When Good Dragons Go Bad

Just saw this in the news, and thought I'd pass it along to my millions of dragon-loving followers:

Komodo dragons have shark-like teeth and poisonous venom that can kill a person within hours of a bite. Yet villagers who have lived for generations alongside the world's largest lizard were not afraid — until the dragons started to attack.

It's unclear to me just how much more dangerous these guys really are. But it's interesting to see the different theories being put forth and the responses to them.

Perhaps it's just a slow news day. But if you happen to be in the neighborhood, better watch out!

My Broken State

I have had the privilege of living in California most of my life. There are many wonderful things about the place, and I have chosen it over some other terrific options. One of the not-so great aspects of living here, however, is that the state government is horribly broken.

This article from The Economist gets a lot of what's not working, and talks a bit about some efforts to fix or replace it. Here's a pretty good summary:

The broken budget mechanism and the twin failures in California’s representative and direct democracy are enough to guarantee dysfunction. The sheer complexity of the state exacerbates it. Peter Schrag, the author of “California: America’s High-Stakes Experiment”, has counted about 7,000 overlapping jurisdictions, from counties and cities to school and water districts, fire and park commissions, utility and mosquito-abatement boards, many with their own elected officials. The surprise is that anything works at all.

As a result, there is now a consensus among the political elite that California’s governance is “fundamentally broken” and that the state is “ungovernable, unless we make tough choices”, as Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles and a likely candidate for governor next year, puts it.

I hope we'll be able to pull it together. The city I live in (Oakland) is pretty dysfunctional at this point, too. Interesting times....

Popular Depictions of Torture

Torture is a standard trope in many forms of popular entertainment. Frankly, it's so common that I don't think some writers even realize what they're including in their material. For example, the very fun (and mostly kid-appropriate) movie The Incredibles has some very intense scenes of torture. I realize that's a staple for superhero movies, but it didn't seem necessary in that otherwise terrific film. And it made me regret that my daughter saw the film, as I felt she was too young to understand that part (but old enough to be troubled by it).

Now, in my youth I saw plenty of "torture," too, but mostly in silly contexts such as cartoons or the Batman TV series, where the "danger" was usually so comical as to be laughable. I mean, Batman being fed to a giant "man-eating clam" is just too silly for even a child to take seriously. We get the message that the bad guy is trying to "torture" Batman, either to extract some information or to make his (highly dubious) demise slow and painful. And I suppose one could argue that such easy depictions of something truly awful might actually lessen one's horror at the real thing (though in my case, that obviously wasn't the outcome).

This is all brought to mind by my seeing the new Star Trek movie over the weekend. I really enjoyed it, both because it was a fun movie from end to end and because I can't even remember the last time I saw any movie on its opening weekend, even standing in line with friends to get good seats. What fun!

As many Star Trek episodes do, this one has some torture in it (though less graphic than much of what's out there these days). I can barely remember an episode of the original series where Captain Kirk or one of his crew didn't get abused in some way by someone. (And is it just coincidence that that series overlapped with Batman in the mid-1960s?) But I had forgotten the really excellent (and excruciating) episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation where Captain Picard is tortured at length by the Cardassians.

There's a great discussion of it at length in this article from Slate by Juliet Lapidos (hat tip to Josh Marshall at TPM). Read the whole thing; it's very good. Here's a highlight:

The extended torture sessions take a toll not just on Picard but on his interrogator as well. The more time the Cardassian spends with Picard, the more he becomes fixated on breaking his prisoner. And so the supposed goal of torture—information—is sidelined, while the means by which the goal will theoretically be achieved—mental submission—becomes an end in itself. As Picard puts it, "Torture has never been a reliable means of extracting information. It is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. One wonders it is still practiced."

