Monday, September 01, 2008

"we find 'em virgins and we leave 'em whores" Jack McCoy 1995 - Draft for discussion



Check out Martin Daly's latest article "Keeping Secrets" at surfline:

http://www.surfline.com/surfnews/article_bamp_400_v03.cfm?id=17806

Martin claims that the Mentawai surf industry is colluding with officials just to spoil his "surfin' lifestyle"...How terrible for him! This sort of resonates... sort of.... until you actually think about it. Because Martin has the biggest fleet in the Mentawais by far. About $7 million invested and counting.....60 mouths to feed and a juggernaut of stuff to cart around the planet.... Not exactly "surfing the earth lightly".... hardly feral.... anyone who just wanted the lifestyle could sail around on a small yacht to enjoy remote surf spots and remain invisible..... Martin is dreaming about it.... but the reality is that he is hard at work promoting a 'new' secret destination. Keeping Secrets is an expensive 8 page advertorial.


Is Martin about to repeat his act in the Marshall Islands? His new "secret" wave mine...... He is paying big bucks to leak the word out and all you have to do is a quick Google on "Marshall Islands" to come up with this. http://www.visitmarshallislands.com/pdf/newsletter/2006_feb.pdf


Seems he is pretty close to the government officials out in the Pacific. Bet they are hoping someone will eventually build resorts. What emerges from the article is what Joel Patterson politely referred to as Daly's "duality"....something is haunting him..... As Martin puts it himself: "You're either making money or surfing perfect waves alone". Martin's biggest secret? The inner turmoil that haunts him? He hates himself for doing what he loves to do. He is a surf circus ringmaster, a showman, not a mellow yachtie type who just wants to cruise and surf. Jack felt much the same back in 1995 when he confessed ...."we find 'em virgins and we leave 'em whores" Both men are tapped into a rich vein of surf industry money and it is addictive. Good luck to them. Jack was proud of it and ready for more. Martin seems a bit conflicted and unsure of what to do next. Given the state of the US economy and his overheads, this is no surprise.

Martin sees the changes in Mentawai as "freedom versus the establishment" and calls a group of small resort owners a "Capitalist Pig element"...... a pretty heavy statement given most of the resort partners are conservative Muslims. And then there is the glaring contradiction that any insider will confirm.

Martin Daly is the biggest capitalist in the Mentawai surf industry. He is a celebrity now and one has to wonder where he stands. Is he siding with feral surfers? Not a chance! Does he just feel that owns any place that he has the good fortune to surf before everyone else? Not really.... so why is he throwing all his efforts into trying to sabotage the Mentawai Governments new tourism policies? The small but growing Mentawai surf industry see Martin using the global surf industry heavyweights (the surf "establishment") to back up his continued tax free plunder of the Mentawais.

The surf trade capitalists are about the only people who can afford his rates.... but the Mentawai resort owners would never call them 'pigs' right? The fact is that an increasing number of the big brands are booking resorts rather than boats. It is way more comfortable and flexible.... the writing is on the wall. The boats were the pioneers but they will soon move on looking for more and more isolated places. That theme saturates the Secrets article from beginning to end.

In May 2008, Martin went against his better judgement and made an extraordinarily heavy handed foray into the complex jungle of West Sumatran politics. His ill fated boat owner group WBC (no, it is not the World Boxing Council), spent up big, romanced top brass and the elite in Padang only to find that they trod on so many toes in the islands that there was a student uprising against them. Martin himself suffered the brunt of the anger after he appeared on local television saying that he thought the Mentawai people were "very primitive".

It is a tragedy that the money Martin invested in this fiasco was wasted on grandstanding rather than used to support infrastructure and community programs in the islands. The Mentawai resort owners have invested on land and worked on navigation the regulatory maze that is mandatory to get a resort license. They pay taxes and employ locals. The foreign boat owners operates like freeloaders and pay no tax on their profits and no VAT on their services. How sustainable is that model? Who will win this battle of wills? Stay tuned for updates.

