On our way north into Raja Ampat, we took a shortcut through a narrow channel near the village of Kabui. These are the photos from that passage through that channel.

This channel is the waterway that separates the two islands of Pulau Waigeo and Pulau Gam. It is a little over a mile long, and is as narrow as 30m in one place. It is mostly quite deep, but where it is wide at the western entrance, there is a gravel bank which came down to 3m depth.

As recommended in the cruising guides, we anchored at the entrance to the channel on approach, and surveyed it in our dinghy first. We carried the depth sounder in the dinghy, as it was written in the guide that there are a number of shallow spots, although they were obvious on our satellite navigation system. From the choice of four different satellite images, overlayed with our location on the GPS, we can easily place SeeBeeZee in the deepest water. The satellite images are the only satisfactory means of navigation in this area, as the marine charts available are completely useless, with shorelines in the wrong place and inaccurate depths.

The channel is historically significant, as the first European to transit this passage was Alfred Wallace in 1860. Wallace, the naturalist, was a significant scientific mind in the documentation of evolution and the geo-diversity of the biology of Earth. We passed into the channel from west to east, and on his exit into the maze of karst rock islands at the eastern end, he thought that he had entered a huge lake, in his travels to find the long sought Bird of Paradise. We traversed that “lake” this morning, having entered it through another opening to the sea at its southern end.

The channel is swept by extremely strong currents, that carry large nutrient loads. This feeds prolific coral growth along the edges of the channel, where the lush rainforest jungles overhang the shear limestone cliffs, with curtains of roots and orchids dangling over the salt water. This is truly a biological wonderland.