CORAL TRIANGLE INDONESIA: SULAWESI AND BUNAKEN ISLAND 2015

I was floating on a remote reef off Sulawesi Indonesia above a mosaic of coral at the edge of a 1600 meter (5300 feet) deep wall in a crystal-clear sea. Staring through my mask, breathing rhythmically with the ocean swells through my snorkel, I was transfixed, watching with my wife floating next to me, schools of amazing fish in every color, shape and form imaginable, from Moorish idols with long ventral and pectoral fins to fusiform and colorful electric yellow, red and purple wrasse. I dove down, and once below held on to a staghorn coral next to a beautiful purple anemone that revealed three orange and white clownfish darting in and out of the tentacles, shy of my presence. The real Nemo.

We had just arrived at Bunaken Island by boat from Manado. This amazing area is one of the acknowledged jewels of the Coral Triangle near the geographical heart of the bioregion off the coast of North Sulawesi, the large oddly shaped island north of Bali and east of Borneo. It is part of the Celebes Sea and its bays, which are surrounded by dramatic mountains, provide habitat to 390 species of coral as well as countless fish, mollusks, reptiles and marine mammal species. Like many of Indonesian island ecosystems, Sulawesi and its islands possess seagrass plains needed by Dugong, extensive mangrove forests, and richly diverse coral reefs that support a panoply of fish species. Bunaken enjoys the perfect conditions for thriving reefs. Its coral walls are deep bringing upwellings of a steady supply of cold water, the key to the health of Indonesia’s coral reefs. With the negative heating effects of global warming exacerbated by the current El Nino, these cold currents help to keep the water not only cool, but provides fresh nutrients to feed the reef ecosystem.

The Coral Triangle consists of a large marine designated area that includes 6 countries. Named for its staggering coral diversity, it is here that the Indian Ocean mixes with the Pacific, forming strong currents through a vast network of islands and tropical reefs. This area of ocean mixing is considered to have the greatest marine diversity in the world and holds over 76% (605) of the coral species of the world and boasting more

coral reef fish diversity than anywhere else in the world: 37% (2,228) of the world’s coral reef fish species, and 56% of the 4,050 coral reef fishes in the Indo-Pacific region. And the superlatives continue with the area sustaining six of the world’s seven species of marine turtles including the huge jellyfish eating leatherback, hawksbill and green, 700 species of mollusk including 7 giant clam species, 57 species of mantis shrimp, and 13 marine mammal species including the endangered dugong, dolphins, and the blue and sperm whales.

The Coral Triangle area is called an ‘underwater Amazon’ that stretches across 5.7 million square kilometers 6 million km2 (2.32 million miles2, 1,4 x the area of Alaska) and its biodiversity sustains the lives of 120 million people The area extends from the Island of Borneo west that includes Sabah Malaysia and Kalimantan Indonesia north to the Philippines, then spans east across the Indonesian island chain of Java, Bali, Sulawesi, Maluku, the Raja Ampat islands, and Papua new Guinea to the Solomon Islands.

My wife and I came to Bunaken Island to celebrate our wedding anniversary after we had learned from one of her clients that Manado and Bunaken was the most amazing diving area they had visited in Indonesia. My wife is Indonesian/Chinese, but had not visited many islands except Java, Bali, and her native Medan Sumatra. This was to be a special memory. We flew directly to Manado from Singapore where we were met by our pre-arranged local driver. While it’s a small city of only 500,000 people, Manado is eclectic and exotic, with traditional horse-drawn carts still used for transporting people, which hold their own against swarms of motorcycles and rusty, exhaust-belching trucks downtown. Nearby was the Minahasan highland town of Tomohon. Apart from its volcanic beauty, Tomohon is famous for its market, selling bush foods such as cooked fruit bats, whole bush rat kebab, and, disturbingly, dogs. I had unknowlingly eaten all this fare while exploring Papua New Guinea, and declined to stop at a suggested café that served this fare for lunch. A local joke is that the only things with four legs one won't find on a Manadonese restaurant menu are tables and chairs.