BREAKING NEWS

Visit Global Surfers website for the first ever public debate between Martin Daly and Rick.
http://globalsurfers.ning.com/forum/

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Keeping Secrets? - Martin Daly & the Marshall Islands


Keeping Secrets - Joel Patterson - Water Magazine (Surfline.com)

September (Summer) 2008

Talking to Martin Daly, one gets the feeling that he's a bit haunted by the mark he's made on surfing. A lifelong surfer and diver who spent his youth working on boats in the Indian Ocean, the Aussie is credited with turning our collective focus to the Mentawai Islands after photos and video from a 1992 trip aboard his salvage vessel the Indies Trader made their way into surf magazines and soon had the entire surf community licking its collective chops at the images of perfect waves and empty lineups.

Daly and only a half-dozen others had kept the Mentawais a secret for nearly a decade before the photos were leaked, and within a few years the area went from one of the most remote places on the planet to a surf mecca that drew thousands of surfers every summer who paid a burgeoning surf-charter industry handsomely to be taken out to waves with names like Macaroni's and Bank Vaults.

In 1999, Daly collaborated with Quiksilver to embark on a half-decade-long exploration of the world's oceans, called simply The Crossing, which ended in 2005 and took him from Cloudbreak on Fiji to New York City's Ellis Island.

By 2003, Daly was to the reef passes of the Indian and Pacific oceans what Ernest Shackleton was to Antarctica, and as his reputation grew, so did his fleet. Each new boat was more luxurious and capable than the one before it, until the introduction of a surf charter boat so massive and appointed, Daly himself refers to it as "a small cruise ship," but most know it as "the Death Star" for its sleek profile and stealthy speed.

Today the Mentawais are in turmoil. With over 40 boats running surf charters in the area and a growing number of land-based surf camps at some of the major breaks, the business of taking people surfing has become so big that outsiders--including everyone from the local and national governments to shady foreign businessmen--have begun muscling in on the action. Surf taxes, licensing proposals, international airports, and private ownership of the most popular waves have all threatened the future of the now beloved "Indo boat trip."

"I'm really not that positive about it," Daly says about his outlook for the Mentawais. "It's the bad things about Indonesia against all the things that we hold dear. It's kind of like watching a bunch of seagulls fighting over a chip. I see it as freedom versus the establishment."


With The Crossing now over, and unsure of the future in Mentawais, Daly has set his sights on new destinations, one of which--a group of islands in the Western Pacific, which will remain nameless here by Daly's request--has the 51-year-old excited about exploring again. So fifteen years after the door to the Mentawais was kicked down, Daly took the Rip Curl team to explore and document his new find. But with the lesson of Indo fresh in his mind, this time Daly's being more cautious about who he tells .... (yea, like the editor of Water Magazine! - Ed)

Can we mention the name of these islands in this interview? I'd rather not. I mean, it's a bit out of reach for the average bloke, unless he's got a really good boat. It's not like the Mentawais where anything that floats will work. It's the Northwest Pacific Ocean, and the winds and weather are what's saved it all these years, but I'd still rather leave the exact location out of this.

So it's really hard to access? Really hard. Even the locals can't access it right now because the airlines are down and the shipping lines are often down. There are people living on those islands out there who don't get any supplies for months at a time. It's very remote.

How did you end up there? I had always wanted to go there since the very beginning of The Crossing project. I always had it singled out as a place that looked to me like it would get some great surf. I looked at the maps, and I thought it would be a no-brainer.

It was one of the few corners of the world we didn't go to during The Crossing, so when that project finished in Hawaii in 2005, I decided to go straight there on my own mission. It was on my way home to Indonesia, and it was one of the blanks I really wanted to fill in.

Did you score it the first time you went? Yeah, we got fantastic waves.

What kind of potential is out there? Well, I think we've only scratched the surface, really. It's a lot more challenging than Indonesia because of the sheer distance, the lack of shelter, the size of the waves, and the amount of swell. Plus, there are a lot of islands out there, and only some of them have spots where all the factors line up the right way. It's really similar to the Tuamotu Islands or the Maldives--it's the same sort of reef structure and similar surf.

