Raja Ampat is a maze of more than 1,500 forest-topped limestone islands scattered off the northwestern tip of New Guinea, standing in some of the richest sea on Earth. From the ridge above Piaynemo or Wayag the islets rise out of turquoise lagoons like green mushrooms, undercut at the waterline — the seascape most people picture when they hear the name. Underwater the numbers are hard to believe. These reefs hold around three-quarters of all the hard-coral species known to science. One ninety-minute dive at Cape Kri turned up 374 fish species, more than anyone has counted anywhere on Earth. The name means "Four Kings," from a Papuan legend in which a woman finds seven eggs and four hatch into the kings of the great islands — Waigeo, Batanta, Salawati and Misool.
Slip underwater and the reason for the fame is immediate: walls of soft coral in colours that look invented, schools thick enough to dim the light, and manta rays gliding in to be cleaned where the currents meet. Here a shark still walks: the small, endemic epaulette shark clambers across the shallows on its fins after dark. On land, the red bird-of-paradise dances at dawn in the forests of Waigeo and Gam. Reaching it still takes real effort, and that remoteness helped keep it whole: the region is now a marine protected area where every visitor pays a conservation levy that funds patrols on its no-take zones. The protection is not settled: nickel mining on nearby islands drew national outrage in 2025, and four of five permits were revoked.