One gets the impression watching Dick Cheney recently that big chunks of the U.S. government crossed that line at some point (like waterboarding the same guy scores of times). Eventually the already dubious goal of forcefully extracting information gets lost in the mission of breaking the victim. Instead of the ends justifying the means (though they still insist that's what's behind it), the means themselves are merely trying to justify their own use. (If you can't break the subject, what's the point of trying to? Thus, you must keep trying.) Ultimately, torture demeans both the torturer and the victim, and for no good outcome.

The good news is that this stuff is only a minor subplot in the whole Star Trek movie. I highly recommend it to those who like the old Trek: the new angles on the familiar characters are a lot of fun. I'll avoid further comment so as not to spoil it for anyone. But go read the Slate article.

Sea Creature Update

No actual further news on the psychedelic frog fish or the barreleye fish, but I just stumbled across both of them on the Rocketboom blog in a post about the 15 most bizarre sea creatures. Definitely other cool stuff there.

And speaking of Rocketboom, I haven't been paying attention, and was disappointed to see that Joanne Colan left as presenter last month. She was great fun to watch. I'm sure her replacement will also be good.

The Good Old Days

I have long complained that baseball players, and particularly pitchers, seem to be pampered to a degree today that I think diminishes the game and the achievements of the players. In particular, starting pitchers are coddled, pitch less often and for shorter stints than they did a generation ago.

The 20-game winner is nearly extinct. Pitchers rarely finish games, settling for so-called "quality starts" of 6 innings or so. They shoot for 200 innings in a season, where 300 used to be relatively common. I'm not suggesting that they don't work hard or anything (though some, such as Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus, contend that pitchers pitch too infrequently in games, and too often between times).

It is comforting, of course, to know that this is not a new issue. For example, this quote from a retired pitcher:

The game of baseball hasn't changed much in the past fifty years, but the players have a different philosophy toward the game. They want to make a lot of money and retire. ... We played for the love of the game; there were few holdouts. We wanted to pitch every day; to win more games than the other guy--not for the money, but for the glory of winning.

It's great stuff, and it comes from Hall of Famer Kid Nichols in Baseball Digest, January 1948 (hat tip to Paul Campos at LGM). Here are some more gems:

...modern-day clubs carry too many pitchers, which prevents the hurlers from working enough to bring out the best that is in them. The old-time clubs carried three pitchers; today, they have 10. ...

Sometimes we pitched every other day. Twice I pitched three days in succession and went the distance in each game. ...

We worked hard, but I wouldn't say we were overworked. During my twelve years with Boston, I took part in 517 games, averaging twenty-seven and three-tenths wins per season. ... If I was overworked, it didn't affect my arm. I spent seventeen years in organized ball, far above the average of present-day hurlers.

It's short, but a good read. Anyway, I guess the more things change, the farther we get from the "good old days," whatever we believe them to have been. And yet, baseball is still pretty wonderful!

I'll just be wandering off in my walker now.

Talking About Torture

First, my apologies for being so silent this month. It's not that there aren't things I want to write. I just found myself immersed in a project for work that ate up all my time. Now that I have at least somewhat caught up on little things like sleep and family, I can once again start to share with y'all!

So we're back to one of our long-time topics here, torture. To summarize for those who arrived late: I'm against it.

But the "debate" goes on. The release of the White House "torture memos" this month has made quite clear that some truly despicable acts were approved and applied. I can think of no explanation for waterboarding someone dozens of times that doesn't involve sadism, desperation, or cluelessness. All of which are completely inexcusable.

Probably the most bizarre aspect of the discussion to me is the focus on whether these tactics "worked." As if somehow, some nugget of information extracted by torture justifies grossly immoral, inhuman, and patently illegal behavior. The "effectiveness" of torture (about which I have ranted many times) is a completely tangential issue. Torturing people is wrong, and to claim that it is necessary or otherwise justified just defies both rationality and decency.

The worst and most lasting legacy of the last few years may not be the state of global economic ruin; that will recover. But the pervasive post-hoc justification of unthinkable, unspeakable acts will be hard to wean people from. A generation that grows up believing that ends justify means will be difficult to live with.