Does it have a big swell window? Pretty big. I mean, I don't want to get too carried away and make a guide to get there, but yeah, during the winter months it gets some swell.What's unique about the area? The marine environment. It is the most untouched place in the tropics that I've ever been to. You put your head under the water and look around, and it's like it was supposed to be. I spent a lot of time in North Queensland [Australia] when I was a kid, and I used to go out to the [Great] Barrier Reef to go diving in all these places that no one had ever dived or fished before, so I kinda know what a tropical marine environment should look like.

One of the most disappointing by-products of spending all those years on The Crossing was observing the state of the marine environment around the world. Even in far-flung places in the middle of the Pacific, you could just feel that a lot was missing. Whether it was the bleaching of the coral or El Niño or global warming. But around these islands the environment is pristine--there are huge fish everywhere, the coral's alive, endless underwater visibility, seabirds are nesting all around. It's refreshing to see a place in such great shape environmentally.

Are there any local surfers? On the main island a couple guys are surfing, even though the surf isn't very good there, but for the most part, people haven't seen surfing.

How many places with good surf are left in the world where local people still haven't seen surfing? A lot, I reckon. On our way to the Pacific from Indonesia we drove right across the top of West Papua New Guinea and there were a lot of places where people had never seen surfers before.

Can you talk a little bit about what you envision as the future of surf travel in the Western Pacific? I think the best thing to say about the area is that I just love going there. [Indies] Trader 4 has been there for a few years and [Indies] Trader 1 has been up there twice, once with Rip Curl, and as you can see in the photos, we've scored some pretty amazing surf there. But before the Rip Curl guys left, people were sending e-mails to Mick Fanning--who was supposed to be on the trip--and others, saying, "This place is absolutely terrible. It's no good, and there's no waves. Martin Daly's an idiot, etcetera." So Mick ended up not going on the trip, but when the rest of the Rip Curl team got there and the surf came good, they were heroic.

Do you find that type of stuff happens to you regularly? I mean, you're the guy out there on the frontier. You're finding waves where people are convinced there's nothing, right? The best quote I've ever heard was from a young pro surfer working for Rip Curl. We were at Macaroni's in 1993. He said to me, "There's no f--king surf here. You're a f--king idiot. As long as my ass points to the ground, there's never going to be a wave in this place. Take me home!" The next morning, when we woke up, it was about as good as Macaroni's has ever been. If you've ever seen the movie The Search 2, there's the first-ever footage of Macaroni's in it, and that was the morning after the mutiny by this guy and a couple of his mates.


That's still happening, too. I was a lot more tolerant then, but these days my tolerance is fading. I get a lot of people out there who totally get it, and then there are a lot of people, who, unless it's served to them on a plate, they just aren't prepared to put up with the waits, the bad weather, and the floggings that it takes to make it all come together.

I guess it's just human nature. Our society these days is all about "now, now, now" and "gimme, gimme, gimme" and instant gratification, and that's the fault of the surf-travel industry to a certain point. All someone has to do these days is put their hand in their pocket, come up with a few thousand dollars, and the next thing you know they're having their hand held and being led to perfect waves. It's taken an incredible amount of work to provide those services, and I think they're undervalued now. I think it's all far too cheap.

Will there be a correction in the price of surf travel? I think so. Fuel prices are going through the roof; even the price of rice has doubled. This will have to be passed on. I think the whole surf travel thing has gotten overamped. For me, it's sometimes a case of "Oh my god, what have I done?" When you do something, you want to do it better and better each time, and you want to fine-tune it. I mean, when I first started it was like, "How would it be if initially we had cold beer on the boat all the time? How cool would it be if we had air conditioning? How cool would it be if we had a boat that would go a bit faster? Bigger cabins? A better tin boat? A Jet Ski? A helicopter?" Well now it's all happened, so I guess I've sort of taken it to its obscene end, if you know what I mean.

So what do you do now? Pull it back and get back to the basics of going surfing with a few friends. I'm 51 this year, and I've been thinking that maybe I should slow down and smell the roses a bit. I've taken this to where it's going to go for this period, so maybe someone else can grab the reigns and take it to the next level, but I think I'm just about to the point where I'd like to spend my days with less stress and more waves, and I'd like to spend more time with my family.


