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Here, hundreds ofmiles fromthe nearest town, projects in tiny villages,the dght fu p mordially da*, utterly sileDt ex-cept for the breathy, gently maternal voice ofthe prophetess, and when she evokes the astro -nauts, their epiphanies ftom space-how it isthe sea, the sea that is life itself ! - it aLrcst feelsas if the Suuen ssos has lifted off and is flyingamong a billion stan, The wine helps, too.

Dr. Earle, who begar diving in suits that arenow in museums arrd who first achieved famein 1970 with NASlt's Teli:tite llall-women mis-sion, which spent two weeks livingbeneath theCadbbean Sea, has had the ears of presidentsand World Bant officials. At 72, she's still ex-ploring, still diving- still beautiful, too-andstill shouldering the burden of a Cassandra whoknows that the oceans are everywhere dying.

"We've gone from eating 'the big, the slo1fl,and the tastyj in E.O. Wilson's rMords, to con-suming everything else, too," she says. "Krillpaste is catching on in Europe. Krill paste!We're eating it all!" Dr. Earle has shown us ashort film about fishing debris, with teams ofvolunteers hauling up a huge amount of shred-ded nets and monofilament longlines, a mad-man's ball of twine, But it's not the staryingmasses predicted by Malthus who are deplet-ingthe sea. The deadliest offerder is the I ruiyseafood market-we of the gourmandizingWest. "But it's all bushmeat ! " Sylvia says, eyesflashing. "We do nothing to cultivate it; we iusiextract it as if the supply had no endl' Wolsesiill, the assault with trawler and fork is onlypart of the problem. wlat rvith pollution andglobal warmirg and coral bleaching, marinehabitats are tipping domino style. The GreatBarrier Reef is a shadow of iiself, t}re Galipagosfading fast. "We've got a limited time to make adifference I' she tells us.

Wtrich brings her talk tulI ctucle, back to theseugn Seos and my trip mates, rnany of whomare board members of or big donors to Seacol -ogn a Berkeley-based envircnmeltal organi-zation dedicated to protecting isla[ds andtheir surounding waters. The ten-day quisehas taken 27 expedenced di!€$ on two boats -the seuen Seas and my boat,the CitraBidodari,which are bothwell-appointed, 100 -foot-plusmodified Balinese schooners - on a vast loopthough Raja Ampat, a group of islands north -west of papua New Guinea. It has cedainly

86 Out5ide

Already the culture shock has been ex-treme. I'm talking about rny culture shockgetting to know my fellow travelers, These aresome rich folks, mainly ftom the upper strataof CaliJornia's Bay Area and Silicon Valley-CEOS, IT wunderkinder, A-1ist attomeys ofvadous st pes - many of whom have inheritedwealth or else finished their work early andgoie out to play, and who seemingly have noworries in the world, except the worry @boutthe world. And while it may be easier for a dol-phin to pass though the mesh of a tufla netthan for a dch environmentalist to avoid the,urn, inconsistency of a Sasquatch-size carbonfootprint, the question rernains: If not them(us), then whom? And if not here, then where ?

R€ja Ampat, after aI, isthe final frontier, oneof the least fished, least populated, healthiestmarine environments on the planet. It's also aplace where worlds collide-politically, geo-gaphically, ethnologically, zoologically- everywhich way at once. Located just east of thefamed Wallace Line (named for the $eat 19th-centuy naturalist Alfted Russel wallace),which separates the fauna of southem Asiafrorn that of Australasia, the archipelago is paltof the 13l,0o0-square-mfle transition zoneknonryr to modern biogeographers as Wallacea.Scientists call Raja Ampat "the epicenter ofmajine biodiversityl' where there are a numberof endemics and where new species are discov-ered nearly every time a marine biologist strapson a tank. Properly protected, it could serve asa kind of evolutionary laboratory and madtimeseed bank to jump - start recovery for the wholeregion and, potentially, in a pinch, the world.

But it's crunch time on the frontier. Histori-cally, the four main islands - Misool, Salawati,Batanta, and waigeo ('rRaia Ampat" means"Four Kings" in Indonesian) - and more than600 smaller islands and numerous cays havebeen protected by their remoteness. The tinypopulation of ethnic Melanesian Papuans,mainly subsistence fishermen, have been ex-cellent conservators. But when they see bigcommercial boats from Sulawesi and otherpopulous Indonesian islands whose own localwaters have been depleted anchor offshore ardwipe out the fish stocks with d]'Damite, theyare tempted-indeed, forced-to blow up the

reefs themselves to keep at least some of theprofit at home. The genius of Seacology hasbeen to cut a better deal for the villages by of-fe ng a customized quid pro quo: whateyerthey need-schools, community centerc, solarpower-in exchange for long-term protectionof the priceless environmert, Still, the pressueto extract the islands' wealth, coming ftom In-doresia's east -looking manifest destiny as wellas multinational timber corporations, has beenreleniless. Seacology, Conservation International, and the Natue ConseNancy have 311entered into this war of wills as the situation inRaja Ampat has heated l]p.

