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Raja Ampat, Indonesia
March/April, 2008
Our voyage from the Solomon
Islands took us through familiar waters between New Ireland and New
Britain in Papua New Guinea with a daily appearance of cetaceans.
Sperm whales, baleen
whales, pilot whales, melon-headed whales and spinner dolphins came to
greet SV
Infinity as she
sailed two thousand miles from the wide open Pacific into the seas of
Indonesia.
We also were the witnesses to a school of
fully grown tuna encircling a large ‘bait-ball’ which, in turn, was
surrounded by a twelve
meter whaleshark and several other sharks.
We arrived in Sorong in the altered state
that can only be reached by spending weeks at sea.
 We know parts of Indonesia
well, but not the mainland of West Papua so clearing into the country in
Sorong was an exciting prospect.
And we were really excited to experience
what lay offshore in
the reefs and waters of the now-famous area known as Raja Ampat.
The words mean four kings but they
represent an archipelago of more than 1,500 islands.
We have explored just a few of them and
their surrounding reefs but could envisage spending months or more here,
diving sites that have become reknowned among the international diving
community already, or dropping down on reefs that have never been dived
before.
There are few underwater frontiers left on
this blue planet, but Raja Ampat is definitely one of them.
 Underwater highlights of our
experiences here included the sheer thrill of diving on coral reefs so
frantic with life that no inch of substrate was left bare; a green
turtle that came so close to two divers that they could stroke its shell
as it nonchalantly passed by; red, yellow, orange, purple and scarlet
soft corals bathed in noon sun-rays until the entire reef appeared to be
a shade of pink; pygmy sea-horses that reside in the gorgonian fans;
drifting along on a three knot current over some of the densest hard and
soft coral coverage we have seen in a very long time; watching from
Infinity’s deck while manta rays somersaulted on portside; surveying a
sand patch in which more than forty conch shells dwelt; observing fish
in their full adulthood and in schools of a substantial size, again
something we have not seen for a while; and enjoying the sunsets that,
since the first time we passed through this area in 2002, have always
seemed to be that hint rosier than anywhere else in the world.
We had the cetacean encounter
of a lifetime in these rich waters.
We met a pod of Orcas just outside the
Fam
Island
group.
They decided
instantly that they liked SV
Infinity
and the entranced attention they were receiving from all of us on board.
They spent more than two hours circling the
ship and displaying their status as kings of the sea – somersaulting,
splashing the sea’s surface with their tails, surfing on the waves,
shooting along the length of the ship at a phenomenal speed.
One of the six Orcas had the extremely
large dorsal fin typical of an adult male.
He made swift motions close to the ship and
in one sweep past us, raised his huge body through the surface waters,
only for us to watch a piece of trash, a purple flip flop, fall off his
starboard flank.
It was a moment where beauty met reality.
The blot on the seascape was
unfortunately the amount of trash in the water.
We watched as the strong currents carried
polystyrene, plastic waste, the ubiquitous flip-flops and all sorts of
debris past the ship.
This area is beginning to receive some
marine protection, but there is a long way to go in solving the mounting
global issue of how to keep the junk out of the sea.
We have a
few more weeks in this area before returning to Banda in the
Moluccas
where we will meet with friends made last year and join them in a
celebration of the closure of Rumah Adats (culture houses), a cakalel
performance and a kora kora race. Visit our next expedition log!
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