As the boat pulled up to the cliff, someone asked Keith, the owner of the pearl farm, how old the skulls were. His response, “About three years”, was a real eye opener. He obviously felt our heightened tension because he quickly added, “but head hunting season ended in November.” The date was December 22; still a little too close to headhunting season for my tastes. The story he’d just finished, the one about the pirates raiding and killing several workers at the pearl farm the previous year, was still fresh in our minds as we arrived at the site and took a closer look at the twenty-five severed heads displayed along the cliff wall. “Thankfully,” Keith said, “animals picked the rest of the tissue off them last year.” Clean skulls, as everyone knows, are much more pleasing aesthetically.
Welcome to Raja Ampat, Indonesia, home to pirates and head hunters! (I doubt that will make the tourism brochure.) Just west of Papua - which used to be Irian Jaya - and dead north of central Australia, this isn’t your typical “should have been there ten years ago” place. As a matter of fact, it is ten years ago. It’s also twenty years ago as well as one hundred years ago and maybe even five hundred years ago.
Due to its remote location, headhunting reputation, and overall extreme environment, Raja Ampat hasn’t changed much since Alfred Russell Wallace, my all-time favorite travel hero, visited here in the 1850’s searching for the fabled Bird of Paradise. It was due to the inherent remoteness of the island chain as well as it’s strangely diverse animal population that he developed his theory of natural selection, which was stolen, some say, by Charles Darwin. The 15,000 square mile archipelago of Raja Ampat encompasses 610 islands, has less than 30,000 human inhabitants, includes the most diverse, densely populated marine life on the planet. It also enjoys a near-zero tourist population. This place is literally a paradise on earth for scientists, serious scuba divers and tag-along travelers - ie. Emily and me - alike.
Several years ago, a marine biologist at Raja Ampat set the record for the most species seen in one hour: 283. Think about that for a second - that’s over four sightings a minute for sixty minutes. If I saw twenty species in an entire day, I’d be surprised. To date, six hundred species of coral have been identified within the archipelago. By contrast, the entire Caribbean boasts sixty.
So, how did we get here?
Molly, an old roommate of mine from San Francisco, invited us to join her family and friends on an 11-day exploration of the area on the Archipelago II, a live-aboard boat modeled after a traditional, 18-century Indonesian schooner. Molly’s father used to head up the Pacific Rim branch of The Nature Conservancy and was a leading figure in the project to have Raja Ampat listed as a protected marine biodiversity site. The trip included a number of scientists, marine biologists and other notable characters. I had a dinner conversation one evening with Jane, the woman sitting across from me, and she mentioned she worked for the U.S. Government. I found out later from her business card that she is the Head of NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency) within the Department of Commerce. I’m sure she was wowed by the fact that I can clap with one hand and swallow my tongue.
Anyway, this trip was all about diving. Raja Ampat is, without a doubt, the best dive destination on earth. When Disney filmed their 3D IMAX movie, “Under The Sea,” this is where they came. Emily and I did twenty dives in ten days. We could have done thirty - we just weren’t that ambitious. Almost daily, we’d see wobbegong sharks, a six-to-eight foot long meat eater with a beard; giant manta rays; pygmy sea horses the size of an eraser head; nudibranchs; giant clams; octopus; and the holy grail of dive sightings, the harlequin ghost pipefish. We also saw a number of other random creatures like the electric clam (my personal favorite), frogfish, blue stingrays, lion-fish, barracuda, moray eels, ribbon eels, crocodile-fish, scorpion-fish, cuttlefish, etc, etc. (Out of this entire list, Emily’s favorite was the ferocious clown fish - aka “Nemo”).
As I mentioned, we could have gone on thirty or so dives during the trip but there were too many other activities available to just focus on one. We sea kayaked around the atolls, walked for miles on totally deserted beaches, snorkeled among coral reefs 2 feet below the surface, went caving, hiked up the near vertical limestone karsts, and went deep sea fishing for mackerel and tuna - we subsequently ate the freshest sashimi ever several nights on the boat. This place is a paradise, and thanks to Molly and her family, we got to witness it firsthand.
Looking back, our days on the boat all bled together to form a single action-packed experience. Typically, it started with a 7:30am dive prep followed by a “Let’s Go Diving!” yell from Made’, our dive master. That call will always be one of my favorite memories from the trip. Breakfast was served at 9:30 followed immediately by the second dive prep at 10:30 with masks in the water by 11am. Lunch was served around 1:30pm, then we’d start get ready for the 3pm dive. If there was a night dive, the prep usually started at six and we’d be in the water by 7pm.
After that, we’d eat dinner, tell stories, dance, play music, simply read or engage in horrifically competitive games of Taboo until bedtime. Most evenings the boat would motor all night to the next dive site and at 7am we’d start the drill all over again. Talk about exhausting! Waterlogged ears, sea sickness, the general pains & aches of travel and the grueling schedule definitely took it’s toll. I still have water in my right ear, coral spines in my hand and Emily thinks her toe might be broken.
The days of Raja Ampat being a safe, inaccessible bastion for marine wildlife are numbered. Due to unregulated overfishing in the Philippines and Malaysia, places that once produced huge tuna, grouper and mackerel yields have now been completely fished out. The companies behind these slash-and-burn fishing techniques - that include shark finning, dynamiting, and cyanide - are now turning their attention to eastern Indonesia. And it’s happening faster than you’d ever believe. This is why Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Foundation and others have all gotten involved and are trying desperately to save this place. Ever wonder why you can’t buy orange roughy at Sam’s anymore? I hadn’t until we went on this trip. It’s gone; fished-out to the point of near extinction...and they aren’t coming back in our lifetime. Blue-fin tuna is next on the list followed closely by, yellow-fin, Atlantic halibut, grouper, cod and possibly salmon. BANG - that’s the sound of me jumping off my soapbox.
Touring Raja Ampat with an amazing group of people on the live-aboard boat, Archipelago II: this was the icing on the cake for our around the world adventure, and it more than exceeded our wildest expectations. You wouldn’t believe the raw, pristine beauty of this place. Hopefully, the pictures can speak for us.
Let’s go diving!