"I prefer the term ftop e spot lo hot spot," DlEarle says. "what I'm asking you to do now ishold up a mftror- see who you are, what you dobest, how you can help. This is a big place. If wecan save it, there's hope for the seal'

BUT IT FUcKs You uP, hope does. You inter-nalize all that bad news about the planet, andthen you see something like Raja Ampat, aplace obviously still being born, ald you don'tknow what to feel. Happy? Anxious ? Exposedfor a doom-and-gloomer, as the old armor ofpessimism begins to crack and a whole new at-titude laises iis cudous head? I felt stirred upftom the very ftst dive -before the dive, rcally,when we were motoring to a site called CapeICi, near Waigeo, and saw a Spanish mackerelleap out of the water, jaws inches from a des-perate silver-shiny fusilier, predator and preygEceftily arcing ten feet into the atu. E!€rybody

^. . -

and here was the rainforest.(his wife, Arnaz Mehta, is Seacology's Indone-sian rep) with nearly 20 years' experience div-ing Indonesian waters, told us the curents thatcarve these Raja Ampat mushrooms are sostrong that ftom the atu the islands look likeships trailing wakes; in fact, one such islard,mistaken for a Japa[ese ship, was bombed byU,S. pilots dudng WWIL We also leamed thatin 20 0t Erdmann's friend ald fellow rnarine bi-oiogist Gery Allen set the then world record atCape Ici for the most species of fish identifiedduring a single dive: 283. So we were ready forthe cufient and we were ready for the fish. Butnothing car really prepare you for your ffust diveat Raja Ampat.

There are about 60 species of coral in theCaribbean; there ate closer to 600 in RajaAmpat. And the reefs here support more than1,0 0 0 species of fish, which means if you latchon to a good handhold and start counting,mental fatigue sets in long before you'vestopped seeing something new I hadn't real-ized just how low rny diving er?ectations hadsunk, kicking around hard-bitten, bleach-stricken, fished-out seascapes. It was as if I'dbeen diving for years on the undersea version ofa prairie, and here at last was the ninJorest.

After the dive, all of us aboard the Cilra

*S*Bidodqrihadthe sane idea: Ransackthe ship'slibrary and put a name to some of the oddercreatures we d ju

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unchanged since Wallace's three -month col-Iecting expedition in 1860, At its southen en-trance, the bay is as narrow as a river windingbetween mountains, an equatorial fjord, beforeopening up to an inland sea nearly dividingWaigeo into two halves. wten Seacology hadftst approached Waifoi village in 2007 to seewhat they'd like to have in exchange Ior limitingfishilg in the bay to traditional subsistencecatches, they said they wanted sidewalks-nice, wide cement walkways to replace the dirttracks that held puddles and rnosquitoes anddisease. And so, that noon, Seacology's boardmembers and donors, festooned with crownsof trumpet vines, were given a hero's welcome,parading into the village center along that ce-mellt path at the head of a marching band of

88 Ortside

drums and fifes , Everybody was given a pieceof cake and a seat i[ the shade. Babies cried,elders speechified, halds were shaken, andthen all feasted on d spread of fish and swim-ming clabs and local mussels.

Errer the scientist, Sylvia Earle carefully ex-amined an odd-shaped, snakeskin- textuedfmit, took out her camera and photogaphed itftom everyangle, andthen ate it fo! dessert Shewas more effusilrc than alybody about the div-ing we'd enjoyed so far, though with a caveat.

"This is the way it's supposed to be every-where j' she said. 'A colal reef is a true metlop -oJis, with millions of interconnected livesl'

AT ALIUI BAy, onthewest side of waigeo, theoddestbeast I've ever seencame crawling out

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ongcurrent.of the dark in the weirdest place I've everdived. The dive site, a shallow patch of muck,layunderneaththe dock of a pearl farrn, afar-flung place, to be sure,like a trading post outof a Coffad novel. A moonless night set theproper mood for pokirg about with divelights. The first creature my scuba buddiesillumined was a giant sea snail caught in theaci of extruding a gelatinous stfing of Ping-Pong-ball-size eggs onto one of the dock'souter pylons. Just inside the ffust row of pil-

lars, a fte urchin, the size and color of ajack-o-lanterl, with short spines and whatappeared to be feathers, lay cheek by jowl witha sea hate-a grandiosely proportioned seaslug, a regular Jabba the Hutt. Mesmerized,Iwatched a certain flatworm, trying to figure

