Indonesia 2 week Coral Triangle Expedition 2024

During the July school holidays 20 students travelled to a very remote part of Indonesia to participate in Operation Wallacea for 2 weeks. Operation Wallacea is an environmental research and conservation expedition organisation, who design and implement biodiversity and conservation projects around the world. This program takes place on Hoga Island situated in the Wakatobi National Park in the coral triangle, the most biologically diverse coral reef in the world.

Photo by Jason Suwandy

Students participated in a reef ecology course, science workshops, a reef restoration project, a beach clean, visited a Bajau village, learnt to scuba dive, and then used these dive skills in scientific and of course fun dives. The students worked with people from all over the world including a former Head of a UN mission to South Sudan, professor from University of Essex, master’s and PhD students, research assistants, dive masters and volunteers from all over the world. In the second week of the trip, they were joined by school students from England and Taiwan.

Photo by Kuyer Fazekas Jr

It was the adventure of a lifetime with students taking 3 planes, across an island by road and then 2 boats to reach Hoga. The island itself has one small village and the Operation Wallacea base on it and was a paradise with all kinds of wildlife roaming the island and wonderful coral reefs on our doorstep. A real highlight were the people we met and worked with and some of us will take away inspiration from our experiences. The students were exceptional and all the Operation Wallacea staff and volunteers were blown away with the energy, positivity, enthusiasm, sense of fun and openness to trying new things that our students approached each day with. Special thanks to Jamie Williamson for all her help organizing beforehand and on the trip. I couldn’t have done it without her.

We will be going back!

Photo by Sebastian Viljoen

Title photo by Michele Murphy