MAKALAH BAHASA INGGRIS

RAJA AMPAT ISLAND

Nama Kelompok :
1. Adinda Diyah S.
2. Cecilia Debby A.
3. Retno Pamuji N.
4. Yuni Indriani
Located off the northwest tip of Bird's
Head Peninsula on the island of New
Guinea, in Indonesia's West Papua
province, Raja Ampat, or the Four Kings,
is an archipelago comprising over 1,500
small islands, cays, and shoals
of Misool, Salawati, Batanta, and Waigeo,
and the smaller island of Kofiau. The Raja
Ampat archipelago is the part of Coral
Triangle which contains the richest marine
biodiversity on earth.
Raja Ampat Regency is a new regency
which separated from Sorong Regencyin
2004.[1] The population of the Regency
was recently (January 2014) put at
49,048. It encompasses more than
40,000 km of land and sea, which also
contains Cenderawasih Bay, the largest
marine national park in Indonesia. It is a
part of the newly named West
Papua province of Indonesia which was
formerly Irian Jaya. Some of the island
 s
are the most northern pieces of land in
the Australian continent.
Raja Ampat is considered the global
epicenter of tropical marine bio-diversity
and is referred to as The Crown Jewel of
the Bird's Head Seascape, which also
includes Cenderawasih Bay and Triton
Bay.
The name of Raja Ampat comes from
local mythology that tells about a woman
who finds seven eggs. Four of the seven
eggs hatch and become kings that occupy
four of Raja Ampat biggest islands whilst
the other three become a ghost, a woman,
and a stone.
History shows that Raja Ampat was once
a part of Sultanate of Tidore, an influential
kingdom from Maluku. Yet, after the Dutch
invaded Maluku, it was shortly claimed by
the Netherlands.
The first recorded sighting and landing by
Europeans of the Ampat Islands was in
the person of the Portuguese
navigator Jorge de Menezes and his crew
in 1526, en route from Biak, the Bird's
Head Peninsula, and Waigeo,
to Halmahera (Ternate).
The English explorer William
Dampier gave his name to Dampier Strait,
which separates Batanta island
from Waigeo island. To the east, there is a
strait that separates Batanta
from Salawati. In 1759 Captain William
Wilson sailing in the East
Indiaman Pitt navigated these waters and
named one strait Pitt strait, after his
vessel; this was probably the channel
between Batanta and Salawati.
The main occupation for people around
this area is fishing since the area is
dominated by the sea. They live in a small
colony of tribes that spreads around the
area. Although traditional culture still
strongly exists, they are very welcoming to
visitors. Raja Ampat people are more
like Ambonese than Papuan people and
now some of them are Muslim and some
of them are Christian.