Mark B Hatter jumps on board the Raja Ampat Aggressor for a cruise across Indonesia’s Sulawesi Sea to the beautiful diving of the Derawan Islands
Words and Photographs by Mark B Hatter
Our cruise director, Pep, was worried. Our departure from Lembeh Strait to the Derawan archipelago off the east coast of Borneo in the Sulawesi Sea was timed to arrive just two days before the full moon.
The moon’s high illumination would likely mean the ‘bagans’ operated by local fisherman would not be manned.
Bagans are offshore platforms with seine nets extending laterally in the water from either side of the structures, with bright lights employed to attract small fish and shrimp, which swarm to the lights, and the nets during the night.
The nets are raised when full and the night’s catch is sorted for transport to shore the next day where it is sold in local markets.
Within a day or two of a full moon, the fishermen abandon the offshore fishing platforms, as the bright moonlight tends to out-compete the lights on the bagan.
Thus, Pep’s worry was palpable, as bagans are synonymous with whale sharks in this part of the world. No fishermen, no catch; no catch, no whale sharks. And while not a guarantee, a whale shark dive on Borneo’s bagans is a signature dive on the Raja Ampat Aggressor during its seasonal itinerary cruising Borneo’s Derawan archipelago.
We were aboard the Raja Ampat Aggressor’s transition voyage, from Lembeh Strait to Borneo, where the boat would cruise for the next six weeks in the Derawan Islands.
The afternoon before, we’d arrived at and dived the northwestern corner of Sulawesi Island. Now we were six days out of Lembeh Strait, and depending on the weather only 16 hours separated us from the eastern coast of Borneo and a dive on a bagan floating above Borneo’s shallow East Kalimantan shelf.
Or we could head directly to the Derawan Islands, a good four hours north of the bagans and to forgo any chance of a whale shark encounter. Any delay to visit the bagans beyond the next day was not an option according to Pep, and he was confident tomorrow was our last and only opportunity to dive with whale sharks on this voyage.
DECISION TIME
Having arrived at the halfway point of an already amazing twelve-day journey, we’d checked-off a number of bucket-list diving objectives for the photographers and sightseers. From blue-ring and coconut octopus, to scores of nudibranchs, locally endemic Banggai cardinalfish and frogfish, Lembeh Strait delivered.
Around the northeastern corner of Sulawesi at Sangka Beach, we dived a signature reef blanketed with stunning orange-hued soft corals. Further west, halfway to Borneo, we dived with dozens of green sea turtles at Bunaken Island.
With so much great diving already logged, Pep’s proposition to go for a risky side detour in hopes of finding a whale shark was an easy decision to make…Unanimously, we chose the bagans!
DERAWAN WHALE SHARK DIVE
The following morning around 10 am we reached the shallow shelf off coastal Borneo and began searching the widely spaced bagans in search of fishermen and whale sharks.
At 11 am the dive bell sounded loudly. One of the advanced staff, racing ahead of the Raja Ampat Aggressor in the dinghy, had found a manned bagan with two whale sharks still feeding on the catch in the water around the structure. Time to gear up!
At 11.45 am we rolled off the dinghy under a cloudless sky and with excellent visibility to one of the best whale shark encounters I’ve experienced. Two eight-metre-plus animals repeatedly swam in lazy arcs around our small group of divers, lining up under the bagan to feed at the hands of the fishermen ladling sardines into the water.
Pirouetting on enormous tails, holding vertically in the water column, the massive animals vacuumed the sardines in great gulps from the surface for the better part of 75 minutes.
With the whale shark encounter now in the log books, we steamed the four hours north to Sangalaki Island for another special event; the release of newly hatched green sea turtles from the island’s ranger station refuge.
TURTLES OF SANGALAKI
To enable the highest survival rate, the refuge harvests turtle eggs immediately after a new nest is discovered on the island. The eggs are then relocated to a protective enclosure until they hatch.
