The week kicked off in a humble, windowless room inside the Forum building—the only available space—but the lack of sunlight didn’t dim the spirits in the room. Instead, an atmosphere filled with excitement and curiosity buzzed through the air as PhD participants from Indonesia and the Caribbean gathered. The morning began with everyone sharing their […]
INREEF Week: a journey of discovery, connection, and commitment Read More »
After a year of delay due to the COVID-pandemic, it was time to get the INREEF engine running! From the 12th of September until the 7th of October, 2022 a large part of the INREEF team members from Indonesia and the Caribbean came to visit the Wageningen University. It was a month full of scientific
The guide is carefully steering the dinghy towards the mangrove-covered shore. His assistant stands in the front on the lookout. The last few meters he carefully pushes it towards the mangrove using his pole while avoiding the corals. We are doing some water quality measurements with the students at different distances and depths from the
Learning across disciplines Read More »
Imagine jumping into a lake full of jellyfish, sounds crazy right? That’s what we got to do today! Lisa got to show us one of ‘her’ Jellyfish lakes, Lake Lenmakana. This lake is a marine lake, which means it is a brackish lake that is isolated from the surrounding sea. These marine lakes are home
Today we arrived in Misool after sailing through the night. We woke up with a stunning sunrise, and a magnificent view on many green islands, randomly distributed in the ocean. In comparison with Dampier we see much fewer liveaboards and no homestays. However, we turn out to be anchored in front of a beautiful resort,
Exclusive eco-tourism? Read More »
I am standing on our ship, gazing at a small dot of green in the middle of a blue ocean. As the dot becomes bigger and the details become clear, our curiosity grows. We have arrived at Arborek, a small island of 0.1 square kilometre (including a football field) with a population of 300 people, that has almost completely adopted tourism. On
Tourism on Arborek Read More »
So finally, after three hot days in Waisai where we had discussions with local authorities, we got on the Temukira, a nice little wooden ship that we rented for our expedition. It felt good to be on the water, much cooler and after days of rain it was finally sunny. We sailed to Cape Kri,
First dive Raja Ampat, Sorido Read More »
After a long trip we finally arrived in Waisai, Raja Ampat. Here, we wanted to sort the fins and snorkels and meet the most important stakeholders for our trip. Through a tropical monsoon we ran to the meeting: around the table that looked like a wedding cake were sitting about twenty West-Papuan governmental partners, conservation
Mostly when you hear about coral reefs in the news, it’s bad. Disease & death. Luckily there are a few bright spots in the world where the reefs are still quite healthy. One of those areas is Raja Ampat, Indonesia. In 2016 & 2017 there were global bleaching events, where worldwide great numbers of corals