The always excellent Tom Tomorrow gives a good slant on the torture "debate" in this week's comic.

Lunch Thoughts

Haven't had much time for blogging since we got back from Indonesia. Lots of work piled up while we were away.

Today I went off to run some errands at lunchtime, and found myself in a position to grab a fast-food burger on the way back to the office. So I stopped in the Carl's Jr at Hallidie Plaza. It's pretty rare that I have a hamburger for lunch (or dinner, really), but I've always kind of liked Carl's "Six Dollar Burger."

As I ate mine today, it occurred to me that before too long, that name may have to change. The list price for the Six Dollar Burger now exceeds $5. I wonder what they'll do about that.

And I have to say I was a bit disappointed in my Western Bacon Six Dollar Burger. It was rather dry, and I don't think I've ever seen bacon sliced that thin. Ah, well.

The Long Ride Home

[Note: I'll update later with some pictures!]

The last legs of this trip are all in the air. From Makassar we fly to Bali, have a brief stopover, then off to Taipei, another stopover, and then home to San Francisco. Because of our friend the International Date Line, the trip starts in Makassar on Thursday morning, and after about 24 hours in transit, it's Thursday evening in San Francisco.

The hard part, of course, is figuring out how to do the trip without ending up hopelessly jet-lagged next week at work. So we'll try a combination of staying awake (my favorite solution to jet lag), and the homeopathic No Jet Lag pills. I've got books to read, and we'll see what fine cinematic treats China Airlines has in store.

Much later...

And it all turns out fine. Jan wasn't feeling too well, so she slept much of the trip. Christopher and I managed to stay awake most of the way, and the airline showed us some decent movies (unlike the trip over, where the "highlight" was a TV movie called "The Librarian"): Madagascar II on the Bali-Taipei leg, then Quantum of Solace (not my favorite Bond flick, but diverting enough for a plane) and Slumdog Millionaire, which I actually wanted to see, on the long transoceanic leg.

On the layover in Bali, we did a little shopping to use up the last of our Indonesian money, then ate lunch at the same Japanese restaurant we went to last September before catching our flight home. That gave us a chance to say goodbye to a few of our friends.

During the stop in Taipei, we had time to walk around and see some of the shops, including a gift shop from the national museum. Unfortunately, we also found shark fins for sale at several shops. But there was also nice tea, art, and some cool electronic gizmos. So that kept us busy. Another intriguing aspect was some rest areas they had decorated to resemble some of the natural areas one might visit in Taiwan. Kind of an interesting way to advertise, and a pleasant little respite from the commercial and travel facilities.

Oh, and they had a bunch of decorated art cows. The decorations were by school children. They were very bright and colorful and very cool looking!

All in all, our very long travel day passed relatively quickly, and the great reward came when we arrived in San Francisco, where we were greeted by our very eager, happy daughter. That was a most welcome end to a great trip.

Interlude in Makassar

Because of domestic flight schedules, we got to spend about a day in Makassar. We had flown through Makassar on the way to Raja Ampat, but this time we got to go into town and stay overnight.

Several interesting points. I noted on the way through the first time that the city and/or the airport seem to have two apparently interchangeable names, Makassar and Ujung Pandang. Some quick Googling now tells me that Ujung Pandang was a somewhat short-lived official name of the city at the end of the 20th century, but it is now Makassar again. I should note that a lot of the place names in Indonesia seem to change now and then. The province of Papua, which includes Raja Ampat, was at some point Iryan Jaya. But not anymore.

Second, Makassar is a commercial and shipping center, but not a tourist destination. It is practically at the geographical center of the Indonesian archipelago. We had a nice hotel, the Imperial Aryaduta. Nice facilities, but it's odd to be in a place where even the hotel staff speaks fairly limited English. Makassar definitely is not set up to cater to American tourists.

