米苏尔岛，拉贾安帕特群岛中的岛屿，印度尼西亚 Misool Island, one of the four major islands in the Raja Ampat Islands in West Papua, Indonesia (© rusm/Getty Images)

米苏尔岛，拉贾安帕特群岛中的岛屿，印度尼西亚 Misool Island, one of the four major islands in the Raja Ampat Islands in West Papua, Indonesia (© rusm/Getty Images)

一个可供探险的水下天堂 An underwater paradise to explore

Misool Island, Indonesia

You may think finding a tropical paradise that's still largely untouched by people is merely a pipe dream. You may be wrong. Raja Ampat, an archipelago in the province of West Papua, Indonesia, has a mere 50,000 inhabitants, and they all live on or around its four main islands—Batanta, Misool, Salawati, and Waigeo. (In fact, the name Raja Ampat means 'Four Kings' and derives from an ancient legend that says four young kings were hatched from dragon eggs, one ruler for each of those main islands.) The rest of Raja Ampat is made up of about 1,500 smaller islands and cays—and astonishingly, hundreds of these tiny islands have yet to be explored by humans.

Of course, the lack of people is critical to keeping this paradise pristine. The main visitors today tend to be adventurous divers and snorkelers, who love exploring Raja Ampat and its vast reef system. And for good reason: It's considered one of the most biodiverse places in the world. The ecosystem, which is part of a larger tropical ocean area called the Coral Triangle, is so diverse that it's sometimes referred to as 'the Amazon of the seas.' Raja Ampat stretches over nearly 10 million acres of land and sea, and it boasts 540 types of coral, more than 1,000 species of coral reef fish, 700 kinds of mollusks, and a variety of warm-blooded marine animals (including migratory snorkelers and scuba-divers).

印度尼西亚米苏尔岛

你可能会认为，找到一个基本上还没有被人们触及的热带天堂只是一个白日梦。你可能错了。拉贾·安巴特是印尼西巴布亚省的一个群岛，仅有50000名居民，他们都居住在巴坦塔、米苏尔、萨拉瓦蒂和瓦吉奥四个主要岛屿上或周围。（事实上，Raja Ampat这个名字的意思是“四个国王”，来源于一个古老的传说，传说四个年轻的国王是从龙蛋孵化出来的，每个主要岛屿都有一个统治者。）Raja Ampat的其余部分由大约1500个较小的岛屿和珊瑚礁组成，令人惊讶的是，数百个这样的小岛尚未被人类探索。

当然，缺少人对于保持这个天堂的原始状态至关重要。今天的主要游客往往是喜欢冒险的潜水员和浮潜者，他们喜欢探索拉贾安巴特及其巨大的珊瑚礁系统。理由很充分：它被认为是世界上生物多样性最丰富的地方之一。该生态系统是一个称为珊瑚三角洲的较大热带海洋区域的一部分，其多样性如此之大，有时被称为“海洋亚马逊”Raja Ampat占地近1000万英亩，拥有540种珊瑚、1000多种珊瑚礁鱼类、700种软体动物和各种温血海洋动物（包括迁徙的浮潜者和潜水者）。