Come scuba diving with Jett and Kathryn Britnell to West Papua Islands and Raja Ampat aboard “Ms Sylvia Earle”.
Exotic: uncommon and thrilling because it arrives (or appears to arrive) from afar, particularly from a tropical country. Different or odd in a striking, fascinating, or mysterious way.
The West Papua Islands and Raja Ampat are everything; and a bag of chips! They are ecstatic to be going on this Aurora Expeditions excursion. Please join Jett and Kathryn.
Raja Ampat, or the Four Kings, is an archipelago off the northwest coast of New Guinea’s Bird’s Head Peninsula, in the Indonesian state of West Papua. Around the four main islands of Misool, Salawati, Batanta, and Waigeo, as well as the smaller island of Kofiau, there are about 1,500 tiny islands, cays, and shoals.
Raja Ampat is known as the Crown Jewel of the Bird’s Head Seascape, which also includes Cenderawasih Bay and Triton Bay, and is regarded the global centre of tropical marine bio-diversity. More than 600 kinds of hard corals, or almost 75% of all known species, may be found in the region, as well as more than 1,700 species of reef fish, which can be found on both shallow and mesophotic reefs. Raja Ampat’s biodiversity is the richest in the world when compared to similar-sized environments elsewhere. Dugongs, whales such as blue or/and pygmy blue, bryde’s, less well-known omura’s, dolphins, and orcas are endangered and rare marine mammals that can be found there.
Temperatures range from 20 to 33 °C (68 to 91 °F) on the islands, which have a tropical environment.
Jett & Kathryn Britnell are professional underwater, wildlife and expedition photographers, internationally published writers, explorers, speakers, scuba divers, shark advocates, book reviewers, marine conservationists and devil may care adventurers.