Are you planning on doing advertised surf charters to this new area? We'll see how we go. I'm not really sure at the moment. The world is a pretty uncertain place, and the surf travel market in the Mentawais is drastically cut this year. It seems to me there's about a 30- to 40-percent reduction in numbers of surfers traveling there, which in a lot of ways is fantastic.

In my business you have a sort of never-ending dilemma. If you're full, you're stoked because you're making a living, but when that's the case it makes the lineups too crowded. When it's quiet out there, we're stoked because we get more waves, but that means less income. Now that I think of it, it's actually a win-win situation, really. You're either making money or surfing perfect waves alone.

"I remember when I first went out to the Mentawais how far away from everywhere I felt,
and that's the same feeling I get in these islands we took the Rip Curl guys to.
I feel responsible somewhat for exposing the Mentawais to the world, but if I hadn't done it,
someone else probably would have ten minutes later."

- Martin Daly


What do you attribute the downturn in people signing up for boat trips in the Mentawais this year to? People are scared; economic doom and gloom, stock market uncertainty. The US is arguably in a recession, and I think people are just holding their credit cards close to their chests at the moment.

What's your view on how the Mentawais surf experience changed in recent years? It hasn't changed at all when there's no one around. The magic's still absolutely there, and it's not as crowded as everyone says. We surf by ourselves all the time out there. A lot of people take it all for granted, and when they fly in they don't realize they're going to one of the most remote places in the world. They see it in the magazines, they see it fully marketed and prostituted--as we do--and they think it's this well-trodden, safe area.

I remember when I first went out to the Mentawais how far away from everywhere I felt, and that's the same feeling I get in these islands we took the Rip Curl guys to. I feel responsible somewhat for exposing the Mentawais to the world, but if I hadn't done it, someone else probably would have ten minutes later.

Do you ever regret that? I don't regret any of the experiences I've had, though I sometimes regret ...

You know, there's a fundamental difference between Australians' attitude towards surf travel and Americans'. We tend to be more secretive and selfish, while the US surfers tend to tell all their buddies about it and brag about it. There have been some cultural clashes out there. For example, my agent Anthony is involved in the Kandui Surf Camp, and he said to me, "Hey dude, we're gonna get a Web cam on Kandui!" And when I replied, "That really sucks!" he had no idea why I would say that. He just thought I was being a negative idiot. An Australian would think, "That sucks." And any American would think, "Hey cool, I can look at Kandui in the morning while I'm eating my Corn Flakes from my kitchen in California."

As Australians, we've had a tradition of feral surf travel and discovery--in Indonesia particularly because it's so close to Australia. Some of these guys get malaria and live on the beach for years, and I think that because it's so hard to find the things they have, and because they put so much effort into the search, they somehow find it more valuable.

So what's going on in the Mentawais at the moment? It's getting really heavy. Basically, it's come down to the business end of surfing versus the surfers. There are people out there--and I like to think of myself as one of them--who own and operate boats and live the surfing lifestyle. And then you have this non-surfing, capitalist-pig element that is just there to take money out of our thing, and they're making things really hard right now. They're trying to impose taxes on every surfer who goes there, they're colluding with the Indonesian and Mentawais governments, trying to put up fences and get exclusive rights for all the waves. Surf camps are trying to get rid of charter boats. I see it as freedom versus the establishment.
Surfers don't like regulations and rules. I mean, that's the whole reason we like surfing, right? Freedom. That's the whole idea of a boat ... it's a freedom machine. And you can't just tell people who have their lives and their dreams invested in something to simply go away, because they're not going to agree.

I have to go to a meeting with the boss of the Mentawai Islands and others on Sunday to try to straighten things out. They had a demonstration against me in Padang last week, calling for my deportation because I disagreed that a boat should have to work underneath a land camp and give them a large chunk of their profit for doing nothing.

