As part of our series on 'great photo locations', wildlife and nature photographer Jürgen Freund takes us to Indonesia's West Papua, home to two giants of the sea.
Cairns in north Queensland is a pretty stunning place for a nature photographer and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather call home. But for 18 months, starting April 2009, the World Wide Fund for Nature commissioned my wife and I to photograph the six Asia Pacific countries of the Coral Triangle.
Of more than 50 locations we visited, the province of West Papua in Indonesia stood out. I was first in West Papua 16 years ago, long before it was known to the world. It’s in one of the remotest parts of Indonesia. I went to Raja Ampat to explore and photograph the wondrous underwater world and the surreal topside landscapes of karst limestone outcropped islands topped with lush forests that was home to the birds of paradise. I kept talking about Raja Ampat for years to anyone who’d listen. Now it’s in every serious diver’s “must-go-before-I-die” list.
We went to a site which guaranteed the rare presence of the world’s largest marine sea turtle – the leatherback. The Bird’s Head Peninsula hosts the breeding ground of the Pacific sub-population of leatherback turtles and in late July 2009, for eight days, we spent the daylight hours sleeping and the nights patrolling the two kilometre coastline of Jamursba Medi. Almost every night we saw two massive female leatherback turtles come up from the sea, heaving their heavy bodies onto the beach, searching for the perfect location to dig and lay their clutch of eggs. This species is so critically endangered, it’s estimated there are only 2000 breeding females left in the Pacific.
Some 500km southeast of the Bird’s Head is Cenderawasih Bay, host to another giant – the biggest fish in the world. Whale sharks come to feed and stay in this bay. Fish-attracting devices, locally called ‘bagan lights’, attract an assortment of fish at night. We dived under the bagan for hours with eight whale sharks circling above us like fighter planes!
