INTO THE EAST

SET SAIL ALONG THE EASTERN FRINGES OF INDONESIA’S VAST ARCHIPELAGO TO DISCOVER REMOTE ATOLLS HOME TO COMMUNITIES OF SEA NOMADS, THE WORLD’S LARGEST CONCENTRATION OF REEF SPECIES, AND THE BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES THAT HELPED SHAPE THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

- SARAH BARRELL

JAGO ISN’T PICKY ABOUT WHAT HE SMOKES. AGED 84, HE’S TRIED THEM ALL — CLOVE-TIPPED INDONESIANS, SOME EXPENSIVE AMERICAN BRANDS; THEY’RE ALL JUST SOMETHING TO PASS THE TIME BETWEEN DIVES.

But Jago isn’t diving today. He sits dockside, poised as if ready to do so, dressed in nothing but a pair of loose shorts, bare feet placed lightly on the decking. You get the feeling Jago is always ready. His sea salt-thickened hair, silver at its roots, is rudely abundant. He’s slight and leathery-tanned, with a teenage boy’s build; liver spot-mottled cheeks frame eyes that are rheumy but resolute. At his hip, a bag bulging with cigarette packets — some gifted, some barter-traded as is the local way. I wonder aloud about his lungs. “They’re fine,” answers his nephew. “He’s not so happy with his knees, though.”

It’s understandable for joints to be giving you gyp after eight decades making forays deep under the ocean. Rohani, Jago’s real name, began free-diving aged five, learning from his father how to train lungs, heart, mind — and knees — to drive him 120ftbelow the surf to spear hunt for fish, earning him his moniker ‘Jago’ — master among the skilled Bajau free-divers. These ‘sea nomads’ of eastern Indonesia’s Togean Islands are supremely fierce fishermen. Over centuries, the Bajau have evolved unusually large spleens: warehouses for oxygen-carrying red blood cells that help sustain dives for up to 13 minutes at a time. In recent years, Jago’s diving and the Bajau way of life have inspired several TV documentaries and glossy photo features. Between here and Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, some 1,250 miles west, Jago is surely the country’s biggest celebrity.