Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6
The cuttlefi sh, newly streamlined, is now ready for its getaway.
there are some fi sh and other animals unique to this narrow passage between
islands. But these examples of recent evolution are almost lost in the cacoph-
ony of more than half a billion years of evolutionary divergence.
The Lembeh Strait lies at the heart of one of the world's great biodiversity
hot spots, where there is a greater variety of marine life than anywhere else
largest island, a jewel of rich tropical diversity called Sulawesi that lies just to
the east of Borneo.
Sulawesi has been so thoroughly pushed and twisted by tectonic forces
that the map of the island looks like a character from some forgotten alpha-
bet. Indeed, the Portuguese explorers who fi rst landed on dif erent parts of
Sulawesi's complex and deeply indented coastline were fooled into thinking
that it was actually several islands. They named this hypothetical archipelago
the Celebes, perhaps a mishearing of Sulawesi, which in turn may be derived
from local words meaning “iron island.”
