After nine years (!) of cruising the South Pacific, we have moved into new territory. The Solomon Islands marked our entry into the Coral Triangle of the equatorial Pacific, which includes the Philippines, Borneo, eastern Indonesia, and all territory eastward to the Solomon Islands. AVATAR has traveled through the Coral Sea, the Solomon Sea, the Bismarck Sea, and is now aimed towards the Indian Ocean or possibly the South China Sea depending on what we decide on for future cruising destinations. Currently, and for the duration of 2013, we are in Indonesia.
This is a dive-oriented trip and I am downright waterlogged from the many hours we have been spending in the water. A typical day might start with me rising earlier than everyone else at 6 a.m. just before dawn, and quietly slipping off in my kayak for a couple hours of peaceful paddling through limestone island studded lagoons, placidly calm, reflecting the sunrise.
Bird song is rampant but mostly its makers fly high above me from treetop to treetop, distant black silhouettes. All are foreign species to me, except for the pet store varieties. I have seen flocks of noisy cockatoos squawking in ragged flight, big green parrots, small red lorikeets, hornbills flapping noisily with a sound like sawing wood, small grey reef herons, giant white bellied sea eagles, flocks of 100 or more frigates wheeling high in the sky or descending upon the ocean’s surface in a feeding frenzy, imposing grey Imperial pigeons. One particular unknown (to us) bird here makes a squealing whistle just like the whine of radio feedback when the microphone is too close to the source. The 39 species of Bird of Paradise are a whole other topic until itself – and as yet I have not seen one.
Once the rest of the crew is up and about, the generator fires up and Rod starts topping off our dive tanks with the dive compressor. Then we are off to explore a new dive site, followed by lunch and a short break, then on to another dive site. In a few spots the snorkeling opportunities beckon as well and I am tempted into another couple of hours enchanted by the mysterious microcosm of sea life in the roots of the mangroves near our anchorage. A dugong cruised nearby a couple of mornings ago. I slipped into the water, camera in hand, in hopes he would approach within range of my lens, but no luck.
We are in an area named Raja Ampat (“The Four Kings”, a name that comes from legend surrounding the four large islands of the area), a 4.5 million hectare (50,000 square kilometer) marine wilderness and paradise for divers. RA is the sweet spot of the Coral Triangle. The currents of three oceans meet here swirling with nutrients, and the biodiversity of marine life is unequaled anywhere else on earth. More than 1,320 species of reef fish have been identified here and still counting. More than half of the world’s soft corals and seventy percent of the world’s hard corals thrive here. The entire area functions as an incubator for marine life, seeding the entire Coral Triangle. The reefs are carpeted with colorful soft corals and huge schools of fish swarm around them. Strange exotic forms of sea life thrive here as well; mollusks, sponges, shrimp and crabs in all kinds of bizarre and wonderful shapes and colors.
A large part of the area has been protected as a marine conservancy. Liveaboard dive boats, beautiful charismatic wooden ships of Indonesian design and character, ply the waters from dive site to dive site, ferrying their passengers to reef after reef of diving heaven. There are a handful of resorts scattered through the area. We anchored off Raja 4 Divers Resort last night and enjoyed the facilities, a spot of Internet, and dinner at the restaurant sharing a table with the resort guests – 2 from London, 3 from Germany, and 1 from Idaho. Adding our New Zealand, Philippine and Arizona credentials to the mix created quite an international group.
Getting here was the least of our fun however. The nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Singapore was 18 hours. Mike didn’t even know they made jetliners that could fly 18 hours without refueling! Then a 4 hour layover in Singapore’s awesome Changi Airport before continuing on a regional flight for several more hours to Manado where we had to overnight two nights because the flight into our destination airport, Sorong, flies only a few days a week. We chose a modest dive resort in Manado for our layover, charmingly shabby but friendly, and used the time to try to reregulate our internal clocks after a net 36 hours in transit and a nine-hour difference in time zones. This is probably close to as far away from home as it is possible to get.
Photos this trip will be predominately underwater scenes. A coral reef is a bit like a florist shop gone crazy – a riot of color, shapes and movement.