Third, this is our first stop in Indonesia where you really get the feeling of how deeply Muslim this country is. There are mosques seemingly everywhere, including one right across the street from our hotel. This means we can hear the call to prayer five times a day (and the hotel room has an indicator to show us where Mecca lies). The hotel information book includes a prayer-time schedule for the entire year.

Going out to lunch was a bit of an adventure. Aside from the fact that we had a bit of difficulty understanding the verbal directions from the hotel staff, we also didn't have any clue where we were going. So we found a restaurant and decided to go in. The menu was only in Indonesian, and the wait staff spoke only a tiny bit of English. Luckily I had learned enough of the names of food items on the boat that I could identify chicken, fish, rice, noodles, and a few other items. And beer. We perhaps didn't expect eight big bottles, but it was a hot day, and they went down great. The food was really tasty, and cheap. No complaints.

Dinner was pretty amusing, too. In the basement of the hotel there is a Brazilian-Mexican Pub and Restaurant called Salsa. The homesick Californians decided to see what Indonesian Mexican food is. We're still wondering, because the menu had no Mexican items. At all. Go figure. So we mostly ordered pizza!

I guess most important, the hotel had Internet service for me, and massages for Jan. Something for all of us, and a nice little experience that served as a transition on the way home.

Diving Recap

Wow...it's over. Lots and lots of diving, and it's done. So let's look back at what we've done:

43 dives, and I think Jan and I were the only ones who did them all. I spent nearly 52 hours under water, or an average of about an hour and twelve minutes for each dive. And Jan averaged about 7 minutes more per dive, which adds up to almost a full five extra hours under water over the two weeks. Amazing!

I guess we're kinda seriously waterlogged by now. But it's OK. A few days ago I was concerned that my ears weren't going to be happy with a dive trip this long, but they seem to have made it through just fine.

So, short summary is that we've done more diving on this single trip than we've ever done at one take before. Was it worth it?

I guess the obvious answer is, "Duh." I can't believe we'd have spent that much time if we weren't enjoying the dives. Although I have to say, we did a night dive the other night that was just dismal. Even the cruise director called it "crappy." And we were still down about an hour. So I guess it's plausible that we might have done a huge amount of mediocre diving, especially having traveled halfway around the world to do so.

Fact is, Raja Ampat and the surrounding area are amazing. I have never seen the sheer variety of corals and colors as we observed here. Just spectacular. And fish! Large numbers of fishes, big schools, great variety, and so on. And the reefs were quite healthy and robust.

Even in those cases where we didn't have spectacular conditions, such as the last few days in the north where the visibility was murky, we saw some great stuff (and could tell that in good conditions, it would be truly awesome).

Looking back, I realize I haven't said much about the dive boat. We sailed on the Archipelago Adventurer II, of the Archipelago Fleet. And I believe the cabin shown in the little slide show on the page is the cabin we actually stayed in. I have to admit to having some mixed feelings about the operation. I can break it down into three separate areas: the diver operation, the business, and the boat itself.

The dive operation is top-notch. The dive guides are terrific (especially Ali and Made), they know the sites and conditions very well. The tenders, tender crews, and deck crew are great. We had some issues with the management of the operation--how they chose sites or limited dive times--but that didn't mar the diving itself. The cruise directors are relatively new on the job, and this is their first time running a liveaboard.

On the business side, I was really impressed with Archipelago Fleet. They arranged all our domestic transfers and lodgings, and all that worked very smoothly. I don't think we could have managed all that by ourselves. It was particularly helpful to have locals there to negotiate all our baggage transfers and fees at the airports. This was all a cut above what I've experienced with other dive companies.

Lastly, the boat itself. The website describes it as "newly constructed," but frankly, it's a bit run down (and I'm told it's going into dry dock in June for some much-needed repairs). The public areas are nice. Both of the dining salons (one of which is used as the camera and TV room) are pleasant, and the dining deck outside the upper dining salon is lovely. The sun deck has no covering, so it's really a SUN deck. Really, it's too hot up there most of the time, so we ended up either indoors or at least under cover on a lower deck. Several of the cabins leaked when it rained. Some of the fixtures and finishing in the cabins were in less-than-perfect repair.