Other than the freedom to explore, what advantages do boats have over surf camps based on land? The good thing about boats is that when you leave a break, it's the same as it ever was. The environment is still intact, and it's like people were never there. But as soon as you put a surf camp on an island, it's changed forever. There are always people there, it's always creating rubbish and pollution. It fundamentally impacts the area.
Are you doing a lot of business in this new area in the Western Pacific? Not really. It's a bit of a disaster in some ways. It costs a lot of money to get out there, and it's really hard to access. People don't understand that if you want to get away from everybody, you've got to go to the ends of the Earth. I just figured the people who wanted to go would put their hands up. It's going to take a really big effort to develop anything out there, and I wonder whether it's a good thing to do or not. I'd like to establish a low-key deal where we just go out there and do it without whoring it out to the rest of the planet.

Do you still have much exploring left to do out there? Oh yeah ... heaps. There are some really good waves out there. But if you want to get really good waves, there are lots of places to go, like the Mentawais, Mexico, Nicaragua ... it's instant gratification pretty much guaranteed in those places. But if you want to go to the more out-of-the-way places, you've gotta be prepared to harden up and put some effort in.

From the photos it looks like that zone is full of right-handers. Yeah, there aren't very many lefts over there. Which is great, because there's too many lefts in the world anyway if you're a natural-footer. Indonesia is the land of the lefts, so it's nice to spend some time surfing some rights. I saw a video of G-Land flipped so it was a right instead of a left, and all I could think was, "You bastards!"

Looks like some shallow reefs in some of the spots you guys surfed. It's not any shallower than anywhere we surf in Indonesia, it's just that the water is so ridiculously clear that it can be head high and look three inches deep.


Do you have more surf industry-sponsored exploration trips planned? No. It became a bit of a moral dilemma.

What was the dilemma? Selling out. What for? Would I be doing it for my own ego? I'm not as hungry as I used to be. It's one thing to take guys out to surf an established, well-trodden spot, but when you start selling your secrets ...

I see what you mean, but the whole concept of Martin Daly has a duality to it. How much do you tell? You're a guy who's privy to a lot of secrets. Yeah, but I'm a guy with 60 employees. That's a lot of mouths to feed, and I have a certain obligation to expand the business and make it work. I have to weigh that against the desire to keep secrets.

What's the next region you want to explore? There's a lot out there left to explore. I'm sort of addicted to going places that haven't been surfed before. That's why I do it. But the compromise is that you have to pay for it. That's the reason why I've worked with Quiksilver to do The Crossing and Rip Curl to do The Search, where those companies partner up with me to fuel my passion to explore.

There will be a time in ten or twenty years when there'll be nowhere left to go in the world that hasn't been surfed before. That said, I think this is a great opportunity for everybody to savor the moment and go have a look around before it's all finished.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Mentawai Surf / Dive Fees for 2008

New $5/day Daily Charge Announced
Written by Nasdion
Saturday, 01 December 2007

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All MMTA members have agreed on new daily charges for 2008. The Mentawai Government retribution charge of US$3.00 per day is part of a new daily charge of US$5.00 per surfer/diver per day. This charge applies to all surfers /divers traveling to Mentawai on boats or staying in resorts.

The fees apply for every day spent in Mentawai or for every day of any surf / dive trip that visits Mentawai. The new fees apply from 1st January 2008. The 5 companies have agreed to collect all fees before guests depart for Mentawai and to settle fees monthly with the MMTA and the Mentawai Government tax office.

The MMTA will print new receipt books for each company to use when collecting these fees. All agents and operators should revise websites and printed material to reflect the new total $5.00 per day per surfer/diver fee.

The MMTA will collect $2.00 per surfer / diver and these funds will be used as follows:

  • 90% for MMTA Community Programs
  • 10% for MMTA administration and office overheads

Village officials will be consulted and asked to present proposals for community projects for funding. In return the MMTA will ask that all ad hoc collection of fees by villagers will stop. Villagers will be encouraged to offer handicrafts for sale to visitors.

The community programs will be discussed with PEMDA and village officials early in 2008 and published on this website with budgets and locations clearly defined.

Thanks for your full support.

