Founded by dive pioneer Leeza English, Triton Bay Divers is a beautiful and secluded resort offering world-class diving and is the first and only resort in Triton Bay, West Papua, Indonesia. Simon Pridmore tells the story of how Leeza was the driving force behind the resort.
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In the 21st century, is it still possible to build a dive resort at the edge of the world in an area that very few people have heard of, more forgotten than the nearby region known as the Forgotten Islands, where the nearest airport is hours away, where almost no one has ever dived (and then only from passing boats), where there are no contacts, no facilities of any sort and you have to start from absolute zero?
Do you think you could do it? Would you even want to put yourself through the considerable effort of even attempting it? Well, Leeza English very much wanted to. And as it turned out, she could do it—and very successfully.
This is the short story of how Triton Bay Divers came to be, and it is all about Leeza. Over the decade or so since the idea first entered her mind, other people have been involved, coming and going, helping or hindering, but without Leeza, there would be no Triton Bay Divers.
And when you think about it, that is the essence of most pioneering stories. They are always about that one key individual, that one dreamer, that one person who is sufficiently single-minded, brave, fixated, stubborn and creative enough (you can fill in a whole bunch of other adjectives here) to keep the focus on the goal and to continue with an endeavour long past the point where most of us would have given up. Pioneers cannot do it alone, but they have that gravitational quality that draws others into their orbit. They are the sun around which others revolve.
Location
Take a moment to look for Triton Bay Divers on Google Maps. It is there; search, and you will find a red location marker. Then zoom out a little, and you will find that it is in an east-facing bay on the island of Aiduma. Zoom out a little more, and you will see Kaimana. This is the nearest town and airport. Most days, there is a flight from Kaimana to Sorong.
But where is Sorong? Zoom out a little more. You can now see the whole of Indonesian West Papua. Sorong is there, on the northwestern tip of what people call the Birds Head Peninsula—so named because it is shaped like the extended neck and head of a bird facing left across almost all of Indonesia.
The most convenient international airport for flights to Sorong is Jakarta, two time zones and four hours flying time away. Sorong is known to divers as the jumping-off point to the underwater paradise of Raja Ampat, and it is also a jump—albeit a longer one—away from Triton Bay, a lesser-known undersea mecca that is becoming better known and more accessible thanks to Leeza.
From an idea to a dream
Born in England, raised in Hong Kong and blessed (or cursed) with itchy feet, she went to Miami for work in 2005. It was while diving for fun in Florida that the germ of an idea formed that running a dive resort might be a nice thing to do, and after three and a half years, she flew off to go diving around the world.
Running low on funds, she did a divemaster course at Black Marlin in the Togean Islands of Sulawesi and began working there. It was at Black Marlin that the idea turned into a dream. Her next stop was Bali to get qualified as a dive instructor, and then she hit the road again, this time diving for work wherever her itchy feet took her—Fiji, Malaysia and the Philippines, before her heart brought her back to Indonesia, this time to work as a cruise director on a dive liveaboard.
Liveaboards are floating dive resorts and the perfect medium for finding out if you have the necessary skills for resort management, including dive skills, people skills, hotel management skills and life-juggling skills.
But, when you work in diving, particularly as a liveaboard cruise director, you do not have the headspace to think much about the future. You are pretty much on stage and on duty all the time. And when you are off duty, you sleep, watch movies and try not to talk to anybody, let alone make plans.
The search for a site
Then, an ear injury gave Leeza some much-needed reflection time and extended topside time. She began to look around Indonesia for a place that had great diving but that very few people knew about and where there were no resorts.
That was in 2012 and 2013. Over the previous 30 years or so, diving pioneers had developed resorts in Bali, then Manado, then Komodo, Lembeh, Raja Ampat and elsewhere—all now world-famous dive destinations. Indonesia was huge, but in recent years, Indonesia’s development, population growth, construction, fishing activities and other factors have combined to damage reefs and decimate marine life in many parts of the country.
Was there anywhere left that fulfilled Leeza’s criteria? She looked at the islands to the northeast of Manado, the Sangihe archipelago of tiny dots in the ocean—Bangka, Talisei and beyond. She thought this area might be what she was looking for. It seemed to fit the bill, but the islands were super remote, and the logistics would be difficult. Yes, there is much irony in this thought process, given what Leeza was about to do next.
Triton Bay
Then, in May 2013, an opportunity arose for her and a potential business partner to visit Triton Bay. She had never been there before. Liveaboard dive boats had visited the area sporadically between 2008 and 2012, but no more than one or two, only for one or two trips a year, and just for ten days at a time. They had discovered some wonderful diving, but by 2013, they had stopped visiting. It was a long way to come from their usual haunts, as it was difficult to provision a floating hotel for a longer trip, and they were fed up with having to deal with uncomprehending villagers. The diving might be superb, but other areas were easier operationally.
