Happy makers like these go a long way in keeping us company during our travels from site to site, boat to boat, hotel room to hotel room all throughout the Coral Triangle. Stella snorkeling the shallow reefs of Komodo National Park Please read all about The Jakarta Post Weekender Magazine cover story in [...]
24 - 28 November 2009 The leatherback conservation efforts in Kei is implemented by WWF-Indonesia through a local, community-based NGO (SIRaN) since 2003. In July this year, a one-man all around staff from WWF, Marthen Leuna aka Ateng, started his full time work here. WWF Indonesia Ateng Leuna took GPS data of every turtle (mostly green [...]
21 November 2009 - Saturday Today we were extremely happy in the morning and extremely sad by the afternoon. We had a slow start leaving the house at 7am. For 2 long hours, we saw nothing. Eki was in fact close to cursing mode when we saw our first leatherback turtle at 9am. For the next 3 [...]
20 November 2009 Second day we were asked to wake up at 5:30am! By after breakfast and 6:15am we were off. The seas were glass flat and calm as. The early morning sun made really brilliant reflections on the water but after 2 hours of searching, we still didn’t see any leatherback turtles. Yogi spotted [...]
19 - 26 November 2009 After zooming around the many islands in Wakatobi, it was a relief to finally stay put in one community and concentrate in one thing and one thing only - leatherback marine turtles. Kei is the only location in Indonesia we can hope to photograph leatherbacks underwater. It is also the home [...]
3 November 2009 Hugua - Regent of Wakatobi We had a very enlightening afternoon with the Bupati (Mayor) of Wakatobi, Pak Hugua. He was very aware of the Coral Triangle and the efforts of WWF, TNC & CI to help in the conservation efforts of this all important region. His special interest of [...]
2 - 12 November 2009 The hour we arrived in Wanci, we immediately had a meeting with WWF Indonesia Wakatobi Project Leader Veda Santiadji in their Wangi Wangi office. He offered us different travel scenarios and we got really excited when the first option was to do initial diving on 2 snapper Spawning Aggregation Sites (Spags) then proceed to [...]
2 - 12 November 2009 We noticed from early on how different the sea gypsies from Wakatobi lived compared to their Bajau relatives from Sabah, Malaysia and the Philippines. The Bajo from Wakatobi reclaimed land and had sturdy houses on top of their new land. We heard from Sugi how complex the situation is because [...]
2 - 12 November I cannot write enough about the people we met along the way. Their faces have left an indelible mark on us. Here is a gallery of the look of Wakatobi. Young Bajo maiden with bedak or traditional sunblock on her face Muslim lass stands out in her bright [...]
2 - 12 November 2009 You cannot mistake the religion of this area. Five times a day, we would hear the Imam sing from loudspeakers of nearby mosques. I loved it. This young man walks to the mosque for his noontime prayers Our WWF companion Sugiyanta or Mas Sugi as everyone called him, [...]