Most of North Sulawesi is mountainous, with extensive uplifting and faulting, and it has many active volcanoes, notably Mount Soputan. Mount Klabat on the Minahasa Peninsula rises to an elevation of 6,634 feet (2,022 meters). The coastal lowlands are narrow, the soils are fertile, and there are coral reefs offshore. The

uplands are drained by many fast-flowing streams, including the Milango and the Marsa. The highlands are covered with rainforests of oak, chestnut, and various conifers; hillslopes have teak, ebony, and a dense ground cover of grasses and shrubs. The Minahasan community constitutes the largest segment of North Sulawesi’s population. The Sangihe and the Gorontalo are sizable minorities. In addition, many smaller groups—including Makassarese, Chinese, Arabs, Javanese, Batak, and various Moluccan peoples—also reside in the province. North Sulawesi is largely Christian, although Islam also is widely practiced.

We passed through town without lunch and without much traffic, and once at the dock we watched longboats being loaded with supplies to be sent to the islands. While waiting for our boat to finish loading, we were faced with the depressing sight of garbage cascading into the oil-slicked waters, snaking its way through boats. Happily, as soon as we pulled away from the port, the garbage diminished and the archipelago of the Bunaken Marine Park presented a wonderful landscape with the island of Manado Tua in the distance towering above the ocean, complete with its own wisp of cloud masquerading as an exhalation of volcano smoke. We were soon joined by a group of long-beaked spinner dolphins that played and porpoised for a few minutes off our bow wave. It was refreshing to begin to encounter this beautiful ocean and marine reserve, heading to the group of islands that were part of a large marine park ecosystem.

Maluccas, Sunset from Bunaken Island We were heading to the Bunaken Cha Cha Nature Resort, run by Raph and his Japanese wife Yuni that operate a secluded lodge on the west side of Bunaken. There are a total of five islands within the Bunaken Marine Preserve, including Naeng-besar, mantehang, Siladen, and Manado tua. Bunaken lies in the taller shadow of 805 m (2,641 ft) high volcano Manado Tua, but itself is relatively flat and crescent-shaped. While a large volcano dominates Manado Tua’s skyline, the other four are mostly flat and surrounded by large fringing reef plates. Mangrove forests protect many of the islands’ sandy beaches, which means there’s little erosion and a tranquil atmosphere even on wavy days. Bunaken Island is covered by a sea level forest amidst a patchwork of small villages and dive lodges clinging to the shoreline.

Our resort came into view with its white façade and roofline built in the local Minahasan style of the indigenous people of Northern Sulawesi. As our boat slowed and we puttered closer, the vibrant, living reef became visible through crystal clear seas below. We exited carefully into a knee-deep sandy partition that sliced through the reef to the

Drone view off Bunaken Island beach, stepping over the reef flat in our resort-issued booties to our accommodation. Set in a lush garden, we were taken from the beach to our ocean view room that had a private verandah, complete with loungers and an amazing ocean view of Sulawesi with the distant volcano Gunung Empeng, 1340 m (4396 ft) rising to the south and to the east Gunung Klabat, 1990 m (6528 ft) to the east. The rooms were charmingly rustic, with everything we needed including air-conditioning and an open-air shower. Raf, the Irish-Italian owner greeted us and sat us at the large communal table, happy to chat and answer all our questions while we were served lunch, fresh and delicious, a mix of local Sulawesi dishes. He shared his wife was a diver, and Bunaken was special place for them, with new discoveries. They had just found a new species of Nudibranch, a type of sea slug that was discovered off their reef. And just in February, they had seen a pod of three Killer whales Orcinas orca attack a huge mora or sunfish and eat it in front of the lodge. I didn’t know Orca traveled this far north from the Antarctic and must be rare in tropical waters. Two pods have been spotted by researchers in Raja Ampat, and observed to feed on manta rays, dolphins, and newborn Bryde’s whales. Whales play a key role in the health of marine ecosystems, from predator-prey interactions to fertilization through prodigious amounts of feces and upwelling of deep-sea nutrients. Across parts of the Coral Triangle small dolphins are numerous; these predators influence fish populations, and at the same time they are preyed upon by large sharks and killer whales. Sperm, and Bryde’s whales seen regularly in Raja Ampat bring nutrients from their 3,000 meter-deep dives to the ocean’s surface, supporting a healthy marine ecosystem. Usually marine mammals are found in cold, nutrient-rich waters near the poles. Although many whales and dolphins make long migrations between polar feeding grounds and breeding grounds closer to the equator, we did not expect the rich abundance of whales and dolphins in Raja Ampat, and parts of the Coral Triangle.