Overall, then, I'm a little conflicted. On the whole, I liked the dive operation and the boat crew and the business operations. On the other hand, the boat itself isn't really up to the standard of other "luxury" liveaboards we've been on.

So Raja Ampat gets a big thumbs-up for the diving. Archipelago Fleet really impressed me as a company and overall operation. I have real reservations about the Archipelago Adventurer II, though. So I would certainly consider going back, but would want to see that the boat had gotten some real upgrades. There are other boats operating in the area, and I would have to look at them, too.

Return Engagements

I've always been of the school that says great experiences aren't repeatable. Your second trip to Disneyland can never be as magical as the first. And if you win the lottery, you should stop buying tickets.

Along those lines, the passengers on our boat last night chose to head back to the sites where we dove with manta rays and under the piers the other day. In the light of not-so-favorable conditions where we'd been diving, the group elected to bypass the signature dive site of the region in favor of sites that had given us great dives. The danger, of course, being that it might not be as good this time. Indeed, I mentioned to Jan last night that we could sit and wait for mantas with no luck, or find that the fish had abandoned the piers and a current was ripping through or something. Ever the optimist, no?

So we arrived early at Manta Sandy to check for favorable currents and such, planning to dive at 8:00 am. Of course, another boat shows up and drops their divers in at 7:30. So we rescheduled to 8:30, so as not to overcrowd the site.

At 8:30 we dropped in, and lo, there are mantas at the cleaning station already, and we had as many as six at a time swooping through for the next hour-and-a-half or more. Marvelous! As good as the first time, and maybe even better in some ways.

Getting back on our boat, we learned that the other boat that had jumped in ahead of us had waited 40 minutes before seeing any mantas, and then had only three. So we definitely got the best of that exchange! They were coming back to the site as we left, so maybe they had something good later.

Then on to the piers, where we dropped in and...no fish. Really. Just desolate. Ghost town. We poked around the reef for a while, finding some pretty nice fish and things, and eventually headed back to the piers. The anchovies had returned, as had the school of trevally jacks that like to hunt there. But no sign of the scads that were so plentiful the last visit.

On the plus side, someone found a little farm of giant tridachna clams (Jan counted 19 of them), including some quite large. Always nice to see big, healthy giant clams.

All in all, it was worth coming back. No great disappointments, and the mantas were at least as good the second time around. We were fortunate.

Great Expectations

All trip long we've been hearing about how great the north was going to be: great visibility, big fish, and so on. And indeed, it's quite different from both the early muck diving we did and the reefs as we worked our way up here.

On the other hand, conditions have been somewhat poor, with unusual currents bringing in murky, yellow water much of the time. The nutrient-rich water is great for the reefs and the critters who live on and around them, but it makes the diving less than spectacular. It's nice to see a school of 100 fish, but frustrating to know that you could see 1000 or more if the water were clearer.

This suggests that perhaps our cruise director should have been a little more circumspect about what we would find here. Yes, we're all experienced divers and know that the conditions are at the whim of the ocean. But we can't help but get our hopes up when we constantly hear how great it's going to be.

It's a little disappointing, but we are still seeing some great stuff. No complaints about the diving; it's just not quite what we'd been led to expect.

Personal Bests

One thing that fascinates me about diving is that the longer I do it, the more I learn about myself. I have, over the years, learned to slow my breathing to the point that I could almost always make a standard tank of air last for an hour under most circumstances. Earlier this week, I faced a challenge, in that some of the folks I was diving with were pushing for longer dive times, up to and sometimes exceeding an hour and a half.