Hatchlings are held for a day in a small cement pond and released at dusk to further aid their ability to avoid early predation, especially from sea birds.
We helped the park rangers collect the green turtle hatchlings as they swarmed up and out of their nest within the protective enclosure. These newest hatchlings were moved to the cement pond and those already in the pond were collected for release on the beach.
In an impromptu baby sea turtle race, the squirming hatchlings were set up in makeshift lanes where they immediately raced for freedom to the sea, to the raucous cheers of our divers.
Of the 31 islands in the Derawan archipelago, sitting two degrees north of the equator in the Sulawesi Sea, the Raja Ampat Aggressor visits spectacular dive sites on four of them over the course of seven days.
Located near the left leg of the Coral Triangle, the Derawan archipelago is exceptionally biodiverse, featuring 872 species of reef fish, 507 species of coral and invertebrates, including five giant clam species, two sea turtles species, and the land-based coconut crab.
It becomes quickly apparent that the diving in the Derawan Islands resembles the diving in and around Waigeo and Gam in northern Raja Ampat. The stony coral reefs are just as healthy and just as stunning as those found in Raja Ampat, only on a smaller scale.
In the current order of our planet’s maladies, the Derawan Islands seem to have evaded the destructive forces of climate change, at least for now.
Large, old-growth tabling corals and dense thickets of staghorn corals abound. And, healthy corals translate to healthy fish populations, such as those seen in Raja Ampat.
BARRACUDA POINT
The Derawan islands are atolls with precipitous walls, reef passages to inner lagoons, and drift dives along the outer walls. On one precipitous wall dive, at Barracuda Point off Kakaban Island, the ripping current required us to use reef hooks to hold position, as briefed by Pep before the dive.
I left my camera behind, and gladly so, as the current was so strong I would have been unable to shoot images. I was, however, able to work my way to within a few feet and hang for several minutes with the massive school of barracuda after which the site is named.
Surprisingly, as we transitioned up and over the underwater spur of Barracuda Point to the lee side of the current, the reef changed dramatically from the relatively barren wall (scoured by the ever-present current) to broad vistas of stony coral thickets swarming with blue and green chromis, orange anthias and yellow and white butterflyfish.
Fortunately, we returned to Barracuda Point for a second dive late in the day. This time, without the reef hook, I sailed in the current to the spur, rounded the corner to slack water and spent 70 fantastic minutes shooting wide-angle images of the coral forests and their inhabitants under a bright, late-afternoon sun.
Another surprise was a swim in one of the largest jellyfish lake in the world on Kakaban Island. The mangrove-ringed lake is an enclosed saltwater lagoon supporting three species of land-locked, non-stinging jellyfish; moon jellies, golden jellies and upside-down jellies.
It was a fun challenge to shoot the jellies in midwater and in the mangroves without the aid of fins (prohibited due to the fragility of the jellies), using only a snorkel and mask.
One afternoon my team of four divers and I had an incredible encounter off Sangalaki Island at a dive site named Manta Cleaning Station Number 2 – spawning cuttlefish!
While the mantas were a no-show, late in the dive we happened upon four large cuttlefish engaging in breeding activity. So focused on the mating process, which is the transfer of a sperm packet from the male to the female in a short-lived tentacle embrace, they were totally indifferent to our presence.
Equal parts photographers, marine biologists and voyeurs, we were witness to one of nature’s amazing acts of reproduction.
On the penultimate day we dived early at Maratua Island channel, the seaward entrance to the island’s lagoon, at the tail end of the incoming tide when visibility was optimum.
With strong currents predicted by Pep, once again, I dived without my camera. It was another correct decision. Although we encountered massive schools of snapper and jackfish at the mouth of the pass, simply hooking-in to witness the spectacle without worrying about f-stops, shutter speeds and backscatter was refreshing. n
Find out more about Raja Ampat Aggressor itineraries at www.aggressor.com/destination/RajaAmpat. For reservations head to bookings.aggressor.com or phone +1-706-993-2531
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