Triton Bay is one of three regions in Indonesia’s West Papua province that comprise the Bird’s Head Seascape which is now considered to be the epicenter of the Coral Triangle, containing more fish and coral species than anywhere else on the planet. We started the morning with a great lecture on The Top 10 Families of Reef Fish, so we were all anxious to get out there to see how many we could identify. So the snorkeling here must have been fantastic, right? Wrong!!! The seas were a bit too choppy for us to go ashore where the captain wanted to drop us, so we went to a more secluded spot. Unfortunately, it was a washout! There was very little coral and what was there was very brown and uninteresting. We saw a few fish, but they were mainly rather small and unremarkable as well.
However, all was not lost because the landscape was quite interesting with limestone islands that looked like small karst mountains, the sort you find in southern China along the Li River. So we soon moved to plan B and went out on a late afternoon to dusk 2-hour zodiac ride among these islands, with a stop on one for some delicious rum fruit drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Here is some of the scenery we enjoyed from the zodiacs. And yes, these are the true colors of the water.
