Raja Ampat

Okay - a very delayed update but nevertheless!  After many false starts and interruptions including a week with no broadband access here it is....an abbreviated version of the fabulous diving experienced in Irian Jaya but, with lots of photos.  Enjoy!

February 16 2007

Joined the mad crowds as part of the Chinese New Year holiday rush at the Low Cost Carrier Terminal in Kuala Lumpur.  Even though I was prepared to pay the extra $$ for excess luggage  as Air Asia's limit is a miserly 15Kg with absolutely no concessions for divers (!!), it still irked me to say the least.  This time, I packed all my "heavier" gear into my carry on...regulator, cameras, toiletry bag, etc, I made it to sub 20Kg at last!

"batik" flatworm

Arrived to more traffic madness in Jakarta.  One lady tried to cut queue at immigration, had to tell her as politely as I could muster by this time to get to the back of the line.  After immigration, got into a taxi and heaved a sigh of relief or so I thought.  The traffic to get to my hotel was worse than anything I've ever experienced in Bangkok.  Jakarta has definitely grown over the years.  More buildings, new condominium projects and shopping malls.   The effects of the recent disastrous flood had mostly receded although there were a few patchy remnants here and there.   Instead of a 20 minute ride (without traffic) to get there, it became 1.5 hours of more idle sitting.   Never again on a Friday right before CNY.  The taxi driver even had to make a detour to a Shell station for a toilet stop!  Okay, checked in at last!  Had my Indonesia Nasi Goreng (Indonesian Fried Rice) and explored the mall that was adjacent to the hotel.   Lots of shops, everyone was in a festive mood and out in throngs including screaming children - my cue to exit....Stopped by the supermarket to pick up some fruit etc and observed the women picking out their mandarin oranges as if they were in a regular wet market.  Some things don't change :)

Checked in with Erwin, our dive organizer, on logistics for tomorrow morning's early start. 

"orangutan" crab resident in bubble anemone

SMS'ed Joni (my room mate for the night) who was getting in later re details of wake up plans.  Done.  7:30 pm....Zzzz.

February 17 2007

2:15 am  Alarm went off.  Showered and packed.  Took a good look at the room clock....oops!  It was only 1:45am!  Embarrassed I woke Joni unnecessarily early, laid on bed and relaxed until it was REALLY time to get up.  The hotel were kind enough to rustle up some breakfast as part of the inclusive package even though it was way before their regular kitchens opened up.  Then we were off to the airport, a sheer contrast to yesterday's chaos.  Met up with Erwin and got introduced to the rest of the dive group from Kapal Selam Dive Club.

There are 10 of us in total, a mixture of folks from Indonesia, Singapore, France and Malaysia.  And no, you may not scroll to "the end" of this entry to see if we survived the trip together or not!

First leg from Jakarta to Makassar (aka Ujung Pandang, South Sulawesi) took 2 hours or so.  Thanks to the vagaries of domestic Indonesia travel, our connecting flight which was originally delayed by 3 hours then got revised to 11 hours (long story)

a goby

.  Spent the afternoon/early evening at a nearby hotel (more like motel) and returned to the airport at 11pm.  Flight took off at 1:30 am but we had to transit in Manado.  I managed to get a couple hours sleep on the bench before we got back on the plane to finally finally finally reach Sorong.   We arrived early morning at the crack of dawn and were welcomed by a group of indigenous Papuan tribe dancing and singing on the arrival tarmac.  No, that was not Merpati's way of making up to us...it so happened that the governor of Sorong district was on the same flight as us hence the 1:30 am departure instead of 9:00 am the following morning.  It was very cool, as that was practically the only exposure we got to Papuan culture that whole trip.

Logistics went really smoothly after that - an easy transfer to the jetty and to the boat: the Seven Seas.  Introductory briefing, breakfast, unpacked and setup our gear.  Since there were only 10 of us, there was really plenty of room to spread out on the boat.  The guys each had a room all to themselves whilst us women somehow ended up having to share.  It still worked out in the end and everyone was happy with the room assignments.  There are 3 rooms on the upper deck including a honeymoon suite/area towards the rear of the boat which on this trip was accessible to all.  The rest of the rooms were below deck - all with their own bathrooms and air conditioning units

A live cowrie shell with its mantle

.  Nice upper deck to chill out on especially around sunset and in the evenings. A Very Nice boat.

Two check out dives in the afternoon - low viz but lots of life relatively close to Sorong on the way out to Misool.

Diving - Feb 17 - 24......