KALIMANTAN

^. \?- ] - l - l -ALUt)) .RESOURCESRaja Ampat and beyond

cETTING THERE: SingaporeA r ines f es to Singapore fromLAX and JFK (found tr p, $1,150;s ngaporealr.com ); from thereyou can flyviadomestlc carriersto Manado, on the island ofSulawesi, or to Balis Denpasarlnternational A rport andconnect ons to all outer-islanddestinations. Cathay Paclf cf es from LAXandJFKto Den-pasar via Hong Kong (roundtrlp, $1,250; cathaypacific.com).WHEN TO GO: The dry season,from Mlay to October, is thebest t lme to visit (and dive).cETTING AROUND: Garudalndones a, by far the country'sbest domestic carr er, f iesdaily between Denpasar andl'"4afado (from $100 one way;garuda indones a.com).Merpat Nusantara Airl nes(merpati.co.id) and L on Air( iona r.co. d) a so fly manyfoutes to remote is ands.

Rala.l\nri.rarWHAT TO DO: Seaco ogy runsd ve trips to numerous internationaldest nations but does notplan to return to RajaAnipat lle-fore 2010 (seacology.org). How-ever. you can 0ooKtne sameuxury I ve-aboard that Seacology chartered to Rala Arrpat,the Seven Seds (frorn $340 pernighit thesevenseas.net). GET-TINGTHERE: From Manado,fly Merpatito Sorong ($120).WHE R E To STAY| In o ne of theboat's eight staterooms, al withen suite bathrooms and A/C.

Llr ::rr-r \?ll;:,. irt'.,' G!tireaWHAT TO DO: Here you ll seeDanl men in headdresses ofboars'teeth and v brant b rd ofparadise feathers. Hlke to thev i lage of Kiise and stay in agrass hut ovedooking a canyon.GETTINGTHERE: Hop a dailyfl ght on GarLrdafrom Denpasarto Jayapura ($253), then one often da lyTr gana,Air f i ights toWanrena ($ll0t trigana aircom).WHERETO STAY In Wamena,bunkatthe Baliem Val ey Resort(from $ll0t baliem-va ley-resoft.de), a stylish bungalowproperty. ln Kilse, sleep at thevi lage guesthouse ($6).

Togiaii lslar'rds. :lLria,\ r€!WHATTO DO: These lmestoneis ands are home to spectacu arcoral reefs and plenty of wildlife.incLuding reel harnmerhead,

90 Outside

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and the occasionalwha e shark,p usdo phinsand dugongs.There's even a sunken B-24bomber. cETTINGTHERE: Lttakes about two days no matteryour route. Frorr Manado, flyMerpati to Gorontalo ($70),where you'Ll board a l5-hourferry to Wakal, the main harboron theTogiaf lslands. WHERETo STAY| Kadldiri ParadiseResort, on Kadidiri sland(bungalows, $32, a -inclusive;0r,62-464-210-58).

ilr. iKO..ria.i !1.r.;. Kii:nrai rtarrWHAT TO DO: Dlve recentlydiscovered WWi wrecks-Japanese milltary cargo floatstorpedoed by the U.S. Navydur ng the 1942 Battle of Balikpapan-at th s lndustria Port.You' ldescend nto holds hous-ng coral-encrusted bornbsand torpedoes. GETTINGTHERE: Garuda fl es dailyffom Bal ($124). WHERETO STAY: Blue Marlln Dlve'siuxury teak sail ng vessei, /ka,B//u ($1,550 per week, alnclusive; bluemar ind ve.com),drops anchqr by the wrecks,anih iho \ ,^r t^ . l i \ /F:q mr .h

a5 posst0le.

Banci3. lslnral5WHATTo Do: ArchipelagoResorts & F eet 's luxury ive-aboard dive yacht, .4rchlpelagoAclverturerl1 sa Ls frorn Ambonon six to l4-day tr ips aroundtha

out how something llat could appear to berevolving like a barber's pole in two differentdirections, when suddenly 1 felt a pdck and anelectric tolt. While I'd been gaping at theworm. a battalion of urchins. the mobile kindwith long, wickedspines, hadcreptupto seeif I was edible. The bravest of the lot hadpronged me in the ar*le,

I kicked away in haste. About then I sawsomeone waving his light, a signal to come havealook.It was Erdmam, oux go-to guy on thecruise for all the rare or hard-io -find stuff.

