Maltese diver witnessed water rising at Maldives island

The Maldives might have been ravaged by the Boxing Day tsunami but a Maltese diver working on an island there believes the region has what it takes to be swiftly restored into a tourism haven.

"I'm sure the Maldives will be as popular as they have always been. Even today, people are calling to make bookings and it's a nightmare trying to get a room for them," Derek Chircop told The Times yesterday.

Mr Chircop, who works as a diving instructor on the island of Giravaru in the Maldives, is optimistic that the masses will return to the tourist paradise, even if travel agents contacted yesterday confirmed that interest in the region has waned.

The killer waves, unleashed by the world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years, killed thousands and were particularly brutal to tourism - the most lucrative industry for South East Asia.

In the Maldives, an island chain 600 miles south of the southern tip of India, about 20 per cent of the country's economy depends on recreational revenue.

Mr Chircop said his resort, where he will remain until April, at first experienced a lot of cancellations in the aftermath of the tsunami though some, especially Italian and Russian tourists, still forged ahead with their travel plans. A week later, the interest was already growing, he said.

No fewer than 26 resorts were destroyed in the Maldives as the death toll reached 75 people yesterday while another 42 were confirmed missing.

Some islands in the Maldives were totally devastated, especially those on the east side of the atoll. The worst affected were Meemu and especially Thaa, which reported 90 per cent damage. On one island called Kolhufushi, all houses were flattened by a 12-foot wave, killing 10 and 22 remain missing.

Mr Chircop recounted the fateful day when the tsunami struck the Maldives:

"One of my workers here on the island informed me at about 8 a.m. that he had heard on the radio that there had been an earthquake near Sumatra and that he had felt the ground shake a bit while he was in Male that morning.

"At about 9.30 a.m. I was at the dive school when the same worker called me to observe what was happening to the sea - the tide was coming in very fast until it actually went over the harbour walls and slowly started to flood the island."

Mr Chircop rushed to his office as he had a lot of computer equipment on the floor plus boxes full of important paperwork and managed to shift all the items just in time.

"Then I returned outside to see that the water had risen about two metres higher than it normally does and subsequently it receded about a metre lower than its average.

"At this time I wasn't particularly scared because I was not exactly aware what was really happening. Some of the locals were terrified although nothing much had happened to our island apart from a bit of flooding and some damage to the protecting walls."

Eager to find out what had really caused the sea movement, Mr Chircop started receiving the horrifying news together with the warnings of aftershocks which, however, never hit the island.

But Giravaru's residents could only thank their lucky stars: "We heard on local radio there were about 20,000 displaced and 100,000 people affected; a lot when you consider there's only a population of about 300,000," Mr Chircop said.