November 07, 2002

Pindito anchored at Pulau Sissie (02° 07’ 138’ S, 130° 19" 576’ E)

Today the team saw the best coral of the trip. It was very impressive to see such extensive and varied beds of coral still unbroken – even the experienced marine scientists on the trip called this area ‘mind-blowing’.

Pawel Achtel with the film group, today saw the biggest Gorgonian coral (sea-fan) of his life – it was more than 3 meters in diameter. Fixed to an underwater wall near Wajil Island, in an area of high current movement, there were large schools of small fish hidden in its branches. There are clouds of planktivorous fish around these reefs, due to vertical mixing of deeper, nutrient and oxygen, rich water.

Turtles are common in this area – one 100m beach had 21 green and 2 hawksbill nests. Another beach had 10 hawksbill nests. Unfortunately predation on the nests is high – monitor lizards take the shallower hawksbill nests, and fishermen take the green turtle eggs. On the first beach more than fifty empty shells were found around the remains of a campfire.

The vegetation team spent several hours trying to get up the Gam River, but low tide and poor access held them up. Even so the team managed to get several kilometers up the river, and found forests on soil, rather than the karst limestone they have met so far in Misool. Another trip up the river is planned again for tomorrow.

In the evening, a shore party met with a juvenile coconut crab. These used to be common across tropical coasts but have now been hunted to extinction in many places. This particular crab was about the size of a small coconut, a deep purple color, and climbed a tree as soon as we had finished photographing it.