The nearly ttuee - foot beastie had the face ofa newbom puppy, and it moved with the con-torting waddle of an antique wind-up toy,walking-yes, walking! - on the tips of its pec-toml and pelvic fins. Ii was the walking shark,of course, which we had been looking for allalolg, not quite believing in it, The discoveryoftwo new walking shark species in 2006 bya ConseNation International eeeditioD hadmade international news and had occasionedmore than a few waggish SNl,-inspired blogs:Walking shark? Candygram! This one per-formed fo! us under half a dozen dive lights,lurching over the rubble*right fins forward.push! Left fins forward, push!-like a patiertudergoing painful physical therapy. It \-as

amazing to watch, and we would have until weran out of afu, but at last, annoyed by the atten -tion, it swam off quite briskly.

There's an evolutionary riddle for you: Whydoes the walking shark walk when, like anyself- respecting elasmobranch, it car swim justfine when it chooses to and. in fact. it walksrather poorly?

The question stuck with me as we steamedsouth for Misool, where I had my own littleDarwiniar crisis. I'l'e said that we were all ad-vanced divers on this tdp, but I was the leastadvanced, the one who saw everything last andused up his air supply fi$t, and at a site nearMisool's Wayalibatan Channel I was nearlytratl]rally deselected for my lack of fitness. Ithappened at a spectacular wall called FantaSea,an enchanted forest of gorgonian sea fans wav-ing in the five -lcrot current. As we had traveledsouti, the visibiJity had declined from incred-ible to merely very good, owing io nutdent-rich upwellings, and the density offish had iustgone crazy. These southern reefs were loudwith life -the clickings and scrapings of clawand tooth like the din of cicadas-€nd visuallyfrnious, gouts of color flirng and splattered.

On this dive, though, everyone was lookingfor pygmy sea horses, a Raja Ampat specialty,

The creature is tiny-about the size of a grainof rice-and mimics perfectly the tint and thetextue ofits favo te hidingplace, the screen-Iike grid of the gorgoldan sea fan. To find thearrimalcr:le, you must comb tfuough the leavesas if looking for fleas on a great shaggy dog.Even when your keen-eyed dive guide hasfound one fo! you, it's hard to see without amagnifying glass. Yet, with those anise-seedeyes, the blunt plumped muzzle, the cunninglynubbed pastel hide, it has its own curiouschaisma, equal to the whale's. So people said,anyway. I still hadn't seen one.

I was determined not to be shut out, so everytime one of the guides rapped on his tank, Ikicked like mad to get into viewing position-up, down, back, forth-until at last: Bingo!Excellent! Tiny! Cool! And then I noticed mySuunto dive computer flashing, warning me Iwas about to go into decompression mode-abig no-no, especially in a shorg cuuellt. I alsonoticed I was nearly out of ah, So I sigraled tomy g"roup that I was heading up and begankicking for the surface, I spent my three-minute safety stop at a depth of 15 leet congat -ulating myself on having, aLnost definitely,seelr a pygmy, wten I broke the suface. theCitl@Bidadariwas nowhere in sight;the zodi-acs were elsewhere as well, and the current wasstjll motoring me toward Antarctica and kick-ing up four-foot haystacks, which would makeme nearly impossible to find. Forturately, I hada signaling device-a bdght-orange inllatable" sausage l' for which I silently tharked Seacol-ogy's executive director, Duane Silverstein, andhis pre-trip checklist. This I helal above me atarm's length. It barely topped the waves. Iyelled "Help!" a couple of times. That wasdu$b. Five minutes later, I dropped my weightbelt, the fist time I'd ever taken that drasticmeasure, and five minutes after that I began tothink I'd really been forgotten, and whal a longand lousy death I was going to die.

Of course, the able boatmen of the Citro

-Bidodori would never lose a customer, Tventy-one minutes after surfacing, I heard ihe growlof an outboard and soon saw my very goodftiend Dewey racing to the rescue. But in thatinteryal of treading water, I'd had ample op-portunity to hold up a milror, as Sylvia Earlehad asked, and see who I was and what I didbest. I'm someone who expects the worst, issurprised bythe best, and somehow survivesto tell the story, So if the worst comes topass-as I expect it will-and Raja Ampat isblasted to smithereens for frozen fish sticks,and the seas all die and all of us along withthem, there's a cedain shark in Aljui Baythat's ready to crawl up the beach and stadthe whole thing over again. o

CoRRESPONDENT BUCKY NiIcL4AHON'SBOOKNIGHT DIVER (ANHINGA PRESS)WAS RELEASED IN PAPERBACK IN I\,4AY.

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