And I utterly surprised myself by managing to do it, too. It was a stretch at times, and I came up with nearly empty tanks a couple of times, but darned if by the end of the trip, I'm not finding 80-90 minutes a very reachable goal nearly all the time. And a couple of times I got to find out what happens when my dive computer runs out of digits to count the dive time. It only uses two digits, so when we aimed for 100 minutes a couple of times, I was curious to see what it would do.

Turns out I can't dive more than 99 minutes on my computer. It just stops counting at 99 (or at least, stops displaying additional time. This seems bad, as it's really, really important to know how much time has elapsed. It was one of a couple of limitations I ran into this week with my old computer. I think I'm going to have to invest in a new one before we do another serious dive trip. Luckily, that gives me a little time to save my pennies.

Reef Encounters

Neat stuff today, in rather unexpected venues. First dive in the morning was a manta dive at a site called "Manta Sandy." As the name implies, it's a sandy sea mount with little coral, but one area is a known cleaning station for big manta rays. And after we sat there for about 15 minutes, here came several big rays. The first ones, I'd guess, we maybe 8-12 feet across their wingspans. Later we saw some that must have been more like 15-18 feet: just massive. They come in, swooping and swirling, with remoras attached, so the cleaner fish can do their jobs. Truly fun to watch, and we had about an hour of that, so it was definitely worth the wait.

Next stop was at the pier at a little island called Airborek (or maybe Air Borek). The main attraction is huge schools of little bait fish (scads, mostly, but also anchovies) that hang out under the pier. Those were spectacular: fun to swim with a great photo and video subjects. The big surprises awaited us on the coral heads nearby. Ali, one of the dive guides, found two pygmy seahorses that he hadn't known about before. Then one of the divers, Mary, found a little blue-ringed octopus.

Basically, I had very low expectations for both of those dives, and both turned out to be great. This is one of the reasons I almost never skip a dive: you never know what you might miss. There's always risk with going to a spot to see one particular thing, since it might not be there. On the other hand, you could always see something great you didn't expect!

The Plural of Octopus

Considerable discussion among the pedants in our group about the proper plural of "octopus." I had never really thought about it, and never looked it up. Apparently,"octopi" is incorrect. Indeed, my spell-checker has just flagged it as an error.

The correct word is apparently "octopodes," although "octopuses" is also acceptable (and the only version my spell checker -- and Blogger's -- seems to accept).

Mixed Results

One of the biggest changes in diving since I started almost 15 years ago is the common adoption of mixed-gas diving. It used to be that the tank on your back held compressed air, and while that is still sometimes true, on most of these tropical dive boats the tanks are mostly filled with Nitrox now.

"Nitrox" is a generic term for "enriched air" which is air with more oxygen added. Oxygen is generally very good for your body. We've all see tired athletes breathing oxygen to recover, and various kinds of patients breathing it under a doctor's care.

Divers have tried lots of modifications of breathing gas over the years. Ultimately there are two (or three) issues they are trying to solve:

• Air contains 79% nitrogen (versus 21% oxygen), and nitrogen bubbles can cause "the bends." The less nitrogen, the better.
  
• Oxygen at high pressure can be toxic. So not too much of that in the mix, especially as you dive deeper.
  
• Breathing too much pressurized oxygen over the course of a day can also be toxic (but in a different way).

I'll spare you all the science behind all this. Suffice it to say that it's desirable to displace some of the nitrogen in breathing gas with another gas. Under many conditions, oxygen is a good choice, but if one is diving very deep (and therefore under very high pressure), that could be deadly, so an inert gas such as helium or argon is generally used instead.

I remember vividly seeing film of divers years ago in a bathysphere breathing a gas with lots of helium added. The resulting "helium voice" was quite memorable. There is still "heliox" in use, but divers more commonly use the heavier (but also inert) argon now.

Fairly recently, recreational divers started using Nitrox (air with additional oxygen), which for most diving provides a margin of safety and comfort.

