Triton Bay – Discoveries in the Bird’s Head Seascape of New Guinea by Michael Bode

I visited Triton Bay, situated in the southern part of the Bird’s Head Peninsula of New Guinea, for the third time in April 2014. The footage from my previous visits in 2007 and 2009 was all the time on my to-do-list, but somehow I could not find time to start the editing. In April (2014) I also took the dji phantom 1 quadcopter and a beholder brushless gimbal on board of our live aboard Amira and was able to film some aerials from Triton Bay with a GoPro Hero 3 BE. At last I was able to portray the underwater seascape of this remote region in the Indonesian part of New Guinea and also show the bay from above! The aerials really made a difference!
I also followed the traces of the Russian adventurer and explorer, Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay, who in 1874 visited Triton Bay under much less comfortable conditions than we did. We found the place were he lived and also some traces of headhunting which was taking place here until the beginning of the 20th century.
There are also rock paintings on the limestone walls of the bay which could be dating back to the time when the aborigines from Australia moved via New Guinea to the new continent.
And last not least there is the colorful and diverse underwater life of Raja Ampat, Triton Bay, Misool and Koon which I try to show in the underwater sequences of my video.