The first two moorings of a planned 200 for Indonesia’s Raja Ampat Marine Park have been put in place in a move to attract more yachts to an area that contains some of the richest marine biodiversity on the planet.

Published 4 years ago

The Raja Ampat Marine Protected Area (MPA) is situated at the north-west end of Indonesia’s West Papuan province and is home to over 70% of the world’s known coral species and more than 1,700 species of reef fish.

Located off the tip of West Papua’s Bird’s Head Peninsula, Raja Ampat, (the Four Kings) comprises more than 1,500 small islands, cays, and shoals in an area that is more than 250NM from north to south 100NM from east to west.

The archipelago straddles the Equator and forms part of the Coral Triangle which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and East Timor.

New Mooring System for Visiting Yachts

The Raja Ampat Mooring System plan (RAMS) is for 200 moorings to be installed in locations throughout the archipelago.  The first two moorings have been placed at Daram Island, which is located off the east coast of Misool Island, one of the four main islands in the Raja Ampat MPA.

The Daram Island location was chosen because it is near to some very well-known dive sites which are suffering from anchor damage due to the surrounding deep water.  The moorings will provide security for boats wanting to dive in this area and reduce the amount of coral being destroyed from boats anchoring too close to the coral beds.

The moorings are funded by a section of the Raja Ampat Government Regency (or Kabupaten) with support from the Indonesian Government and the private sector.

Warwick Alliston from Sorong-based PT Eon Engineering, the company responsible for installing the moorings, said RAMS was designed to be a proper system rather than just moorings placed in an area and hoping for the best.

“The RAMS will be maintained with the help of a user-reporting system to keep ahead of any damage or loss of the moorings,” he said.  “The reporting will be supported by a smartphone app using a QR file so that users can send photos and reports via their smartphone.”

Mooring Costs for Users

At the moment, there is no charge for the use of the moorings.

However, some way of including a “host community” benefit from the moorings is being discussed as previous moorings were often removed by the village people because there was no host community buy-in or benefit.

A “User Pays” system is being considered for the use of the moorings, as is increasing the marine park fee by a small amount to feed a maintenance fund and provide a return to host communities.  But for an initial six month period, there will be no fee due to the small number of moorings.

Mooring specifications 

The following specifications have been provided by PT Eon Engineering:

• The first two moorings have been installed using 360 kg Stockless anchors set 20m apart on 22mm Studlink chain.
• All the fittings have been closed with stainless steel weld to reduce the possibility of theft.  The main riser is 8 strand buoyancy neutral Anchorplait rope.
• Future plans include smaller capacity moorings for yachts and local boats using different colored buoys in shallower water (<30m).  These would be on concrete blocks with helix screws or rock bolts to reduce damage from the “swept” area of the mooring riser.

Daram Island Mooring Locations

• RAMS Mooring #001
  S 002 deg 09.835
  E 130 deg 55,698
• RAMS Mooring #002
  S 02 deg 06.978
  E 130 deg  51.798

Our thanks to Warwick Alliston for this very useful information. Warwick is well known with cruisers in the Sorong area and operates the following businesses in Sorong, West Papua:
PT EON Engineering
Helena Marina
Tampa Garam Boat Harbour Pond

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The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of Noonsite.com or World Cruising Club.