Nasdion SH

Legal Council - MMTA, Website Administration

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Public Notice to All Mentawai Operators/Agents

Mentawai Charter Boat License List 2008
Written by Nasdion
Wednesday, 28 November 2007

The MMTA has submitted a final list of charter boats for 2008 onwards to the Mentawai Government. Each one of the five companies with a license to operate marine tours has selected 6 boats based on the standard MMTA license contract (5 years validity) Guests can book on these charter boats with full confidence that they will be welcome by Mentawai Government authorities who will operate Marine Patrols in 2008.

The land based resorts companies with a license to operate marine/surf tours under PERDA No. 16 - 2002 KAB KEP MENTAWAI are:

PT Internusa Bahagia - Macas Resort - Silabu, Pagai Utara

PT Saraina Koat Mentawai - Kandui Resort - Karamajet Island - South Siberut

PT Mentawai Wisata Bahari - Katiet Villas - Katiet, South Sipura & Eco Bay Mentawai -Nyang2 Island - South Siberut

PT Bangun Toro Koat - Coral Sands Lodge - Pitojat Island  - Sipura (under construction)

PT Bintang Samudera Nusantara - Indian Ocean Resort - Bitojat Island - Pagai Selatan (under construction) 

The 2007 grace period for all resorts and charter boats expires on Dec 31.

Please support the new regulations to be enforced strictly in 2008 onwards.

Bangun LH

Secretary MMTA

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Letter attached to this list can be viewed by clicking 'read more'

 

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Friday, November 02, 2007

Monday Deadline for Mentawai Charter Boat License

PEMDA Mentawai Request Final Boat List for 2008
Written by Nasdion
Friday, 02 November 2007

The attached letter from the Head of Tourism in Mentawai, Drs Zulkarlin, asks MMTA to submit a final list of 30 boats by the beginning of November 2007. This letter will be determined on Monday the 5th of November and all MMTA members must submit their list of 6 boats by that time. MMTA companies will be responsible for the collection and payment of Mentawai Retribution Taxes from the boats on the company list.

License plates will be issued to the 30 boats for operation in Mentawai waters. Other boats are permitted to stop for fuel or emergency in Mentawai ports but they must not stop at any other location and they are not permitted to operate as surf charter boats in Mentawai Kabupaten. The fine for stopping at a location that is not on the SIB issued at the orinating port is Rp50,000,000.

All MMTA member boats are responsible to report any boat that is not on the list and taking surf charters to Mentawai to the MMTA for processing. The MMTA will inform all sales agents marketing surf charters so that clients are not victims of non-compliance.

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Sunday, September 16, 2007

URGENT APPEAL - MENTAWAI QUAKE SITUATION REPORT

To MMTA subscriber: Mentawai Investigator

MMTA Earthquake Relief
Written by Nasdion
Sunday, 16 September 2007

air photo loading

The 3 massive earthquakes that destroyed over 6,000 homes in Bengkulu have also done terrible damage to parts of south and west coast Mentawai. Some villages such as Malakopak near Thunders and Rags breaks report that 100% of homes are either destroyed or so badly damaged that they will have to be demolished. In Silabu village close to Macas surf break, over 50% of homes have been damaged beyond repair or submerged due to subsidance. Only 6 homes remain useable in Sinaka village just a few miles from the Hole and Lighthouses.

Reports are still filtering in from remote communities and the news is grim. The weather has now compounded problems with strong west winds and heavy rain adding to the misery of families who are camped on muddy hill tops in fear of more earthquakes or tsunamis.

Village economies in the south and west are at a standstill and food, drinking water, shelter, sanitation needs and medical care are all needed urgently. With damage spread over hundreds of miles of remote coastline, government transport is not able to distribute aid supplies. MMTA are mobilizing ferry and cargo boats to assist with distribution of food and water supplies that are on hand at the moment. Shelter and sanitation supplies need to be purchased and delivered as soon as possible.

MMTA have established a POSKO (Aid Post) in Padang where NGOs and private donors can drop supplies for delivery to area most in need.

POSKO MMTA

Jl Batang Arau No. 66E (next door to Pertamina Fuel Station)
Padang
West Sumatra
Indonesia

Tel + 62 751 36527
Fax + 62 751 31913

info@mmta-mentawai.org

All MMTA boat owners or boat representatives are requested to make a minimum donation of Rp3,000,000 to support ferry and cargo boat fuel and running costs so that this urgently needed aid can be delivered.

