IT’S ONE OF THE LAST PRISTINE CORAL REEFS ON EARTH. SHOULD WE BE VISITING IT?

IT TOOK one plunge to realize that the long trip to get here—48 hours in all—had been worth it. Staring down into the water, I floated above a dizzying variety of corals: Some looked like giant, glowing brains; others like plates, six-feet across. Gorgonian fans swayed in the currents, competing for real estate with antler-shaped specimens in purple, green and golden-yellow. Then a hypnotizing fog of striped sergeant fish floated into view before suddenly parting as a reef shark darted through them.

The 1,411-island archipelago of Raja Ampat sits off the edge of the Indonesian province of West Papua, which, on maps, looks uncannily like a bird’s head jutting into the Pacific Ocean. In Bahasa Indonesia, Raja Ampat means “four kings,” named for a myth in which four royals hatched from eggs to rule over the largest islands. Vegetation blankets the islands, many of which are ringed with white-sand beaches. But most people who make the journey are far more interested in what lies beneath the waves.

“It’s the planet’s marine biodiversity hot spot,” said Mark Erdmann, Conservation International’s vice president for Asia-Pacific marine programs. In the 17,760-square-mile marine national park that surrounds the island chain, 75% of the world’s coral species and 1,653 species of fish have been recorded, dwarfing even Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in terms of biodiversity. Most remarkably, Raja Ampat has managed to stay relatively pristine, even as warming seas, pollution and overfishing decimate other marine ecosystems.

Making a trip here invites a hard-to-answer question about the footprint of tourists like me: Should we even be visiting the last pristine places on Earth? Over the course of two weeks, an answer—shaky though it may be—began to emerge.

I spent the first week at Agusta Eco Resort, set on an absurdly picturesque island. Had I been shipwrecked there, I would have hidden from passing vessels to avoid being rescued. “I’ve dived the Red Sea and Caribbean, but Raja Ampat is the place every diver wants to see,” said Jorn Theelen, the resort’s dive instructor.

Every morning I’d wake up in my palm-thatched cottage and go snorkeling, sometimes right on the reefs off the beach, other times farther afield. Though I had to forgo scuba diving due to an injury, I never felt like I was missing out by sticking to the surface. One afternoon, at a site called Manta Ridge, I watched rays with 10-foot wingspans converge at a kind of aquatic carwash, where fish diligently stripped the rays’ massive bodies of parasites.

Most divers I met were reduced to wild superlatives trying to describe it. “It’s like looking back at the origins of life,” gushed one Italian tourist. He’d just seen an electric disco clam and was buzzing, although thankfully not from contact with the high-voltage bivalve.

While Raja Ampat has mostly escaped the coral bleaching happening in other reefs around the world, I did hear rumblings of other threats—namely, people like me. Last year, a record 25,500 people came to dive, relatively few compared to numbers at other places, but at the most popular sites, divers can crowd reefs like wasps around an ice-cream cone. Most divers choose to visit on “liveaboards,” traditional wooden boats called phinisi with cabins for up to a dozen guests. Anchors and irresponsible human waste disposal practices can devastate delicate ecosystems, and while rules exist to mitigate such practices, they can be hard to enforce.

On balance though, most locals I met considered dive tourism a positive force. By the 1990s, I learned, decades of overfishing had ravished the reefs. In 2004, a newly set up marine park authority began patrolling a protected area. As illegal fishing was virtually eradicated, sharks and rays returned and dive tourism emerged, offering alternative and less-destructive livelihoods.

Visiting Yenbuba village, a 30-minute speedboat ride from my resort, I paid a fee, which funds community projects. Protection seems to be working. Around Yenbuba’s jetty, before even masking up, I watched blue fusilier fish congregate in a mega-shoal 200 yards long. When I did take a dip, I saw six hawksbill turtles in an hour, more than I’d ever seen in a lifetime of undersea adventures.

Another day, I visited Sorido Bay Resort, near the reefs of Cape Kri, where I learned of an ongoing project that brings dive guests into the effort to repopulate endangered zebra sharks. Project coordinator Mary-Rose Tapilatu introduced me to two hand-reared sharklets—Buddy and Marshal—dubbed by guests who’d paid $10,000 each for the naming rights.

Without tourism, few doubt the bad old days of overfishing would return. “During Covid when there was no visitor income I counted 30 illegal fishing boats at sea,” said Jack Burns, owner of Raja Ampat Eco Lodge, where I spent my second week in a cottage overlooking a coral garden.

As my trip progressed, a paradox emerged. Though I was spending hours underwater, I became convinced that booking accommodation on land was better for the reefs and contributed more to the economy than spending up to two weeks on the water in a liveaboard. Taking a break from snorkeling, I hired Deki Sauyei, a local guide, to take me on a hike into his family’s plot of rainforest to see birds-of-paradise. As we made our way back to the beach, I marveled at how healthy the forest seemed. “There’s no need to cut trees when making good money,” Sauyei said.

THE LOWDOWN / Floating Into Raja Ampat

Getting there

From Jakarta, get a four-hour flight to Sorong in West Papua, the gateway to the reefs. If you’re staying island-based, a twice-daily ferry hops to Waisai, where you can pick up a speedboat to your hotel.

Staying there

Modest options include all-inclusive hotels like Agusta Eco Resort with 16 beach-facing cottages and Raja Ampat Eco Lodge, which offers produce from its gardens. For something more upscale, Misool Resort has over-water villas made from reclaimed tropical hardwoods.

Diving there

Dive trips can be organized either through your resort or on liveaboards, boats that can host 8 to 12 guests and hop between dive sites over multiday trips. Before booking, make sure to ask your operator about eco-friendly practices like waste disposal and reef-safe anchorage.

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