A converted cynic

[billt4sf]

I am a convert.

I now accept fully that the purpose of Misool Resort (no longer Misool ECO Resort BTW) is environmental stewardship of the area. In previous visits, I wasn’t so sure that I believed the propaganda. Now, after our third visit and fifth “trip” I do, and I think my wife shares my conviction fully.

I am not aware of any other dive resorts or tourist resorts that have similar goals. If there are, I would love to know about them.

I would therefore encourage one and all to visit the resort as much as makes sense for you. It is not cheap, it is similar in price to a luxury liveaboard, but frankly the liveaboards in Raja Ampat do little or nothing to protect the environment as far as I am aware – by all means, please correct me if I am mistaken.

Why the change? Well, partly we have listened to the nightly presentations a few times, and perhaps more importantly we have gotten to know the managers and personnel there.

They explained that the founder Andrew started by purchasing all the fishing rights to a large area after observing that the locals were selling them to outside fishers that were taking everything they could for the princely sum of $30/month to the local village. One thing they were doing is shark finning, in fact the location of the resort is a former finning station. The founders realized that protecting a relatively small area could help a much larger area, and they also realized that they needed an income stream to fund the ranger patrols. The initial protected area has now been increased and is 300,000 acre / 1,220 sq km -- I think they said it was equivalent to all 5 boroughs of NYC or twice the size of Singapore.

As they began the process of building the resort (no small feat in an area where there was no regular ferry service) they found that there was a tremendous number of unused but felled trees on various nearby islands, so the resort has been built with nearly 100% reclaimed materials. This is clear if you take a close look at the tables, struts, roofs, and the like.

This initial initiative has been supplemented over the years with a number of other initiatives, for example paying the locals for collecting trash, converting the resort to solar energy (they are nearly 60% there), processing the human waste (liveaboards simply dump it into the ocean AFAIK) and of course employing many Indonesians. Those I talked to seemed to clearly understand and buy into the purpose.

The quality of diving there has been presented many times on this site and in addition there are many wonderful moments to be had in Misool aside from diving. There is a large lagoon that is easily snorkeled, there are a number of off-site trips to see a jellyfish lake, petroglyphs, and the lovely karst hills. My favorite activity aside from diving were the quiet hours I spent reading.

Misool will not be the only dive vacation that we will use in our continued exploration of Indonesian waters, but I sure wish the others had as much environmental stewardship. My understanding is that waste of all types from LOBs or other resorts is not processed or very lightly processed before being disposed of using the normal Indonesian manner – which is so say little or nothing – but please correct me if I am wrong.

I hope this causes some of you to consider including Misool Resort in your vacation plans – except of course when we want to go!

Thanks,

Bill

 

[RainPilot]

So glad to hear this Bill. On a less global scale, glad you had a great holiday!

 

[Indah]

Hi Bill,
I am very impressed and happy with the positive results which have been achieved around Misool. Really amazing. And Bill, it would be wonderful if more people would be thinking as you do about paying a bit extra for conservation.
If you could adjust to a little bit less luxury, I think you would like our Weda Resort and Magic Bay Rao too. Our main goals have been from the start Education and Conservation. We are happy that we can protect a forest with the size of 1.800 Soccer-fields and fund our 4 schools from the income of the resorts. Our vision:
Eco tourism in our opinion means more than putting a solar panel on your roof. Eco resort also means:

• That most of the building materials are coming from a close range of the resort and whenever possible have been bought from the local communities
• No trees out of a forest have been used at all. For every tree (coming out of gardens from the villagers) we replanted many more
• The local community did most of the building and got training and education to improve their skills. For example training in installation of water and electricity
• Ninety percent of the employees are people from Halmahera.

Our environmentally friendly technologies include:

• Solar water heaters, providing hot showers in the resort.
• Ultra low emission outboard engines for the dive boats.
• Solar power and batteries, that provide much of our 24-hour electricity.
• Wind turbine for top-up electricity.
• Making drinking water with filters and UV technology.

All eight bungalows in Weda Resort were built from leftovers of the production of sagu from palm trees. For the people of Halmahera sagu (starch extracted from the pith of Sago palm stems) is a major staple food. We used the leftovers for:

• The roofs were made from dried pinnated Sago palm leafs, plaited by the local people.
• The walls were made from dried sago palm ribs (gaba-gaba).