Raja Ampat

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An archipelago off the north-western tip of the island of New Guinea, in the Indonesian province of Southwest Papua, at the heart of the Coral Triangle and among the richest reef locations recorded anywhere for both coral and reef fish species. Its interest for this Journey is not only diversity but resilience: the islands sit in a zone of strong tidal currents and vigorous mixing between the Pacific and Indian Ocean water masses, which delivers cool water and disrupts the stable warm surface layer that mass bleaching requires. Sites like this are the empirical basis for the idea of thermal refugia — places where local physical processes hold the temperature below the bleaching threshold while the surrounding region crosses it. Refugia are not immune; they are lagging.