Bunaken Cha Cha Resort and beach, our veranda, dinner, dining veranda

Our first agenda after lunch was to explore the reef. My wife had only a little experience snorkeling in neck deep water with me on your honeymoon on Binden Island, so this would test her ability to be more comfortable in the ocean. It was first a blue colored starfish that lured my wife in; the sand flat was rich in small creatures. She is not a very strong swimmer, but excited to see the reef even if she remained on the surface with a flotilla of life preservers. Snorkeling we learned is among the best sites in the world. I gave her a review of using the mask and snorkel, then we waded in. Nervous of squashing the abundant coral, we both slid into thigh-deep water to swim the rest of the way to the reef drop-off, her pushing a life jacket in front and wearing another jacket. She was buoyant and overcoming her fear of deep water. The shallows offered up a

kaleidoscope of amazing fish diversity and colors that made the best of tropical aquariums look pale in comparison. The house reef at Bunaken Cha Cha was officially amazing. We turned around and came back.

This afternoon we were to see one of the best locations on Bunaken for snorkeling that feature pristine hard corals, abundant reef fish, and larger pelagic species including reef sharks, eagle rays and tuna. Bunaken National Park covers an area of 890.1 km2 (344 miles2), and there are approximately 91 species of fish found here due to the offshore unique bathymetry. The absence of a continental shelf in the northern part of North Sulawesi shapes a coastal area offshore to drop directly down the continental slope. The sea depth between the islands of the park is 200 -1,840m (662 feet -6095 feet), over a mile deep. The marine national park area is home to thousands of different species of fish, coral, endangered marine mammals and reptiles, birds, mollusks and mangrove species. The Sanghie-Talaud island chain immediately to the north of the national park area is equally diverse (440 species from 52 sites in 23,000 km2 or 8800 miles2). The uniqueness of Bunaken and the wider North Sulawesi area is its density of diversity in close proximity to a growing and populous part of Indonesia.

We met Andre, our Indonesia snorkeling and diving guide at the small diving shop below the dining room. He was very affable, and very helpful to encourage the confidence of my wife needed to go out on the water. He taught her how seal her mask, reinforcing my instruction, and rubbed Johnsons baby oil on the inside glass, so it wouldn’t fog up on her. We waded out to the boat with our gear in the late afternoon, when many of the reef creatures would be emerging to feed at dusk. We had the resort’s large snorkeling boat all to ourselves and we boarded, then motored out a short distance south where we could see Manado Tua volcano next to our island.

My wife with a life jacket on, we both flopped into the water. I swam next to her and helped her seal her mask, then placed another life jacket in front of her like our practice run, and with Andre and I beside her, she put her face down and completely lost her fear, captivated as I was by the amazing diversity of color, shapes and images below us. Andre was pointing out turtles, which were often located just over the reef drop-off. As we coasted along the surface, the beautiful star-shaped motifs on the backs of a hawksbill sea turtle was illuminated in the bright sunshine, with a background of dusky,

unending blue as a backdrop. In the first five minutes alone, we came across more outlandishly colored tropical fish than we could have imagined. We were passed by another two Hawksbill sea turtles 5 meters (15 feet) below us that seemed blissfully unaware of the human presence above them before appearing to wave flippers goodbye and then swam off in opposite directions.

One turtle ploughed through a shoal of hundreds of red-toothed triggers-fish, the other that had just passed a few meters below us, scattered a shoal of bright yellow and white pyramid butterfly fish, and silvery Trevally that are similar to lookdowns. I then turned my attention back to the wall on our right; a glorious patchwork quilt of soft and hard corals; staghorns, gorgons, shelf, and there were anemones, rocks and caves. It bristled with sea life, an amazing demonstration of Gods creativity and sense of humor in shapes, sizes and colors. So many different different schools of snapper, large bumphead parrotfish, Napolean wrasse, and a variet of unnamed reef fish schools varying from neon blue green to scarlet red and orange, moving in unison back and forth in long patterns. Some nibbled gently on the coral; and some just meandered, allowing themselves to be carried on the current to nowhere in particular.

