Buyat Bay Reborn

North Sulawesi’s Buyat Bay was the center of controversy a few years ago amid reports of a man-made environmental disaster there. With the US mining operation at the center of the uproar now long closed, a diving firm is attempting to present Buyat in a brand-new light. Melinda Chickering reports.

Ever larger waves began crashing over the bow as we left behind the relative serenity of Lembeh Strait off the northeast tip of Sulawesi. A storm had blown through the night before. After three months of high winds rendering travel by boat to Buyat Bay too dangerous, we had high hopes for our mid-October trip. Poseidon would have none of it; our fearless but prudent leader, boat captain, first mate, dive guide and two eager if not quite intrepid travelers readily agreed that we should turn around.

Buyat Bay can also be reached over land, so our trip was not lost. Travel by car would add an hour or two of bumpy roads and subtract a couple of superb dives along the way, but at least we would get there safely. Our host, Erwin Filius, began making phone calls as the captain expertly reoriented the bow to face north. We endured a pang of disappointment – visions of coral heavens where critters abound and fish wash around us would have to wait another day. Better to surrender to the power of the sea, though, and weather waves of disappointment rather than test our fate amid waves of salty blue.

Buyat Bay has at least two stories. The short story is of an unspoiled underwater paradise discovered by dive enthusiasts with a vision for its preservation. The long story is about a gold mine with a complicated history of relations with the community. The future, of course, has yet to unfold.

During our visit to Buyat Bay, Filius said we were among the first 30 people ever to dive there. A palpable thrill of discovery added to the serene euphoria of beautiful diving. As increasing numbers of divers discover underwater delights around the reefs of Southeast Asia, dive sites become more crowded, so we savored our solitude. What a treat to have this all to ourselves!

The short story begins with Danny Charlton’s first dives here in 2002. Charlton, an American, and his Indonesian wife Angelique own a dive operation in Lembeh Strait, about three hours by boat north along the east coast of North Sulawesi. Charlton initially traveled to Buyat to see a reef rehabilitation project.

“I kicked for 20 minutes and saw more than 300 meters of [natural] coral,” he recalls.

Despite the abundance of pristine coral reefs, he didn’t fully grasp the location’s potential for dive tourism until 2008. On closer inspection during an excursion in August of that year, Danny and Angelique, along with their dive guides bringing decades of experience from across Indonesia, decided they were witnessing an underwater treasure.

What they saw was not a gold mine, although there had been one at Buyat Bay not so long ago. The world’s largest gold producer, an American mining giant named Newmont, had run a gold mine in the area from 1996 to 2001.

It’s not easy to make Newmont’s long story in Buyat Bay short. The company operated a gold mine, employing local villagers as well as foreign staff. It received awards for environmental stewardship as well as profits from the gold mine, which ended production in 2004. That year, prompted by complaints from local NGOs, the Indonesian environment ministry filed a suit against Newmont for US$133 billion, alleging environmental damage from the mine. Though the suit was dismissed by a Jakarta court, a new one was filed and settled in 2006 when Newmont agreed to pay $30 million over 10 years, conduct scientific monitoring and invest in community development. The lawsuits, allegations, their scientific basis (or lack thereof) and the settlement all garnered international media attention.

All the while, 3,000 reefballs that Newmont began depositing in the area in 1999 continued to grow coral, the world’s largest privately funded reefball project. Newmont also donated reefballs – hard, hollow globes about a meter in diameter with holes to allow water flow and coral growth – to Charlton’s reef rehabilitation project in Lembeh Strait.

“If not for Newmont, those reefs would probably be gone,” says Charlton. Though mines are often associated with their attendant environmental damage, he argues that Newmont helped preserve the reef through a combination of reef rehabilitation, marine patrols preventing unauthorized overfishing, and local education.

In 2009, Charlton’s operation began offering dive trips to individuals and groups seeking the thrill of discovering a new location. Filius, a Kiwi who hosts the Buyat trips and has logged thousands of dives all across Indonesia, says Buyat Bay’s biodiversity and the ecosystem’s health compares favorably with the rest of the region.

“All in all, I would say it's another gem in Indonesia's already very richly encrusted underwater crown,” he says.

