Anambas, Indonesia
27th November - December, 2006

SV Infinity left Tioman, Malaysia with an excitement coursing through her that we hadn’t felt for months.  The potential of the new lay ahead of us in the Anambas Islands, described to us by several Indonesians as the ‘Treasure Islands’ of the South China Sea.  First, we sailed to Batam and met Francis Lee from Raffles Marina, Colonel Aji from the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Stephen Beng from the Singapore Underwater Federation and a whole host of players interested in the future of the Anambas Islands and the possibility of protecting them as a Marine Park of Indonesia.  As we all stood together on the deck of Infinity before parting, two pink dolphins surfaced beside us, a good omen for the voyage ahead.

The northeast monsoon made its presence known as we emerged from the channel between Matak and Mubur; the sky clouded over, the shallow sea darkened to the color of deep open ocean and lightning struck within meters of Infinity.  Eibes and Jen were on scuba at the anchor chain, checking how we were holding at our first Anambas anchorage, and were blinded as the water around them turned an opaque white for several seconds.  But the next day, the dramatic skies had quietened.

The channel, Selat Onas, runs between Semut and Matak and in it lies a beautiful ridge of reef, running across from one island to the other, crowned with large colonies of hard corals.  But here we also found our first scars of Anambas’ past – areas of dead coral rubble, broken plates and branches, created by dynamite fishing which was a popular fishing method until a few years ago in this area.

At Penjalin, we roamed uninhabited beaches and underwater found impressive swathes of hard coral forming reef scenes that were almost perfect.  The biomass of the fish life did not equal the diversity of the coral substrate and we were left wondering how much over fishing may have taken place here.  Oil deposits wash up on the beaches here, reinforcing the myth of these being ‘treasure islands’.   But we were on the hunt for a different kind of treasure, the kind that comes when a group of people live the sea life that they dream for, that become united with the biosphere around them and synergize with their fellow sea people.

We found this in Terempah, a ‘city’ of sea-people, houses and roads built over the bay with boats and canoes bustling with cargo ships and ferries at the docks.  It was an exciting chance to make contact with the people of the Anambas Islands.  We cemented a friendship with Stephen Tolam and his extended family, especially with his niece and nephew, Calista and Dominic.  Dominic showed us a picture he had drawn, and lo and behold if it wasn’t a treasure map, with the Infinity on it and an ‘X’ for where the treasure lay buried. 

The fish market at Terempah is a pre-dawn affair and, like all fish markets, provides an insight into the health of the waters around these islands.  We surveyed the catches of the local fishermen.  Healthy amounts of skipjack tuna, mackerel ‘tingiri’ which is in season right now, jacks, snappers and other pelagics.  But disturbing sights were the fins of juvenile sharks drying on the roof of one of the fishing boats, a 40 cm white tip reef shark which would have grown to 2 meters had it not been brought to market and a guitarfish less than a third of its adult size.

We explored Dikar, then Bawah was our final anchorage and was not an easy place to leave. Here we found the treasure of the Anambas Islands in the form of small islands, rock cliffs, lagoons, deep blue pools, baby blacktip sharks, mangroves and white sand beaches that disappeared into the lagoon under the full moon’s high tide.  The beach was the stage upon which we celebrated Eibes’ birthday, with rainbows before sunset, a silver lagoon in front of us and Orion watching over us as we made candles from coconut shells and bathed in sensational bliss.  We had much to celebrate as this phase of our expedition drew to a close and winds called us to other parts of Indonesia. 

For a report on the Anambas Expedition with coral reef observations, please see Anambas Expedition Report.

Click here to view the Anambas Island dive log.