How to Travel Here Without Leaving Damage Behind

Most responsible travel advice is generic enough to apply anywhere, which is another way of saying it applies nowhere in particular.

This page is about this place. A karst archipelago with reef, a giant clam conservation effort, an enclosed marine lake and a working Bajo village, visited by a small but growing number of boats. Some things genuinely matter here. Others are gestures. We have tried to separate them.

Sunscreen

The single easiest thing to get right, and worth understanding rather than just complying with.

NOAA states that chemical UV filters found in sunscreen can harm corals and other aquatic life, and that they can induce bleaching, damage DNA, deform young and kill coral. Two filters in particular, oxybenzone and octinoxate, are the ones regulators have acted on: several jurisdictions including Hawaii and Palau have banned them.

Some honest context, because overstating this doesn't help. Sunscreen is one of several pressures on reefs, and NOAA lists it alongside climate change, unsustainable fishing, land-based pollution, coastal development, disease and invasive species. It is not the biggest of them and no amount of careful sunscreen choice substitutes for the others being addressed. What sunscreen is, is a local, concentrated input in exactly the places snorkellers gather, which is precisely the situation here where a boat puts people into the same handful of bays repeatedly.

So: check the ingredients list, avoid oxybenzone and octinoxate, and treat "reef safe" on the front of a bottle as marketing rather than certification, because the term is not regulated.

The better answer is to use less of it at all. A rash guard or long-sleeved swim top covers more skin than any amount of reapplication, and nothing washes off it.

In the jellyfish lagoon, do not wear sunscreen at all. It is an enclosed body of water that doesn't flush, so whatever goes in stays in. Cover up instead, and apply after you get out. More on that stop is on swimming in the jellyfish lagoon.

The giant clams and the no-take zones

The most substantial conservation story in this region concerns kima, the Indonesian name for giant clams, and roughly a decade of work relocating them onto reefs near Labengki Kecil that the local community treats as no-take zones.

The conservation organisation behind it reports around 8,000 clams across 8 species collected and moved, six of those species Tridacna and two Hippopus, with the refuge sitting inside the Teluk Lasolo protected area and the provincial conservation agency, BKSDA Sultra, alongside the Labengki Kecil community recognising it as off-limits to fishing. Those figures were published in 2021, so read them as the scale of the effort rather than a current tally.

Why this matters more than it might sound. A 2018 review in the ICES Journal of Marine Science found that fish biomass in no-take marine reserves averages several times higher than in unprotected areas, and substantially higher than in partially protected ones. But protection has to be real: a study of Karimunjawa National Park in Indonesia found reef fish biomass in its no-take zones fell by more than half over four years because fishers complied with gear rules while ignoring the spatial closures, even though awareness of those rules was high.

Put together: no-take zones are the most effective form of marine protection there is, and a no-take zone the nearest community doesn't actually observe is a line on a map.

So the community acceptance around Labengki Kecil is the mechanism, not a footnote. Your part in it is simple.

• Don't touch the clams. They close hard and they're slow-growing.
• Don't stand on anything. Not coral, not the sandy patches between it if you can avoid them.
• Don't take shells. Not from the water, not from the beach.
• Don't buy shell or turtle products anywhere on this trip.

More on the site itself is on the giant clams of Labengki Kecil, and why.

In the water generally

Don't touch coral. Contact damages the living tissue and it takes years to recover from something that took you a second.

Keep your fins away from the bottom. More reef damage is done by fin kicks in shallow water than by hands. If you're in water shallow enough that you are worried, swim flatter or take the fins off.

Don't chase or handle anything. Fish, turtles, jellyfish, none of it.

Don't feed fish. It changes behaviour and diet and it doesn't help anything except a photograph.

Don't lift jellyfish out of the water. In a marine lake this is straightforwardly lethal to the animal.

In the village

Mbokita is a working Bajo village, not an attraction with opening hours. The full history of the community is on who the Bajo actually are, and it is genuinely worth reading before you go rather than after.

The short version of behaving well:

• Ask before photographing people, and take no for an answer. Especially children.
• Don't photograph into houses.
• Dress as you would walking through any village, meaning shoulders and knees covered when you're out of the water.
• Buy something if something is for sale. It is the most direct benefit a visit produces.
• Don't give sweets or money to children. It sets up a dynamic that lasts long after your boat leaves.
• Go at a reasonable hour, not at dawn because the light is better.

Rubbish

There's no waste infrastructure out here. None. What comes onto the islands either goes back out on a boat or stays.

• Take everything back with you, including things that feel harmless.
• Bring a refillable bottle. Drinking water is provided on the trip, so single-use bottles are an entirely avoidable contribution.
• Don't bury or burn anything, and that includes food waste on beaches.
• If you find rubbish on a beach and have space, take it. Nobody is coming to collect it.

Where your money goes

Worth naming plainly, since "supporting local communities" is the vaguest phrase in travel marketing.

Our crews, guides and boats are local. Accommodation is in village-run homestays and cottages rather than an outside-owned resort. Entrance and local fees paid at stops go to the communities administering them, and they're inside the package rather than an optional extra you might skip.

The most direct thing you can add to that is buying locally where there is something to buy, and tipping the crew if you thought they were good.

What doesn't matter much

In the interest of not wasting your effort:

Carbon offsetting a domestic flight is not going to be the meaningful part of this trip's footprint, and the flight is the footprint. If you're concerned about that, the honest lever is trip length and frequency, not offsets.

Bamboo cutlery and metal straws are fine and change very little here, because the meals are cooked and served by the crew anyway.

Refusing the photo documentation on environmental grounds. It is a camera.

The things that actually matter on this trip are your sunscreen, your hands and fins in the water, your behaviour in the village, and your rubbish. Four things. All of them free.

Common questions

Is the reef here in good condition? We haven't verified the current condition at the sites we visit, so we won't describe the reef as good or undamaged. Public reviews from the wider region include reports of destructive-fishing damage.

Is "reef safe" sunscreen a real standard? No. The term is unregulated, so read the ingredients rather than the front of the bottle. Avoid oxybenzone and octinoxate. Covering up works better than any product.

Can I collect shells from the beach? Please do not. Shells are habitat, and taking them from a place with an active shellfish conservation programme is a particularly poor idea.

Should I tip? It is not obligatory and it is appreciated. Cash, brought from Kendari, since there's no ATM.

Is it responsible to visit a village at all? It can be, and it depends entirely on how. Arriving quietly, spending money locally and not treating people as scenery is the difference between a visit and an intrusion.

What should I bring to make this easier? A rash guard, mineral sunscreen, a refillable bottle and a dry bag you can also put rubbish in. All of it is on the Labengki packing list.