“The next day he drove us down to Hikkaduwa, a pristine little fishing village built on a coral reef where Arthur (C. Clarke) had his house and scuba-diving business. There were four or five ...

At the time, the steady destruction of coral reefs around the country ... and surged inland for more than a mile; at Hikkaduwa, the wave came ashore at a height of about nine feet, and barely grazed ...