The trip was almost derailed when Leeza fell ill, and her first few days in the region were spent hooked up to an IV in Kaimana Hospital—not the most promising of omens. Her colleague, however, felt fine and headed off to Triton Bay to scout the area and do some diving. By the time Leeza reached the point where she could pull herself out of her sick bed, hire a speedboat and head off to join him, she only had time to do one dive and one snorkel.
It would have been nice to get more underwater time, but it was not essential. Before the trip, she had done plenty of research and canvassed trusted and experienced friends in the business. She knew that Triton Bay had spectacular diving. The area ticked all her boxes, and there were no dive resorts within hundreds of kilometres.
She realised she had an amazing opportunity here. You have one life, and you have to go with your gut (even though her gut was still feeling quite fragile).
She now viewed the adverse practical and logistical factors that had ruled Sangihe out (all of which also existed here) not as obstacles but rather as challenges. They could be handled later. The key had been to find the right place. Everything else would follow. Given the will, all problems could be managed. Her instinct was, “If we build it, they will come.”
And she had a good feeling that this was the right place.
Purchasing the land and beginning construction
She and her business partner met with the West Papuan family, who owned the land right in the middle of the area where the best dive sites had been discovered, to finalise a deal. The land was in a secluded bay with a mountainside behind it and jungle all the way down to the waterline, and it faced the sunrise, which would mean beautiful mornings and cooler afternoons. There was also a source of fresh water.
They felt it would be best to incorporate the family into the business, as this might help things go more smoothly. The deal was done. By September 2014, the family had already cleared some of the land. Leeza returned on a ship with construction materials and fifteen workers, and they set up home in tents on the beach, with no toilet and a burner for pot noodles and tempeh, although the tempeh never lasted more than a couple of days. Then it was noodles, noodles and more noodles until the next supply boat arrived. At first, the water pouring down the mountain was their shower, but after a few weeks of struggling across the rocks to have a wash, they made life a little easier for themselves by running a water pipe from the waterfall to the beach.
Resort design and completion
Leeza’s original floor plan design, with the structural drawings supplied by an architect in Bali, was for four guest rooms, a restaurant, a kitchen, a dive centre, an office and a staff room. She started with one dive boat called Pygmy, which doubled (or tripled) as a passenger transfer and supply vessel to and from Kaimana.
The first guests, Spanish backpackers, arrived in February 2015. They did not care if the building work was not completed. They wanted to come anyway. As it turned out, they managed to get one room finished in time for them, along with the dive centre, staff room and kitchen, but the guests dined on the beach under the stars as the restaurant roof had not yet been installed.
The rest of the bungalows were completed in March. At first, the staff consisted of two cooks—one for guests, one for staff—a housekeeper, a gardener, a handyman and a boat driver, with Leeza as manager, tank filler and sole guide. Then, in October 2015, she took on a divemaster to share her workload.
Now, in 2024, she has 30 people working for her, most at the resort, but also some admin and logistics staff in Kaimana and Surabaya.
Building relationships
For over ten years, a lot of her efforts have been directed at developing and building not only the resort’s infrastructure and customer base but also relationships with her neighbours. These are perhaps the most important aspects of the whole project and are hugely time-consuming, requiring immense patience, understanding and careful management on all sides.
As an outsider—and as a woman—she is breaking new ground in many ways. The people who live in this area have never seen anyone like Leeza, nor, in the beginning, did they have any comprehension of what she was doing or why people might want to travel thousands of miles just to come and look at their fish.
But her presence can be—and has been—beneficial to the West Papuan people of Triton Bay, many of whom have friends and relatives who now work for Triton Bay Divers. Some have worked for the company for several years now and, through their work, have acquired specialist skills, performed several different jobs and even earned promotions to leadership roles.
The neighbours now have a better understanding of what is going on, although they probably still think that foreign visitors are crazy. Mutual respect and the maintenance of social stability are key, and the income stream helps. Visiting divers pay Marine Park fees, which are passed on to villages in the area and contribute to children’s education and the construction of longboats for inter-village communication.
Further developments
Triton Bay Divers is open eight months of the year, from the end of September to early June. The remaining four months of the year are a period of high seas, rain and wind, giving the staff a rest and providing much-needed time for maintenance and expansion. In 2023, two guest rooms—there are now eight—a camera room, a compressor room and a laundry room were added, as well as two new boats, bringing the total to five, one for transfers and four for diving. And the dive centre has been renovated.
In 2017, they planted some bougainvillea bushes near the guest rooms, and in 2023, the bougainvillea began blooming for the first time. The bushes have remained in flower ever since, thriving just as Triton Bay Divers is thriving. ■