Researchers from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) who visited Buyat Bay at the same time we did were impressed with the biodiversity there. Their visit was part of an 18-month-long project to document aquatic life in the Coral Triangle region, which takes in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste, and is home to some of the world’s richest marine biodiversity. Both the world beneath the ocean and human interaction with it are central to the WWF project, and the researchers were most excited about a fish farm that we encountered in Buyat Bay, a model they said was both successful and sustainable.

What will the future hold for Buyat Bay? With the gold mine no longer producing buried treasure, locals may look to the sea for their livelihood. Commercial fishing practices around the globe are proving unsustainable, and the Coral Triangle’s precious reefs are suffering.

Developing sustainable dive tourism, Charlton points out, is “simple but not easy”. Engaging and educating local communities is the top priority and biggest challenge. In addition, sustainable tourism requires cooperation from the government and NGOs, who must work together to protect the environment. Finally, tour operators must behave responsibly, managing numbers of divers to minimize the pressure on the ecosystem and disposing of waste responsibly, with a view to the long term.

Charlton believes the money to be made from sustainable tourism will not compare with that from a gold mine, but there will be many more jobs created to spread the wealth around. “If they are taking care of their reefs, then those jobs will last a long, long time.”

North Sulawesi’s Bunaken and Lembeh Strait are both, rightfully, already famous dive destinations. How does Buyat Bay compare?

The crown jewel of North Sulawesi’s tourism industry is the Bunaken National Marine Park, a mere 45-minute boat ride out of the provincial capital Manado. Glass-bottom boats give water-shy viewers the chance to enjoy reef walls, and snorkelers attest to the beauty of the area within reach of the surface. Divers delight in weightlessness among the fish, soft and hard coral and larger marine life, including regular sightings of sea turtles and reef sharks. The aquatic ecosystem surrounding Bunaken and the neighboring volcanic island of Manado Tua is protected as part of a national reserve, established in 1991.

Bunaken's attractions include its multitude of dive sites, diverse ecology, consistently good visibility and accessibility. Direct daily flights from Jakarta and Singapore deposit visitors at the airport, and tour operators whisk them away to accommodations either on the mainland or Bunaken Island. A morning flight can have you in the water for a night dive or soaking in the sunset from Manado’s westward-facing bay. Dive conditions are usually favorable throughout the year.

A strong contrast to the colorful walls of Bunaken is the gray sandy bottom of Lembeh Strait, on the opposite side of North Sulawesi's northward-pointing peninsula. There’s not much in the way of underwater topography here, but it doesn’t take long to see why Lembeh is world-famous as a “muck diver’s paradise”. Why would I want to dive in muck, you may ask. A boundless variety of rare and colorful critters, of course! The water in Lembeh is not itself mucky, though visibility is somewhat limited by the thick presence of plankton, which provide a rich diet for sea life. Nudibranchs, octopuses, seahorses and small charmers such as mating Mandarin fish keep seasoned muck divers coming back to Lembeh from as far away as Europe and the United States. Some soft coral flourishes here, but you won’t see reefs; nor will you miss them.

Rewards await those brave enough to test the less-traveled waters of Buyat Bay. You might say that this newly discovered destination combines the best of both worlds, with lovely topography, loads of hard and soft coral, healthy schools of fish and abundant critters. Our first dive there featured six white-tipped reef sharks and stunning purple sea fans 3 meters across. Blankets of pink soft coral cover slopes next to fields of bright green hard coral spreading out like a giant underwater cabbage patch.

We saw at least one blue-spotted ray on every dive, a Napoleon wrasse, many moray eels, pygmy seahorses, large cuttlefish and reef octopuses. The size, number and variety of nudibranchs featured memorably on every dive, though it’s a bit less fishy here than at Bunaken. Visibility was fantastic, and we had the whole place to ourselves, as it has barely been discovered by divers. The relative lack of development and population density in the area also means less garbage in the water and more pristine coral reefs.

Travel to Buyat Bay requires time and stamina, and it doesn't yet offer the type of luxury accommodations available at Bunaken and Lembeh. Divers rest in simple wooden bungalows left over from Newmont’s mining days. All of the basics are covered, however, including hot water, air-conditioning, cold sunset beers and three tasty meals a day.

- Photos by Alex Mustard

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