INDONESIA
never visit. Such is the complexity of living in a country where more than 700 languages are spread across an archipelago scattered 3,200 miles along the equator. On the island of Obilatu, the international language
of money speaks loud enough for us to buy a hawksbill turtle tethered in the shallows, broiling in the sun. It’s rewarding to save this endangered delicacy from the cooking pot and release into open water. SeaTrek’s conservation remit, however, is more than this drop in the ocean. Sailings visit numerous sponsored projects including, in a modest shack on the coral-fringed island of Banggai, one dedicated to protecting the area’s endemic cardinalfish. “They’re being poached for the aquarium trade quicker than they can reproduce in the wild,” says Khalis Dwi, local coordinator for Balinese- based fisheries conservation non-profit, The Indonesian Nature Foundation (LINI). He shows me some tiny, inch- long specimens nesting in tanks, bred here to sustainably supply hungry hobbyists, the profits from which pay local volunteers like Khalis, and fund eco-education on plastics and mangrove ecology in primary schools. Snorkel-clad, offshore, we spot a group of seven
cardinals. Then countless more, their black-and-white spines impressively camouflaged among foot-long sea urchin spikes. As ever, just a 10-minute dip reveals a boggling array of sea creatures: mace-red starry night octopus lurking in the shallows, stonefish, starfish, sweetlips and rays. Our clambering exit into the Zodiacs scatters flashing shoals of turquoise parrotfish and metallic sparkles of humphead wrasse. Defended against the eviscerating equatorial sun with UV swim shirts and reef-safe factor 50, each day we’re submerged into a sub-aqua realm that brings us, crew and Seatrek passengers alike, gasping to the surface, pointing downwards in disbelief.
FROM TOP: A classic coral-fringed island in Central Sulawesi; a school of striped large-eye bream, just one of the many marine creatures found within Indonesia’s Coral Triangle, home to the world’s highest diversity of coral species
MAR I N E MAR VE L S Indonesia’s Coral Triangle, home to the world’s largest concentration of reef species, is reason alone to spend 14 days afloat. I come face-to-beak with several species of marine turtle, and a venomous sea snake that looks as startled as I do. Dogface pufferfish beetle about like badly designed Victorian flying machines; toothy sharks grin from beyond reef walls, and giant eels dart out of the seabed. Swimming in marine lakes, thousands of rare stingless jellyfish morph lava lamp-like around us. In brackish shallows, I float above rainbow-jewelled clams whose twisted gummy lips span a metre. And while driſting among whip fans, anemones and towering chimneys of coral, I’m educated into the seemingly
infinite world of nudibranchs — tiny Technicolor wonders I’d previously reduced to ‘psychedelic sea slugs’ — by conservation officer, Jeni Kardinal. We tack and jibe across the invisible lines that shape
our world, twice crossing the Equator, although there’s more excitement about the Wallace Line — another of Alfred Russel Wallace’s history-shiſting discoveries. This is the biogeographical boundary dividing Oriental and Australian species, slicing Indonesia in half. “East of the line, in Halmahera, we saw cockatoos and parrots,” explains George. “Monkeys exist only west of the line, marsupials east. There are some anomalies; Guinea has both, although the latter live in trees. And Sulawesi has lots of unexpected animals. It once had three-tusked pigs and elephants. When the ancient continents began dividing, separating species, swimmers migrated. Elephants are great swimmers: they’ve got their very own inbuilt snorkels, of course.” We’re standing under a tree that’s home to a colony
of roosting fruit bats, an anomaly species with distribution across Wallace’s line. We’ve docked on a crescent of talc-white sand to watch the creatures take flight at sunset. I squint into the branches strewn with what look like battered black umbrellas. It’s only the squawking and a decidedly ferrety smell that signals their animate nature. “They taste like an old umbrella too, according to Bill Bailey,” says George. “He had to eat one for Jungle Hero.” This pre-coronavirus TV entertainment followed the British comedian’s Indonesian travels — an attempt to revive Wallace’s reputation. The legacy of the Victorian era naturalist was, over time, to become eclipsed by Darwin’s rising star. The latter only ever reluctantly conceded natural selection to be a simultaneous co-discovery with Wallace, who was derided in some circles as a self- taught, lower-class upstart. Bailey is patron of the Alfred Russel Wallace
Memorial Fund, founded by George to commemorate his hero. Its Wallace Correspondence Project aims to locate, digitise and interpret all of Wallace’s surviving letters and manuscripts — an impressive life’s work aided in part by SeaTrek funding. I leave George in the trees, camera poised, and wade into the skin-warm sea to watch the colourful sky darken with hundred-strong clouds of umbrellas in flight. It’s a surreal sight — a memory I’ll return to — but soon enough, the captain is calling us in. Time to set sail. As ever, I’m the last one aboard, this time having discovered the joys of riding full speed behind the ship’s rigid inflatable boat, while trying to stay upright on a paddleboard.
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