Stella Chiu-Freund's latest posts

8 – 26 February If I may, I would like to lift a few bits and paragraphs written by Dr. Mark V. Erdmann, Senior Advisor Conservation International Indonesia Marine Program in his introduction of a new fantastic coffeetable book The Raja Ampat.  “Reefs on Steroids”, “The Kingdom of Coral”, “Heart of the Coral Triangle”, “The […]

8 – 25 February In 1526, Jorge de Menses, the first Portuguese governor to the Moluccan “spice islands” was swept ashore by a storm to the Bird’s Head Peninsula (West Papua) even before he reached his post. He named the country Ilhas dos Papuas (Islands of the Papuans) derived from the Malay term “orang papuwah” […]

8 – 23 February 2010 S0 34.808 E130 32.494 Manta Sandy S0 33.681 E130 32.471 Manta Slope There are very few places we know where you can find, almost guaranteed, mantas in a cleaning station. There are many cleaning stations known, yes, but few guaranteed! Depending on the number of divers underwater, i.e. if you […]

16- 30 January 2010 S2 14.666 E130 33.401 – MER Loads of divers dream of owning a resort in an island paradise in the tropics surrounded by pristine coral reefs and lots of fish. When out at sea, palm trees and sunshine seem to make our brains go funny and think within the lines of […]

25 January 2010 S2 03.462 E130 24.747 – Yellu Island What originally started as a 200 square kilometer no-take zone has now been increased to 425 sq. km. Misool Eco Resort MER take their conservation work very seriously. They have set up a UK charity called the Misool Conservation Centre to raise funds for the […]

19 – 20 January 2010 Sometime early November last year, we got an email from Dr. Lida Pet-Soede, WWF Coral Triangle Programme Leader to discuss an idea of having a photo exhibition of our expedition in Manila during the first WWF Coral Triangle Business Summit in January 2010. We knew this was going to be […]

22 January 2010 S2 12.917 E130 33.574 – Fiabacet S2 14.666 E130 33.401 – Misool Eco Resort When Yogi starts singing, I have all reason to stop and listen to his song as he seldom does this. Whereas I break into a song at a drop of a hat, even if I don’t know the […]

11 – 16 January 2010 It feels like such a great reward to be here in Misool Eco Resort, after our tuna adventure during the Christmas holidays. We have been traveling intensely for this expedition for about 10 months now and have covered quite some WWF work in the field as well as fishing and […]

16 January 2010 After  the busy Copenhagen Conference last year and the holiday season break, our friends in WWF International On-line & Communications Department have now the time to add new things into our blog and have put it in the main Panda.org homepage! Whoopy! Thanks guys for pushing more readers to check out the […]

December 27 With hardly any sleep for both of us, by 5:30am with still very faint light in the horizon, our boat crew caught a yellowfin tuna. I woke Yogi who by this time was an angry bear. We had been waiting for this – for our boat crew to catch a big tuna. So […]