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My Trip to Papua

A Life-Changing Experience

 

My trip Papua officially began when the small boat pulled up at the jetty. As I got out and took in my surroundings, one definition kept popping into my head. Paradise. I walked along the pier, looking down at the crystal clear water to see what I could spot. There were starfish, brain coral, minnows and a stingray just to name a few.  My brother and father walked a few feet ahead of me. We reached the main office of the resort and after getting our room key, went to see what the room was like. We opened the door to a full size air-conditioned bedroom. We had brought our Xbox with us so we connected it to the TV and started playing. When we arrived it had been close to 5:00 PM, so by the time we finished playing it was 7:00 PM. We went to have dinner, which consisted of rice, sautéed vegetables and, for desert, a piece of chocolate cake. After this, my brother and I were very tired because we’d been up since 2:30 in the morning! We said goodnight to everyone and then walked to the room and crashed into bed.

 We didn’t wake up until 7:00 the next morning. After a good breakfast of delicious Nuttella pancakes and a banana milkshake, I headed to the pier and my dad and I got ready for our first dive in Papua. When we had assembled the various bits and pieces, we got on to the Barracuda, a 7-man diving boat, and headed off to the first dive site. Since I am only 11, I’m not old enough to dive with a buddy below the rank of Dive Master, so I had my own buddy assigned to me. His name was Dolvinus. As we neared the site, I reflected that Indonesians are very good divers, so I was in good hands. When we finally did arrive at the “jump-in zone” we did a quick equipment check and then jumped in. A huge swarm of bubbles appeared around me as I opened my eyes. I inflated my BCD, or my Buoyancy Control Device, and floated at the surface. When Otto, our dive guide, gave the signal to descend, I let the air out and sank into another world. When I was 1 meter above the seafloor, a godlike sight came into view. I was floating over a cloud of thousands of fish, which were in turn floating over a beautiful reef. No, beautiful isn’t the word to describe the reef. Nor is divine. No matter how hard I try, I simply can’t find the word to describe that reef. You have to see it to know its true beauty. I swam to rejoin the others, who consisted of Otto, my father, Yoko (one of my dad’s colleges),David (a medical consultant from Boston with almost 300 dives under his belt) and then we all swam together over the reef. I saw a lot of beautiful fish, but then Dolvinus pointed out something just out of the range of my peripheral vision. I turned around….and my heart skipped a beat. I was less than 10 meters away from one of the most beautiful hunters of the coral reef. The Blacktip Reef Shark. I will never forget that moment; because that was the first time I had seen a shark outside of an aquarium. Dolvinus and I saw two more sharks. A Wobbegong Shark and another Blacktip, and millions more fish, but I couldn’t get the image of that shark out of my mind.

 The second dive of that day was at a different spot, but when I jumped in, the sight that greeted me made my blood boil. For at least two kilometers, dynamite fishermen had blown up the reef. They had left in their wake a huge pile of dead coral, white and lifeless, mere shadows of the once brilliant creature they made up. Why anyone would want to destroy a vibrant coral reef both perplexes me and angers me. What could fishermen possibly gain by blowing up their fishing grounds? They realize that the next time they come here, all the fish will be gone, and there will be nothing for them to catch. Yet they continue to blow up reefs all over the world, and nothing seems to stop them. I kept thinking about this for most of the dive, so I wasn’t paying much attention. But I managed to see my first turtle, which was a Hawksbill Turtle, and the much bigger but slightly less beautiful cousin of the Blacktip Reef Shark, the Whitetip Reef Shark. On the third dive of the day, we descended as usual, and I happened to descend right into a million strong school of Yellowfin Tuna, and it was a spectacular feeling to be engulfed by so many fish. They accompanied me until I hit seafloor, and then they swam away. I looked and Dolvinus and he had a look that said: what in the world just happened?! I laughed to myself, if you can laugh underwater, and swam off to look for the others. Dolvinus followed me. We saw a lot of fish, a fact I was getting used to, and among those fishes were a Bumphead Parrotfish, a Sweetlips Grouper and Jack Trevally.

 The fourth dive of that day was another thing that I will never forget. The fourth dive was my first night dive. We descended in pitch-black darkness onto a reef that was teeming with sleeping fish and reef animals that were creatures of the night. I was terrified and ecstatic at the same time. I think that was a side effect of the adrenalin rush I experienced while descending. We saw Mantis Shrimp, Ghost Shrimp, another Hawksbill and a clownfish sleeping peacefully in an anemone. I had a big meal of rice, corn fritters and vegetables for dinner and then watched a movie with Yoko, my brother and my father. The next day I skipped the first morning dive because I was too tired to go, but the second morning dive I participated in and it was an eventful dive. We descended through murky waters and were again enveloped by schools of fish, this time it was silverfish and Trevally. When I hit the bottom my regulator was snagged on a rock and was almost yanked out of my mouth. Then, because I didn’t deflate my BCD properly I kept bobbing up and down in the water column like a cork. I saw a Whitetip on this dive as well as nudibranchs and starfish. On the third dive we again descended through water with nil visibility. We stopped at a sand plain and then continued towards the reef. Currents were really strong and getting there was like trying to pull a truck filled with cement through a really strong headwind. Again the condition of parts of the reef made me angry. More dynamite had leveled homes and the survivors had fled to intact parts of the reef. I knew from long hours of studying the ocean and its inhabitants that many of those species would not survive. Many species of reef fish have adapted to live in only one specific environment in the entire reef ecosystem. Forced to move away from those habitats, they will soon die out.

 I want to educate these fishermen when I grow up. I want to educate them on safer and more profitable ways of fishing. Ways that are safer for the reef, and more profitable for fishermen. But I can only do that when I am older. Now, I can send a message to a small group of students at JIS: Our coral reefs are the richest ecosystems in the world. The biodiversity of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil pales in comparison to the natural wealth of the coral reefs. We, as kids born in the 21^st century, are lucky. We have the best quality education available to us, we have plenty of food to eat, and we all have families who love and care for us. There are many people in the world who don’t have these things. I urge you all, as a friend, a classmate and an ocean lover, to make the most of your opportunities and save the coral reefs so that not only we can enjoy them, but future generations of children and adults can enjoy them too. I will help too. My dream since the age of 4 was to become a marine biologist. I figured that by taking that kind of job, I could be in the thick of the effort to protect the oceans. Even after seven long years, my passion for the ocean remains as strong as ever and my dream is still the same. There are a lot of things we can’t do as adults, but there are small things, tiny things that might not seem to make a difference, that we can do to help the oceans. So I urge you again to do the best you can to protect our oceans, because without them, our world, will be an, empty, lifeless ball, floating around in space, a shell of its former glory. If you don’t want that to happen, go online and Google ways that you can help. Like I said before, most of them are so simple you won’t believe it has any effect. But it will. We are the generation that has the power to change this Earth that we live in. Take advantage of that. Act now.