Suffice to say this is NOT a dive blog but I will summarize the best as I can.  For 7 days of diving, we did quite a fair bit of travelling around Raja Ampat per the boat owners' preferred routing to get to the dive sites coupled by the fact that we were delayed by >12 hours at the start.  We did:

1) A couple of exploratory dives on the way out to Misool - a lot of fun and a lot of current, lots of life and recommended that the dive site be named after the dive club (Kapal Selam Dive Club based out of Indonesia) :)
2) Dived Misool in the south - some of the best reef life you can imagine WITH fish! And what an amazing amount and variety of fish!  And great viz! It was such a privilege to experience this site

A pair of phyllodesmium serratum...look carefully

.  So this is what Malaysian reefs and Indonesian reefs USED to look like before pollution and overfishing.  I will not describe it - for divers, you have to get there and experience it yourself.  This is our oceans as they should be.  One site called the channel was meant to be a drift dive with current.  Somehow, we timed it wrong and of course there was no current.  No regrets though - it turned out to be a very peaceful almost meditative dive moving amongst wall to wall cover of gigantic sea fans to explore and search for pygmy seahorses.... if one was really looking that hard that is.  One for the books for sure.  This area really should be protected and also protected from divers who
cannot control their buoyancy.  It is PRISTINE.  It is the mother of
all tropical reef nurseries.  Let's hope it stays this way but in today's world of government and business (legal AND illegal) greed, it is hard to see how it will be protected and delivered to our future generations in safe hands.
3) Dived some more en route to Waigeo at a place where a conservation group is working with the locals to rehabilitate their reefs as a fair portion of it has been subjected to reef bombing to supply the North Asian and South East Asian seafood restaurants.  Currents...and we weren't exactly drift diving either...swimming from bommy to bommy to shelter behind...I felt like a spy on this dive

A pair of very shy clownfishes aka Nemo ala Disney

.  We did do a night dive here at the village jetty....be warned, the entire village will be at the jetty when you end your dive as you will be the evening entertainment.... due to the fact that the remoteness of the villages are living where time practically stood still as far as infrastructure is concerned.  This did not mean they did not have access to instant noodles as evidenced by the box load that we managed to buy for our divers who were missing their favourite snack of Indo Mie!
4) Dived Waigeo central including in the waters of a pearl farm.  One very cute Australian marine biologist working at the pearl farm but I digress...Diving at that pearl farm were some of the best dives I've had including a wall FILLED with nudibranchs and flatworms.  More Thecacera sp. and Pacificas that I've seen, loads of Nembrotha and Chromodoris species including rare ones. The greatest variety we've ever seen at one site - have a look at the photos to get an idea. (nudibranchs - sea slugs without shells).  Great rubble reef diving at the pearl farm including my first blue ring octopus and a few wobbegong sharks.
5) Waigeo south east as we made our way back to Sorong.   The last dive day included: MANTAs.  And yes, we did see them; some were lucky enough to spend the entire 1 hour dive with them!  What a great way to end a dive trip! With dolphins on the way back too!

a pretty scorpionfish

Side comment:  I could actually count the amount of plastic bags/rubbish spotted this time as there were so few.  Normally, I'm trying to find the fish or turtles as they are usually overwhelmed by plastic bags/rubbish which are all indiscriminately dumped into the seas and turtles mistake these as food since clear/white bags resemble jellyfish.  My last trip to Manado was shocking looking at the number of plastic bags floating by at one particular site during a couple of dives. 

Side trip:  Rise at 4am to watch the Bird of Paradise to do his and her thing....the mating song and dance.   We were unlucky though.  A glimpse was all we could manage as it decided not to hang around at its usual perch.  There was too much movement by the other people who came to watch below the tree cover which made it quite skittish.  Lots of other birds turned up too with some amazing calls.  Bring your cellphone which should have a recording function, erm, if you can find it buried in the menu somewhere...some interesting sounds to capture for a ring tone ;)

Weather:  Beautiful days, blue skies, hot afternoons, gorgeous sunsets.  Water's warm - 28C, rarely 27C.

Will I go back?  Yes.  We barely scratched the surface -  I'm already planning when I can make a next trip back to Raja Ampat/dive West Papua!

The group?  We had fun diving and giving Stew, our Cruise Director from N. Carolina USA, a really hard time from very demanding Singaporeans and Indonesians, this Malaysian was on a nudibranch high so almost everything else really didn't matter ;)  Luckily, he more than survived us!

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