Visibility was "only" about 30m, Andre shared with us later. The water temperature was 29C even though the slope plunged more than 1,500m down to the inky depths of the Celebes sea. If this wasn't diving paradise, I didn't know what could be. I ran my battery down on my Sony Camera, buoyant in an underwater housing. The diversity here is one of the world's few dive locations where there are no horror stories as in parts of Raja Ampat of coral depreciation, cyanide and bomb fishing, poachers, corrupt officials, arrogant and disgruntled locals do not resonate. This is because all the stakeholders have combined to form a visionary park management system that is consultative, inclusive and productive. Because of preservation, the waters of Bunaken National Marine Park retain its high diversity of corals, fish, echinoderms or sponges. Notably, 7 of the 8 species of giant clams that occur in the world, occur in Bunaken. It also claims to have seven times more genera of coral than Hawaii, and has more than 70% of all the known fish species of the Indo-Western Pacific.

Oceanic currents may explain, in part, why Bunaken National Marine Park has such a high level of biodiversity. Northeasterly currents generally sweep through the area but abundant counter currents and gyros related to lunar cycles are believed to be a trap for free swimming larvae. This is particularly true on the south side of the crescent-shaped Bunaken Island, lying in the heart of the park. A snorkeler or diver may spot over 33 species of butterfly fish and numerous types of groupers, damsels, wrasses and gobies.

Gunung Empeng, 1340 m (4396 ft) rising to the south from Bunaken Island and our veranda

flambouyant cuttlefish, sea horse, octopus, nudibranchs, sea horse, toadfish

The gobies, smallish fish with bulging eyes and modified fins that allow them to attach to hard surfaces, are the most diverse but least known group of fish in Bunaken.

Anemone fish, trumpet fish, tang, gobies, buttergyl, triggerfish, anemone fish, parrot fish, mandarin

On our fourth and final day, we departed in the morning on a glassy ocean on a clear day, rested, relaxed and thankful we discovered this unique jewel of Indonesia. Right on cue, our boat was joined by a pod of dolphins. They rode the bow wave and rolled over to look at us. As we edged away from the islands, the dolphins peeled off, seemingly unwilling to give up paradise and go the way of the mainland. We felt the same.

Once back in Manado, we regretted not having more time to explore North Sulawesi. I had wanted to visit Tangkoko National Park to see one of the world’s smallest monkeys,

the tarsier, and Black-crested macaques that are found only in Sulawesi. Locally known as yaki or wolai, its skin and hairless face is almost entirely jet black with a long muzzle with high cheeks and the long hair tuft, or crest, at the top of the head, and striking reddish-brown eyes. They forage on the forest floor and eat fruit, and live in groups of five to twenty-five animals, and occasionally in groups of up to seventy-five animals. Despite their fearsome appearance, Celebes crested macaques are quite gentle. They

Amphibian frogs, Wallaces standardwing bird of paradise,superb fruit dove,Sulawesi pitta, roller, yellow eye, Sulawesi crested macaque, cuscus, Sulawesi tarsier

are unusual in the macaque family as they communicate with several hundred different sounds. Unfortunately, their numbers have been declining in the last few years, mainly due to loss of habitat and hunting. All these factors have led to a considerable decline in their population. The island of Sulawesi is unique in its flora and fauna and was studied extensively by Alfred Russel Wallace in the late 1800’s, a contemporary of Darwin, but although he believed in natural selection, he concluded that major differences between animal and plant body design was created by some intelligent design. He spent 8 years studying the Malay Archipelago and noted in his island exploration a definitive line that demarked a major separation between different species, a line that today bears his name: the Wallace line. Wallace's Line is marked marks the location of a deep oceanic trench between Bali and Lombok north between Sulawesi and Borneo, and the point over which land animals and plants could not cross easily when the ocean levels were lower during the ice age. Similarly, Lydekker's Line, running from between Timor and the Australian shelf to between Halmahera, Seram, and New Guinea, marks the point where Australasian flora and fauna could not easily pass. Wallace discovered that the Malacca Straits separated, delineated the Austro Pacific animals from those of Borneo west to SE Asia. East of the line there is a definitive separation of both birds, mammals and reptiles from the west. To the west are found elephants, the rare Sumatran rhino, sambar, orangutan, and predators that include tiger, clouded leopard and leopard, which are lacking east. Australasia in contrast is populated by mostly marsupials and rodents, and endemic birds that include the birds of paradise found from Sulawesi to Papua New Guinea.

