For the fishers and farmers working along the Indian Ocean, extreme weather has long been an adversary. However none of these hardships prepared poor fishers and farmers for the devastation wrought when a massive tsunami crashed without warning onto the shores of 12 Indian Ocean nations on 26 December 2004, ripping through towns and villages, killing 200 000 people and leaving nearly one million homeless. Livelihoods were shattered, schools flattened and offices destroyed. Freighters were washed inland, harbours disappeared and fishing vessels snapped like matchsticks. This booklet profiles the rebuilding of livelihoods in fisheries and agriculture in Indonesia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand. In interviews with the men building new fishing boats and the women planting new trees in the orchards where their loved ones died, a story of rebirth and hope emerges, with the generosity of both the national and international public playing a major role.