Please transfer or deposit funds to:

Bank Negari, Account No. 21000105002087, Account Name: MMTA

If you have any problems or questions about donating funds please contact Yanti HP 08126622716

Thanks

Bangun - Secretary MMTA

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Saturday, September 15, 2007

Quakes Rock Indonesia; Experts Warn of 'Big One'

September 14, 2007
AP

PADANG, Indonesia (AP) — A series of powerful earthquakes has terrorized residents in western Indonesia — including another one that triggered a fresh tsunami warning Friday — leaving thousands sleeping on plastic in the hills and each new aftershock triggering a fresh round of panic.

Seismologists warn the worst may be yet to come.



Photo: A motorist passes a damaged road along the coastal area of Ketahuan, Indonesia's Bengkulu province, Friday. Indonesia's meteorology agency issued a tsunami warning on Friday after another strong earthquake struck southern Sumatra island. (By Crack Palinggi, Reuters)

Kerry Sieh, from the California Institute of Technology, has spent decades studying the volatile fault line. He is one of several experts predicting a repeat of the massive earthquake that triggered the 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations.

"No one can say whether it will be in 30 seconds or 30 years," he said. "But what happened the other day, I think is quite possibly a sequence of smaller earthquakes leading up to the bigger one."

An 8.4-magnitude quake that shook Southeast Asia on Wednesday was followed by dozens of strong aftershocks — including one measuring magnitude 7.8 and another 7.1 — that killed 13 people, damaged hundreds of houses and spawned a 10-foot-high wave.

A 6.4-magnitude temblor hit the area again on Friday, triggering the latest in a string of tsunami warnings that have further traumatized people living in coastal communities. Hundreds fled inland by foot, motorcycle and truck before the alert was lifted.

The wall of water that slammed into several fishing villages along Sumatra island's coast Wednesday swept away nearly a dozen houses, but overall damage was "minimal," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said after an Air Force aerial survey.



Photo: An Indonesian woman weeps outside her house that was destroyed by an earthquake on Sumatra island, Indonesia, Friday. (By Dita Alangkara, AP)

A nine-member U.N. assessment team reached the same conclusion after visiting the area, saying that a major international relief operation was not required, John Holmes, the U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement from New York.

Many people said a public awareness campaign launched after the 2004 tsunami paid off, including warnings issued over mosque speakers and training provided by local officials on how to escape a disaster.

"When the earth started shaking, some people yelled, 'It's time to go up the hill ... let's get going," said Fadil, 35, a father of two, describing how he and hundreds of neighbors watched from above as the 10-foot wave approached. Hundreds of houses were damaged, but no one died.

Elsewhere, however, electricity blackouts prevented some sirens from going off.

The three massive quakes — together with the 9.0-magnitude temblor in 2004 and a 8.7 tremor in early 2005 — deeply concerns experts.

The fault, which runs the length of the west coast of Sumatra about 125 miles offshore, is the meeting point of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates, which have been pushing against each other for millions of years, causing huge stresses to build up.

"There is a strong indication this foreshadows the big one," said Danny Hillman, an eart



hquake specialist at the Indonesian Institute of Science. "We all agree there is an 8.5 or stronger earthquake waiting to happen."

That's exactly what residents along Sumatra's western coast, which is expected to bear the brunt of the next disaster, are worried about. The island was hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the deaths.

In the tiny fishing village of Sungai Pisang, just south of the badly damaged city of Padang, hundreds of people were too scared to return home after the recent tremors sent a large wave washing into their bay.

At a camp pitched on a muddy hillside cemetery, they have been sleeping atop plastic sheets or on the cold ground between graves. A small generator powers a light bulb, hung over branches in the thick tropical undergrowth, but there is little else.

"I am very afraid of another tsunami," said Dasima, a 50-year-old rice farmer who fled with her 7-year-old grandson, Rolin. "We only cook our rice in the town and then return here to eat and sleep. We will stay here until we feel it is safe."

