RAJA AMPAT (INDONESIA)- In 2005 conservationists and local villagers in the remote Indonesian archipelago of Raja Ampat worked together to create the Misool Eco Resort and Conservation Center, establishing a 165-square-mile “No-Take Zone” that banned fishing.
These faraway islands in Western Papua, regarded by many marine experts as having the potential to help restore the world’s ailing coral reefs, are vulnerable to the unchecked exploitation of a lucrative treasure that is rapidly disappearing from Indonesia’s waters: sharks.
China’s growing appetite for the de rigueur shark fin soup has attracted fishermen from elsewhere in Indonesia and Southeast Asia to the waters around Raja Ampat’s 1,500 islands.
NBC News did an interview with one the first shark rangers of Raja Ampat, 31-year old Abdul Razak Tamher.