Painless Encounter with Alien Beauty!

There is this Bay in Raja Ampat that I have wanted to visit for YEARS - I guess you could say it's right up there on my 'bucket list'!  It's been there ever since I first heard about this spot, which, when the light and conditions are absolutely right, you can enjoy swimming with thousands of jellies!  I was even there once, too, with the right local guy to find us the spot, but he said it wasn't really the right season at the time, so we only saw one or two...  so I can't cross this place off my list just yet!

BUT....  During our annual Bird's Head Seascape meeting, which was held at our Wayag field station this year, there were a few opportunities to explore this amazing area...

And it turns out, hidden amongst these stunning karst mountains, there is a saltwater jellyfish lake RIGHT HERE!!!  There were at least two species of jellyfish in the lake, one virtually carpeting the entire floor of the lake, and the other, much larger, much more intimidating one free-swimming around the slightly deeper areas.

It was such a peaceful, calm place -- hidden away from the roaring sea, it was like being in a dream.  No coral tinkling, only my own heartbeat in sync with the pulsating jellyfish as I floated through the algae-thick green waters.

(Sorry, the video is not loading on the bandwidth from the field station... maybe once i'm in town again...)

In fact, an aerial survey of Wayag has shown there are actually 12 saltwater lakes here - I wonder what mysteries the other ones hold!?!

The only place in the world I had heard about where you could swim with thousands of stingless jellyfish is a land-locked lake in Palau...

Even though Palau is geographically the closest place to Raja Ampat (closer than most of the rest of Indonesia, in fact!), it is virtually impossible to get there from here!  There are absolutely no direct connections.  Although this is probably the most famous place on earth to experience the stingless jellies, I also just found out about another place right here in Indonesia called Kakaban Lake, in East Kalimantan!  Turns out it is actually part of an area in which CI works - hmmm.....

The Jellyfish lake in Palau is also a very different situation from the bay in Raja Ampat - it is a land-locked lake, which used to be part of the sea, but which has been cut off from the sea, probably in a geological 'lifting'.  It is still connected to the sea only by small fizures in the porous limestone walls surrounding it.  The jellyfish were trapped in the lake, and over time in their predator-free safe haven, have evolved into 'stingless' jellyfish.  Their stinging cells (or cnidocytes/nematocycts) have all but disappeared, making it possible, and some might say pleasureful, to swim amongst them.

This makes them unique from the stinging cousins in the open ocean, some species of which can cause serious pain and even death to humans!