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, with a population of 235 million people, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-09-14-indonesia-quake_N.htm

Current Indonesian Shakers

Mag. 5.0 Sept. 14 06:01:34 -4.108 101.220 35.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA

Mag. 6.4 Sept. 14 06:01:34 -4.108 101.220 35.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA

Mag. 5.4 Sept. 14 04:03:44 -2.179 100.088 29.3 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.2 Sept. 14 03:07:14 -3.010 101.083 39.2 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 4.8 Sept. 14 02:34:51 -0.466 98.141 21.5 KEPULAUAN BATU
Mag. 5.0 Sept. 14 01:31:57 -3.757 100.759 27.5 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.5 Sept. 14 01:02:06 -3.696 101.845 35.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 5.3 Sept. 13 23:12:31 -3.108 100.971 35.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.0 Sept. 13 18:30:38 -2.565 99.763 35.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.5 Sept. 13 16:59:26 -2.118 99.978 35.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 6.2 Sept. 13 16:09:09 -3.247 101.439 3.3 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 5.6 Sept. 13 15:08:54 -4.354 101.212 24.5 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 5.0 Sept. 13 18:30:38 -2.565 99.763 35.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.5 Sept. 13 16:59:26 -2.118 99.978 35.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 6.2 Sept. 13 16:09:09 -3.247 101.439 3.3 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 5.1 Sept. 13 13:43:58 -2.998 100.215 35.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.6 Sept. 13 13:10:15 -2.786 100.863 28.7 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.2 Sept. 13 12:12:59 -3.691 100.694 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.0 Sept. 13 11:57:17 -2.034 99.434 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 6.2 Sept. 13 09:48:43 3.794 126.411 21.9 KEPULAUAN TALAUD
Mag. 5.4 Sept. 13 09:21:35 -2.164 99.748 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 4.8 Sept. 13 08:01:56 -2.773 100.292 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.2 Sept. 13 06:32:48 -2.072 99.405 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.0 Sept. 13 06:28:51 -2.029 99.383 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.1 Sept. 13 05:53:23 -3.979 100.553 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 4.9 Sept. 13 05:48:44 -3.988 100.511 24.5 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.0 Sept. 13 05:44:14 -3.735 100.706 2.8 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.5 Sept. 13 05:23:24 -1.686 99.717 38.9 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.2 Sept. 13 04:06:10 -1.723 99.567 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 7.0 Sept. 13 03:35:26 -2.160 99.581 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.5 Sept. 13 02:51:31 -2.049 99.790 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.9 Sept. 13 02:30:01 -1.639 99.697 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.0 Sept. 13 01:55:44 -3.869 101.629 10.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 5.2 Sept. 13 01:49:04 -2.331 99.404 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.2 Sept. 13 01:38:05 -1.902 99.734 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.8 Sept. 13 01:26:33 -2.039 99.730 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 7.9 Sept. 12 23:49:04 -2.506 100.906 30.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.1 Sept. 12 23:19:44 -4.082 100.907 10.0 SOUTHWEST OF SUMATRA
Mag. 5.4 Sept. 12 22:17:17 -2.897 100.757 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.1 Sept. 12 22:02:23 -4.609 101.280 10.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 5.3 Sept. 12 17:04:33 -7.598 126.085 307.3 KEPULAUAN BARAT DAYA
Mag. 5.9 Sept. 12 16:37:01 -3.142 101.377 21.2 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 5.2 Sept. 12 15:35:08 -4.262 101.008 35.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 6.0 Sept. 12 14:40:02 -3.227 101.361 18.8 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 4.9 Sept. 12 14:04:57 -4.239 101.196 35.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 5.3 Sept. 12 13:17:17 -3.308 100.654 32.8 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 5.6 Sept. 12 13:02:07 -2.946 101.352 35.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA
Mag. 5.2 Sept. 12 12:21:44 -2.667 100.318 10.0 KEPULAUAN MENTAWAI Reg.
Mag. 8.4 Sept. 12 11:10:26 -4.521 101.370 30.0 SOUTHERN SUMATRA

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Australia_eqs.php