Sulawesi lies between these two lines., and long geographic isolation have created Sulawesi's distinctive fauna. The Sulawesi Lowland Rain Forests harbor some of these unique animals with a distinctive fauna representing a mix of Asian and Australasian species. A fruit-eating pig with huge tusks, a dwarf buffalo, endemic macaques, and cuscuses (possum)

exemplify a truly unique mammal community. There is variability, different among various animal and plant groups, with a considerable large number of species endemic to the island. Of the 104 mammal species in the ecoregion, 29 are endemic or near endemic Whereas the two cuscuses have Australasian affinities the Peleng cuscus and dwarf cuscus, the remainder of Sulawesi's mammals have Asian origins, including the crested macaque, moor macaque, booted macaque, lowland anoa, spectral tarsier, and babirusa. Sulawesi contains a poor diversity of bird fauna, and the origin of Sulawesi's birds is predominantly Asian and consists of about 337 species, of which 70 are endemic or near-endemic. Sulawesi, like the hub of a wheel, is surrounded by a variety of exotic ocean basins, including the Flores Sea, the Banda Sea, the Molucca Sea, the Java Sea, and the Straits of Makassar, as well as the diverse islands of Borneo, Java, Flores, Halmahera, and the Philippines. More than half of the original forest has been cleared. There are no extensive lowlands on Sulawesi, with large areas above 1,000 m and the highest elevation at 3,455 m on Mt. Rantemario. Sangihe is

mountainous, reaching an elevation of 1,784 m. The upland areas (more than 1,000 m) of Sulawesi form a separate ecoregion, the Sulawesi montane rain forests. The lowland forest is predominantly tropical lowland evergreen and semi-evergreen rain forest, with some monsoon forests at the tip of the southeast peninsula and small areas of freshwater and peat swamp forest. Distinctive forest types on limestone are distributed around southern Sulawesi and on ultrabasic soils in scattered locations all around the island. The lowland and hill forests contain the most tree species, although these forests are not dominated by any one tree family; only seven dipterocarp species are found in Sulawesi (compared with 267 and 106 in Borneo and Sumatra, respectively). This ecoregion also includes karst (limestone) areas that have a relative paucity of trees because of their shallow soils and steep slopes, resulting from the high solubility of limestone rocks. High calcium levels in the soil give rise to distinctive tolerant plant communities but support certain snail species limited to limestone forest as well as the large swallowtail butterfly.

I was excited to finally explore this area, having read about the history of the spice trade, and explorations of Alfred Wallace, who spent so many years here. In the eighteenth century, the Moluccas were 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. He lived in Ternite for 10 years and came to the conclusion of a different kind of evolution than Charles Darwin, who is acknowledged was the brilliant and indefatigable naturalist, but more so a self-absorbed speculative theorist, a self-mythologizer who wanted to represent himself, when the time was ripe, as the pioneer

evolutionist”. Darwin abandoned science in favor of propaganda and launched a systematic campaign of deliberate suppression of his predecessors largely by refusing to acknowledge them, and offered Victorian England a reprieve from following the Bible.

In Contrast Alfred Russel Wallace was a methodical scientist, who developed a concept of Intelligent evolution. directed, detectably designed, and purposeful common descent. Both forms of evolution describe change through time, but only Wallace’s intelligent evolution limits the power of natural selection to effect biological change. It suggests that in those areas of the biological world beyond the scope of natural selection’s operations, some purposive intelligence must be called upon to explain their existence. In contrast, Darwinian evolution claims that all biological life can be explained through a directionless process of “survival of the fittest” and random mutation. It has failed.