During a night dive in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, documentary filmmaker Johan Candert manages to film a wobbegong shark catching its prey. “In the hundreds of dives I’ve done here, I’ve never seen that,” says Mark Erdmann, an ecologist specialising in coral reefs, who lives and works in Raja Ampat for much of the year.
When world-renowned ecologist and coral reef researcher Mark Erdman first arrived in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, in the early 2000s, both dynamite and shark fin fishing were still going on. He describes it as if all the major valuable fish species had been fished out. But today, when we meet him in Raja Ampat, we find a completely different reef, full of sharks and small fish.
