The Last Best Place
World editor Douglas David Seifert travels to Triton Bay and discovers an underwater wonderland
To answer the ubiquitous question, ‘Where’s the best diving?’ many seasoned divers would say New Guinea, situated just below the equator and above the continent of Australia in the South Pacific Ocean. New Guinea is the world’s second-largest island (after Greenland and before Borneo), 2,700km long east-west and 900km northsouth. It is, thanks to Dutch, German and British colonial annexation, apportionment and hasty retreat, evenly split down a centreline into two contemporary countries: the eastern half is the independent state of Papua New Guinea and the western half is West Papua, consisting of the two provinces of Papua and West Papua (previously called Irian Jaya) and claimed by the Republic of Indonesia.
Geologically, the entire island is part of the Australian continent, sitting upon the Sahul shelf, which in eras of lower sea levels was a land bridge between Australia, New Guinea and the Aru Islands (of Indonesia). To this day, the Arafura Sea, which separates Australia from New Guinea, is a vast, shallow body of water ranging from less than 15m to 70m deep. There is no geological connection to the majority of the Indonesian Archipelago, a good part of which is situated upon the Sunda Shelf and is connected to the Peninsular Asian continental plate.
Papua New Guinea has been world-renowned for its beautiful reefs for more than thirty years, but due to its remoteness and often challenging infrastructure, PNG remains somewhat ignored by the international diving community, save for neighbouring Australian divers and a trickle of adventurous Asian, European and North American visitors. Until the PNG government and its national airline Air Niugini make dive tourism a priority, only a few will get to experience the near-pristine reefs of Kimbe Bay, Milne Bay and other superlative hot spots.
Far better known is the Bird’s Head Peninsula on the
north-west of West Papua. For years, the words and images have been getting out and circulated to wider and wider circles, and its Raja Ampat (Four Kings) archipelago has become a very popular, very crowded, destination.
Raja Ampat is considered the global centre of marine biodiversity, with more than 1,615 reef fish species (and counting), more than 600 species of hard corals, populations of reef and oceanic manta rays, sea turtles, sharks, dugongs, dolphins and whales to be found among the 1,500 islands that make up the region. For most people, it is the place where their dreams of the ocean in all its glory can be found on one itinerary. It is a fairly distant destination from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta (roughly four hours’ flying time after however long it takes the traveller to get to Indonesia from wherever they started), yet it is relatively easy to access. Due to the proliferation of low-cost carriers, there are several airlines with daily flights servicing the port city Sorong, site of the province’s airport.
Not so long ago, there were but a handful of liveaboards operating, irregularly, and few resorts with sufficient accommodation for the divers who visited Raja Ampat. Slowly, then rapidly, that number has grown, from 3,000 visitors in 2010, to more than 30,000 visitors in 2019.
Now there are more than 70 liveaboards, a dozen resorts and innumerable homestays vying to take full financial advantage of visitors flocking to Raja Ampat.
There is no question that this marine paradise is crowded and getting more so, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.
The upside is that more and more tourists can visit this unique centre of marine biodiversity, more local people are employed and, with more eyes on the water, less illegal fishing can be conducted. Win, win, win – right?
The dark side is that the visitor experience can be lessened when dive sites are chock-a-block throughout the day. Even when there is give-and-take negotiation between rival operators, there can be a dismaying and irritating queue for many of the most popular, celebrated dive sites, especially in the Dampier Strait in the north; in the Misool Marine Reserve in the south; and at known manta ray cleaning stations throughout. Also, at constantly visited dive sites, there is noticeable evidence of environmental damage to the reef structures, of broken or dead corals and damaged or ravaged sea fans and sea whips, from careless, poorly-trained or oblivious divers, en masse, impacting the reefs.
‘There is one last best place to experience the kind of underwater wilderness to fill one’s soul’
This Last Great Place requires a journey as daunting as Joseph Conrad’s voyage in Heart of Darkness: first you take a ship into the Ceram Sea on a voyage down the rugged Papuan coast from Sorong, past Raja Ampat and around the Bird’s Head Peninsula. Your destination lies further to the southeast, past the now barely used port of Fak-Fak which was once a bustling Arab trading point and beyond the Bomberai Peninsula. You sail on through the Nautilus Strait, past Adi Island, and then you reach Kamrau Bay – the most remote part of this rarely visited outpost of Indonesia. A few liveaboards make this demanding journey from Sorong, and there is one tiny land-based resort which caters for a maximum of 12 divers on Aiduma Island, serviced by not very regular flights into the tiny airport at Kaimana, the nearest thing to a town in the region. The bay is a large, roughly triangular, semi-enclosed basin with a relatively shallow shelf extending out far offshore. It is bounded by rugged karst coastline to the north, west and east and exposed to the confluence of Ceram, Banda and Arafura Seas to the south.
