” Hariyah-Permadi said. She will leave the centre to lead a new paid field-training scheme, arguing that research teams need skilled local surveyors who can return to the same sites year after year.
We cannot ask the sea to recover on a timetable if we train the people watching it only for a season.
Shakila Hariyah-Permadi, outgoing research director
The programme will take its first 30 trainees in January, with instruction in underwater sampling, mapping and data checks. The Coastal Habitat Bureau, a government research agency, has committed 12 million baht (about €316,000) for its first two years. Hariyah-Permadi said the trainees would be paid for fieldwork rather than treated as occasional volunteers.
Training for longer field seasons
Madge Gleason, a marine ecologist at Trang Marine Science College who was not part of the survey, said the result was encouraging but called for caution. “Twenty-two per cent is a meaningful change in the plots, not a promise that every meadow is back,” she said. She praised the repeated measurements, which make seasonal fluctuations easier to separate from longer-term shifts.
Seagrass beds shelter young fish and store carbon in the seabed. Around Koh Libong, they also support small-scale fishing and are part of the habitat used by dugongs, which graze on the plants. Local fishing groups have asked researchers for clearer updates on which coves are improving and whether boat access should change.
The centre plans to publish its full data set next month and extend monitoring to four more coves in 2027. It will name an acting director before Hariyah-Permadi’s departure. The bureau said the new training scheme would not delay current fieldwork, and that existing teams would continue monthly checks through the dry season.
At the briefing, Hariyah-Permadi said she had made the decision only days earlier, after the latest survey results came in. She described leaving the centre as “the right way to stay with the work”, and said her first trainee group would be in the water before the next annual count.
