October 30, 2002

An auspicious start - members of the team flying in from Makasar (Ujung Pandang) arrive at Jefman Airport in a shower of afternoon rain - the first to fall on a parched Sorong in more than 5 months. Riding a koli-koli (long-boat) from Jefman to Sorong, we pass under the stern of the Pindito, which stands out amongst the medley of transport and fishing boats like a swan in a flock of ducks: snowy, proud, and elegant. The skipper, Edi Frommenwiler, joins the team at our hotel for a planning session.

For dinner we take two cars down to a local seafront restaurant. Behind our table there is a pile of fluffy white fibers, something like fine noodles, drying on a bench - this is processed shark-fin (photo). Beside this pile, there are several bags of small shark fins (photo), around 20kg of the raw material. Under the same bench is a large tray of beche-de-mere, or sea cucumbers. This seemingly innocuous sight sparks a heated conversation - Edi says that 15 years ago when he first started diving the reefs large sharks were common, whereas during the whole of this trip we will be lucky to see 10 sharks (in about 60 dives). Even these will be small ones.

The immediate cause of this is line fishing for the fins, which are used as the basis of a soup in China, Taiwan, and Japan. This industry has cleared sharks from reefs across the whole of Southeast Asia and parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

What does completely removing the top-predators mean for a reef system? There have been no in-depth studies that our team is aware of, the only thing we know for sure is that the incredible experience of diving with very large fish is getting rarer.

Needless to say, we don't order the soup.