This recess into the coastline functions to amass, concentrate and redirect water movement from these Indonesian seas and, during the southeast monsoon season, from cold, nutrient-rich, upwelling currents originating in the deep-water trenches of the 3,600m Aru Trough and the 6,500m Banda Trench. On the eastern side of the bay lies the large indent of Triton Bay – an oblong, canyon-like, semiconfined stretch of water bordered on three sides by heavily vegetated, rugged coastline. The bay is dotted with limestone islets and is bookended by two islands running parallel to shore at its inlet: Namatota Island to the southwest and Aiduma Island at the southeast. As currents flow towards Triton Bay, they are obstructed by Aiduma Island and their flow is funnelled through Iris Strait, which increases their rate of flow to supernatural speed, as evidenced by whirlpools and eddies seen at the surface.
Underwater, the scenery is a continuation of the tropical rainforest and karst geology of the surface: white-grey rocks and boulders, sheer cliffs and ledges, but with a sensational
difference: instead of palm trees, ficus and acacia, the reefscape is lush with sessile invertebrates of every colour and every form. Mirroring the hornbills and parrots of the skies, the seascape is alive with marine life of every kind and in numbers seen nowhere else. More than 1,050 species of fish have been recorded in the Kaimana-Triton Bay region, including ten species of shark, and manta rays. Pre-eminent ichthyologist Dr Gerald Allen counted 330 different fish species on one single dive at a site called Tanjung Papisoi during a Conservation International survey in 2006, one of only four known sites in the world to achieve the record of more than 300 fish species rapidly identifiable on a single dive!
There are fewer species of hard coral, the reef-building ones, than are found in Raja Ampat (‘only’ 471 compared to Raja’s 600-plus), but a greater number of soft coral species and mind-bogglingly dense assemblages of those soft coral species, particularly the striking, dendronepthya species in vibrant hues of pink, fuschia, orange, yellow, cream and red, jockeying for every centimetre of space on rock structures fronting the strongest of current flows. At Triton Bay’s signature dive site called Little Komodo, the density of soft corals blanketing the reef wall facing into the current is unparalleled: not a patch of bare rock can be seen, only a pastel patchwork of living soft coral as far as the eye can see.
Feathery forests of black corals sprout from less currentintense zones sheltered between boulders, beneath overhangs and along vertiginous walls. Black corals are somewhat misnamed, as only their chitinous skeleton is black – their living tissue is silver-white or yellow-orange by species. They are not soft corals nor gorgonians, with which they are often grouped. Their branches are pliable and lithe and they are clearly not hard corals. However, their polyps have six tentacles to the soft corals’ eight. They are a vital part of the marine ecosystem, a keystone species, as they provide a shelter and three-dimensional structure for epibiont organisms, such as barnacles, sponges, flatworms, crabs, shrimp and bryozoans, and as gathering places or home for small fish such as sweepers, hawkfish, and damselfish. Snappers and sweetlips mill among the black coral bushes seeking protection from predators.
Whip corals and wire corals grow outwards into the
‘The density of soft corals blanketing the reef wall is unparalleled’
‘The seascape is alive with marine life of every kind and in numbers seen nowhere else’
current. Gorgonian sea fans flourish with the constant flow of water bringing food to its polyps. Colourful pygmy seahorses (Hippocampus bargibanti) specific to certain sea fan species are frequently found, always in the same livery to blend in with their golden or pink-hued gorgonian hosts.
One of Triton Bay’s most cryptic and most sought-after denizens is the tiny leopard anemone shrimp (Izucaris masudai), first described in 1999 and found on about one in a hundred gorgonian wrapper sea anemones (Nemanthus annamensis). Uncommon does not begin to describe this treasure. Gorgonian wrapper anemones have white tentacles and a mantle that is white and patterned with narrow, black stripes. The shrimp mimics this coloration, making it exceptionally difficult to find. The anemone itself adheres to the branches of dead gorgonian coral and envelopes the branch with its mantle, capturing prey in the current.
Tasselled wobbegong sharks (Eucrossorhinus dasypogon) are commonplace, lying upon the sand, under ledges or atop open reef structures not overgrown with bushy soft coral. They are nocturnal ambush predators, generally lying in wait for invertebrate or fish prey to stray within striking distance. Wobbegongs are tolerant of divers’ approaches as long as they are not touched. By night, an endemic species of ‘walking shark’, the Triton epaulette shark (Hemiscyllium henryi) can be seen wriggling through the rocky structure and corals as it hunts for invertebrate prey. The species made headlines around the world when it was discovered and described in 2008; its naming rights were sold at a charity auction in Monaco for US$500,000. All the proceeds went to conservation.
Bright orange cup coral (Tubastrea coccinea), a nocturnal feeder in other locales, is often observed here in fully open polyps feeding mode at any time, as long as the current is running. Day octopus (Octopus cyanea) are ubiquitous, peering out from reef hidey-holes or actively out hunting. By night, the starry night octopus (Callistoctopus luteus) is commonly seen hunting the sandy plain and soft substrate away from the reef.
