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challenges of finding world-class dive sites and establishing
avenues for marine tourism to become an economic alternative
to the exploitation of the sites’ natural resources.
Usually we explore a place, photograph it, write about
it and move on. But for the past decade we have been
actively involved in building Raja Ampat, Triton Bay and
Cenderawasih Bay, Raja Ampat’s neighbors to the south and
east, into “must-do” destinations for serious traveling divers.
The entire contiguous area is so vast — more than 70,650
square miles (roughly the size of North Dakota) — that a
new term, “seascape,” was needed to describe it. In 2004, this
marine wonderland was designated the Bird’s Head Seascape
and became our new stomping grounds.
I often think about the month we spent completing our first
survey of Raja Ampat. I don’t dwell on the uncomfortable times
like the nights the heat forced us on deck. When I reminisce,
I think about days like the one toward the end of our initial
survey when we opened the doors of discovery to a particularly
special site. On the last dive of the day, we descended over
a channel that led to two magnificent undersea pinnacles
crammed with sea fans and soft corals. No one else had ever
dived there, and we moved easily through curtains of fish
that didn’t seem to care whether we were there or not. We
named the site
Love Potion Number 9
, and it remains one
of our favorite dives in all the Bird’s Head. Discovering sites
like that one gets into your system, and you start wishing your
assignment would last forever.
So far we are still out here, witnesses to the good, the bad
and most of all, the contradictory. Although we love the
Bird’s Head Seascape, as we love all places where wildlife
outnumbers people, we didn’t really understand it until we
started working to preserve it. At first we might have wished
for better visibility at times, but with familiarity comes
awareness that the rich mass of plankton clouding the water
is what nourishes all those fish and corals. It also seems
somewhat contradictory to encourage Papuans to embrace
modernism and welcome tourists when they believe that
everything, including “their reefs,” is imbued with an ancestral
spiritual power most westerners do not comprehend.
We happen to think these contradictions are what make
the place so interesting and filled with potential. The Bird’s
Head Seascape is a wilderness on the verge of transition.
There is no going back, and moving forward will either
destroy an entire tropical ecosystem or preserve one of
nature’s most extravagant creations. We have been fortunate
to work with people dedicated to the latter.
Preserving Bird’s Head Seascape
A few years ago, our old friend and one of the world’s
foremost ichthyologists, Gerry Allen, played matchmaker
between us and Mark Erdmann, regional coordinator and
ocean expert for Conservation International’s Bird’s Head
Seascape program. Erdmann knew we had been diving in the
region since 2002 and that we could write, photograph and
didn’t mind getting a bit hot and dirty as long as we could
explore, dive and produce books about our discoveries.
From this contact and collaboration emerged our first
guidebook on the area, Diving Indonesia’s Raja Ampat,
published in 2009, and now we’ve
expanded the scope and produced a
completely new guide, Diving Indonesia’s
Bird’s Head Seascape, that covers the
entire region. Both Erdmann and Allen
firmly believe (and the data support)
there is no equal to the Bird’s Head Seascape in numbers of
fish and coral species, habitat diversity and overall marine
biodiversity. The Seascape shelters fringing reefs, lagoons,
bays, mangroves, deep drop-offs, sea-grass beds and black-
sand critter sites. So far scientists have documented 1,629
fish species, 569 coral species (10 times more than the entire
Caribbean), the Pacific Ocean’s most-utilized leatherback
turtle nesting beach, dependable manta ray and whale shark
aggregations, World War II wrecks and a whopping 57
species of mantis shrimp.
ON THE L AS T D I V E OF THE DA Y , WE DESCENDED OV ER A CHANNE L THA T L ED TO TWO
From left: Reef squid at Crissy’s Delight, Cenderawasih National Park; a decorator crab with hydroids, Batanta Island,
Raja Ampat; a pygmy sea horse peers out of its gorgonian, Aljui Bay, Raja Ampat. Opposite: Green turtle hatchlings,
Piai Turtle Sanctuary, Raja Ampat. Inset: Burt Jones explores a new site in the Dampier Strait, Raja Ampat.
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