November 14, 2002

Pindito anchored at Aljoi (00° 11' 73" S, 130° 15' 66" E)

This morning we awoke to find the ship anchored in a wide fjord on western Waigeo. The local pearl-farm, PT Cendana Indopearl, helped us send e-mails, reprovision the vegetable larder, and sold us sorely needed fuel for the speedboats. The film crew visited their harvesting operations in the afternoon, and watched as large oysters were prepared for the pearl harvest. Oyster cages are brought into an operations shed, where they are washed and prepared. Using a dilator and a wedge, the shells are opened carefully, and the pearls extracted. If the oyster is a good one, a new pearl nucleus is inserted and layered with a little flesh from the mantle - this will stimulate production of the pearl. Besides pearls, the farm also produces mother-of-pearl shell, and oyster meat. Breaded and fried, this makes excellent supper.

The area proved to be very rich in soft corals. Even though hard corals were not very rich, Emre made 7 new records for Raja Ampat, 2 of which may be new species. There was very little evidence of new bomb damage, but some damage from anchors. There is some discarded equipment on the ocean floor, and Edi Frommenwiler filmed some beautiful coral growth on these, even after only two years.

The rocky islands offer very little sand beaches for turtle to nest on, and the team only recorded a couple of hawksbill nests.

The Social Economy team had a very interesting day, visiting Sel Pele village on the point, which has just last week been declared a Sub-district centre. The communities here claim traditional ownership of islands from Waigeo to Gag to the west, and north to Wayag and Sayang. Most of their economic activities are focussed on the sea, particularly line fishing, and they fell that tourism and other developments are not providing enough benefits to them. We went back to the village in the evening to request permission from traditional leaders to visit Sayang Island, and heard some very interesting oral traditions. Sayang Island, for instance, was a site for many battles between peoples from the Tidore and Halmahera sultanates, and between the peoples of Waigeo, Kawai, and Ari. They talked about the tame monitor lizards of Sayang, and said that their ancestors ate susu batu (= rock milk, maybe lichens?, maybe an oral history of a famine event?).

Gerry Allen recorded some high fish counts today - 235 and 217 species - which he attributes to the good water circulation. New records are still coming in at the rate of 15-20 per day, which means it is difficult to make an estimate of the total number of fishes - the number of new species found should begin to tail off as the real total is approached.