Close to the boulders and reef structure, schools of vermilion-hued slender pinjalo snapper (Pinjalo lewisi) mix with yellowfin surgeonfish (Acanthurus xanthopterus) in the mid-water; both schools dash for their lives when swiftlymoving hunting packs of giant trevally (Caranx ignobilis) charge in on an attack. The sound of a whoosh of displaced water can be heard in their wake and the atmosphere is electric with the frenetic activity.
Several species of schooling fusiliers – blue-black and yellow fusiliers (Caesio teres), lunar fusilier (Caesio lunaris) and redbelly yellowtail fusiliers (Caesio cuning) – their combined numbers in the thousands, mix and blend as they are concentrated into confined spaces backed up against the reef walls by hunting jacks. The schools converge, briefly co-mingle, make evasive manoeuvres to avoid collision with each other and ultimately pass in different directions. Their numbers and density can blot out the sun. The richness of
invertebrate and fish species in Triton Bay are due to the unique combination of the influence of colder deep-water upwelling and the circuitous influence of surface currents of multiple origins, continually bringing in a superabundance of nutrients and planktonic prey. Sediment enters the environs from rivers and run-off entering the ocean at various points along the coast. These sediments are also nutrients vital for the prosperity of Triton Bay’s reef life.
BAGAN FEEDING
One consequence of the profusion of plankton and nutrients suspended in the water is that the visibility underwater is often lower than one would expect, especially if the diver is used to the frequently superlative 25-metre or more visibility of Raja Ampat. Sometimes, too, the colour cast is decidedly greenish. But once the focus is on the life in front of one’s eyes, instead of the vista trailing away, the density and diversity of invertebrate and fish life overwhelms, stimulates and satisfies.
If the prospect of one the greatest concentrations of soft corals, black corals, invertebrates, walking sharks, pygmy seahorses and reef fish by the thousand were somehow not enough to gratify, Triton Bay also offers the opportunity to encounter the world’s largest fish, the whale shark – and often, more than one.
Around the corner and a few kilometres up the coast, through a fjord created by Namatota Island and the mainland, is an area frequented by fishermen utilising large, semi-permanent floating platforms. These structures are called bagans and they support an array of drop nets that
the fishermen lower at night. The bagans are equipped with a number of bright lights, which serve to attract schooling fish and squid up from the depths to gather in shallower water beneath the pools of light illuminating the darkness. Once the fish and squid have gathered, the fishermen draw up the nets, trapping their haul.
The most desirable fish are collected and saved for the market. The less desirable are left in the net, where they die, and with wave action they begin to abrade against the net and release their scent. One by one the smaller fish fall through the holes in the net, and whale sharks are attracted to the scent and the random rain of small fish drifting downwards. The whale sharks snack on this easy meal – and the bagan fishermen, a superstitious lot, decided that whale sharks are good luck for fishing and began feeding their by-catch to the whale sharks.
This has become a tourist attraction for passing vessels and a feature of liveaboard itineraries, where a fisherman is paid a fee to dole out a constant supply of fish to keep the whale sharks feeding and interested, while divers and snorkellers can observe closely for as long as the whale sharks and/or passengers remain interested. As it happens, the fishermen can earn more income from renting out the whale shark interaction beneath their bagan than they can from selling their catch for local consumption. It is a more or less sustainable model.
The shark’s habituation is a supplement to the whale shark’s diet, but not a major component. The ongoing whale shark feeding industry has provided a platform of opportunity for scientists to tag the whale sharks and keep tabs on their movements.
Nearly forty whale sharks, ranging from three-andhalf to six metres in length, have been identified and put into a photographic database and with the exception of five females, the majority of the whale sharks have been found to be sub-adult males. Satellite tags affixed to the whale sharks show that each has its own random movements and may travel great distances without any known rhyme or reason. One four-metre male travelled more than 8,400km from West Papua to Palau, then to the Philippines, down to northern Australia, and back to Papua before the satellite-transmitter battery reached the end of its life (the tags have a two-year lifespan).
The waters of Triton Bay and Kaimana have been designated a marine protected area, encompassing 6,000 sq km. It is hoped that as the rest of Indonesian waters are denuded of fish stocks by the ever-expanding fleets of blue-water fishing boats, Triton Bay will stay untouched by unsustainable fishing practices to remain the Last Best Place.
Douglas would like to thank Dive Damai www.divedamai.com, owner Alberto Reija Gracia, cruise directors Carlo Calderaro, Shawna Briant, Simon Marsh, and Zi Liang, the entire wonderful crew of Damai I and Damai II, and especially to dive guides extraordinaire Daniel, Adry and Salim. No pressure!