The drawback for me is that one needs a special dive computer to handle the necessary calculations for allowable depth and time given a particular mix of gases. Most modern dive computers handle this pretty elegantly, but my rather outdated one requires that I set it for the percentage of oxygen in the Nitrox for every single dive. And if I should forget, it defaults to assuming I'm using a 50% oxygen gas for my next dive, rather than the more reasonable assumption that I'll be using whatever I used the last time (usually between 30 and 32% oxygen).

So of course, I have now twice forgotten to set the computer before a dive on this trip, and it has been a huge hassle. I think I've handled it well and responsibly, by occasionally lying to the computer and telling it I was breathing plain air instead of Nitrox, so as to balance out the calculations. But I should not have to do this.

Before I do any more serious diving, I will probably need to invest in a new dive computer. Not that I mind new toys (especially computers!), but I basically like the one I have, but for this one thing. Annoying.

Misool Eco Resort

Been so busy diving the last couple of days, I haven't gotten to write at all! Diving's been really good, though.

This afternoon a few of us had the chance to pay a brief visit to a new dive resort here in Misool, the Misool Eco Resort. To say it's beautiful is an understatement. It's a lovely lagoon, and actually incorporates a small island in the lagoon via a wooden bridge.

The idea of the resort is the be as "green" and sustainable as possible. Thorben Niemann, who designed and built much of the resort, gave us a little tour and pointed out many features, such as the fact that all the wood used in construction was driftwood. They capture and use waste water for gardening. And they will soon have solar panels to generate much of the daily electricity (though not enough for, say, the air compressor in the dive center). And they've created a marine preserve around the resort, so there's no fishing and the like. We saw fish and small reef sharks swimming right in the lagoon.

It's quite beautiful and impressive. My pictures don't do it justice; you should click through to their website which does a much better job. I did get one cool shot of the inside of the roof at the resort's restaurant, though my little camera doesn't do it justice:


All I can say personally is that in the brief time we were there, we were accosted by some of the largest mosquitoes I have ever seen. They were fierce! We had forgotten to put on any repellent, but I have to say it would be a very different experience staying at the resort than on a boat as we are (with no mosquitoes!).

But it's really nice to see someone creating a very different kind of resort.

Motoring from Ambon

After our night dive tonight, we pulled the anchor and started on our way north. Tomorrow morning we'll be at a small island with a fringing reef north of here. We'll do a couple of dives there, then around noon we'll head for Raja Ampat itself, specifically the island of Misool.

Raja Ampat literally means "four kings." It refers to four native kings who controlled the spice trade back in the 17th century. They divided up the spice islands, including the area we're going to now.

Raja Ampat includes one of the largest marine protected areas in the world, and should be quite spectacular. It is known for having the greatest diversity of both coral and fish life of any area known on the planet.

Diving in the Muck

Today's diving is what we call "muck diving," which means searching for creatures (usually small ones), often amongst rubble, sand, or detritus. In fact, some of the best substrate for muck diving is human flotsam, such as bottles, discarded clothing, and such.

We have already seen, after only two dives, some very cool stuff. One highlight is that we've found several pairs of small cuttlefish, and have observed them both eating and mating. Wow! I'd only seem that on video before. We've also encountered more stonefish than I've probably ever observed before. Stonefish are very hard to see, as they blend in with their surroundings. But they pack a punch: very toxic spines that can kill humans. So it's good to know there are a lot of them around, if only to make us really, really careful.

Frogfish Update

Just had a chat with James, one of the cruise directors. He says the much-anticipated psychedelic frogfish hasn't actually been seen by anyone in about a year. As noted in my earlier post, it was first found some twenty years ago, then "misplaced" until last year, at which time it was seen a fair amount for several months, but not since.

We've declared a bounty on finding this fish: free beer for the remainder of the trip for whoever locates it. If that doesn't find it, nothing will!

We did a nice dive this morning, kind of a check-out dive, but we saw good stuff.