Showing category "Raja Ampat, Indonesia" (Show all posts)
After our days in the villages, we returned to Misool
Eco-Resort for some wrap up interviews and photography.
During my final afternoon, I stood waist deep in the crystal
clear water as baby blacktip reef sharks circled me. Their charcoal dipped fins barely broke the surface as their
bodies moved and blended with the white sand below. Ten, then fifteen, then twenty sharks streamed through the
water just inches from me.
The sharks paid me little attention, as they were busy
hun... Continue reading ...
Arriving in the villages with our 250 pounds of gear caused
quite a spectacle. When I pulled
out my audio equipment and headphones, the kids broke into an excited frenzy.
Some exclaimed that I had a bomb. When I handed them the headphones to listen,
they giggled at the amplified sounds and voices, realizing it was only a
strange looking microphone.
When we set up the camera for landscape shots, the village
kids wanted to simultaneously be in front of the lens and behind it. They
fol... Continue reading ...
Prior to visiting the villages, we made arrangements to
photograph artisanal pole-caught fishing operations for bonito, a type of small
tuna. In this famously beautiful spectacle, fishers toss buckets of bait fish in
the water, sending the tuna into a feeding frenzy. Fishers then plunge a single hooked line attached to a long
pole into the water, snare the frenzied fish, and toss them one by one into the
boat.
We couldn’t wait to see the operation in play and spent days
tracking down ... Continue reading ...
Traveling to Raja Ampat takes almost as long as a trip to
Antarctica and feels almost as remote.
From San Francisco we flew west for three days, finally reaching Sorong,
Indonesia, the gateway to the Raja Ampat Islands. There we boarded a boat and made a four-hour journey to
Southeast Misool, passing only a boat or two along the way as we approached the
seemingly endless chains of dark jagged islands.
At first glance, the rugged islands seem uninhabited, but a
closer look would reveal 10... Continue reading ...
As marine resources become depleted elsewhere in the
Indo-Pacific, fishers have pushed into Raja Ampat, the island group off of
Papau, Indonesian’s easternmost territory.
But these outs... Continue reading ...
I thought I knew beauty, I thought I knew remoteness and I
definitely thought I had a clue about what a healthy marine ecosystem looked
like. Arriving to Southeast Misool
in Raja Ampat, Indonesia I realized I had no idea.
Nothing I experienced before could have prepared me for the
lush green virgin forested islands or the vibrant blue lagoons and bays.
The moment I peaked below the
water’s surface, my ideas about what a healthy coral reef was supposed to look
like were shattered.... Continue reading ...
| |
