Coral Triangle

Edi Frommenwiler Movie “Wild Eye of Raja Ampat” on YouTube 15 years ago, when Yogi quit his office job as industrial photographer of MTU in Munich and became a fulltime freelance photojournalist, he embarked on a one-year self-funded expedition to Christmas Island and the Coral Triangle – Indonesia, Sabah & the Philippines. He spent a […]

15 December – Tuesday S0 35.679 E130 18.159 – Jef Fam Woke up at 5am to look if our Panda flag was still flying on the mast of the Pindito. Yup, still there. It did a long night trip through from the south to the north. Hope there are no holes by now . . […]

12 December S2 13.223 E130 36.471 Boo The Pindito steamed all of last night till 10am this morning to Misool. The first dive site at 11am was in Boo.  The landscape of limestone islands and outcrops is similar to Coron and El Nido, Palawan in the Philippines. Beautiful! This is finally my introduction to Raja […]

10 December S4 31.557 E129 53.675 – Banda Neira Banda Islands is historically known as part of the Spice Islands of the Moluccas. It belongs to  a string of islands south east of Ambon. It has an old Dutch fort and there is a volcano here called Gunung Api (mountain of fire) which erupted in […]

9 December 2009 S4 31.557 E129 53.675 – Suanggi Islet I woke up to a nice porthole view of a small islet called Suanggi. The birds were all over the islet – brown boobies, red footed boobies, frigate birds . . .  Yogi wondered if there were tropic birds but didn’t see any. Had a […]

8 December 2009 We finally got on board the lovely Pindito and an old friend of Yogi’s  Edi Frommenwiler, Pindito owner and Raja Ampat pioneer made it to be with us with his brand new RED camera and Gates housing. Our first and second dives were in Ambon in what is famously known as Twilight […]

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. Please read all about The Jakarta Post Weekender Magazine cover story in Alya B. Honasan’s article Odyssey of Life. And another cover story […]

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. There is much conservation work to do in Kei. We got […]

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 […]

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 […]