Ultra Marine

The Indonesian archipelago of Raja Ampat has scarcely changed since spice traders passed this way in the 18th century. But as Maria Shollenbarger sails among its hidden coves on a traditional wooden boat, she wonders if the pristine beaches and rich biodiversity of these remote islands will be able to resist the tourist tide much longer.

Becalmed. This is the word sailors have used for centuries to describe the kind of utterly placid sea that surrounds me. Smooth as a mirror, it reflects vast skies above, hides vaster mysteries below. It’s dawn, and I am at the far eastern edge of Indonesian waters, on the deck of a traditional phinisi sailing boat called the Alila Purnama. We rocked and rolled gently on the tides as we made our way north from the port town of Sorong, on the coast of West Papua, where I had boarded. But at around 5 a.m., we dropped anchor. Now, as light tints the air, all is still: the sea, the ship, the sky.

We’re 12 miles above the equator—which we crossed during the night—moored in one of the many bays of Wayag Island, surrounded by jagged lava peaks clad in dense green jungle. The view is prehistoric. Coco palms sprout in rough rows out of sheer cliff walls. Bright-white crested cockatiels perch in their fronds like a scattering of coarse sea salt. Eddies of mist drift in deep silent canyons. No houses, no other boats, no people visible in any direction, all the way to the horizon.

My six fellow travelers and I—all strangers when we boarded, we are quickly becoming friends—have just woken up on the second day of a six-day expedition in Raja Ampat, a chain of 1,500-odd islands strung like rough-cut emeralds across nearly 29,000 square miles off the west coast of West Papua. Bookended by the Pacific and Indian oceans, and anchored by four large islands (Raja Ampat means “Four Kings” in Bahasa, the official language of the country), it’s one of the most physically ravishing, historically intriguing, richly biodiverse places I’ve ever encountered. In the eighteenth century, it was the nexus of the lucrative spice trade over which the Dutch and English battled for control. In the mid-19th century, the Victorian explorer Alfred Russel Wallace identified and named hundreds of species of flora and fauna on his more than 70 expeditions. In 1860, he lived alone for three months in the jungles of Waigeo, the northernmost of the four main islands—a voluntary Crusoe observing in its natural habitat the flamboyantly plumed bird of paradise, then found only in this archipelago.