Waigeo is an

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

Southwest Papua Southwest Papua ( id, Papua Barat Daya) is a province of Indonesia, and is a fraction of Western New Guinea. Despite being named southwest, it is a misnomer and this province is actually located in the northwest edge of Papua. The area that belo ...

province of eastern

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. The island is also known as Amberi, or Waigiu. It is the largest of the four main islands in the

Raja Ampat Islands Raja Ampat, or the ''Four Kings'', is an archipelago located off the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula on the island of New Guinea, in Indonesia's Southwest Papua province. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and shoals surrounding ...

archipelago, between

Halmahera Halmahera, formerly known as Jilolo, Gilolo, or Jailolo, is the largest island in the Maluku Islands. It is part of the North Maluku province of Indonesia, and Sofifi, the capital of the province, is located on the west coast of the island. Hal ...

and about to the north-west coast of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

. The Dampier Strait (a.k.a. Augusta's Strait) separates it from

Batanta Batanta is one of the four major islands in the Raja Ampat Islands in Southwest Papua province, Indonesia. Its area is 453 km² and its highest point is 1184 m. The Pitt Strait separates it from Salawati, while the Dampier Strait separate ...

, and the

Bougainville Strait Bougainville Strait separates Choiseul Island, part of the Solomon Islands from Bougainville Island, the next to the northward and part of Papua New Guinea. The first European to pass through the strait was Louis Antoine de Bougainville in 1768, wh ...

from the Kawe Islands to its north-west. The "inner sea" that nearly cleaves the island in two is Mayalibit Bay, also known as the Majoli Gulf. The area of the island is ; the highest elevations are Buffalo Horn (Gunung Nok) and Serodjil. From west to east the island measures approximately , north–south about . The town of

Waisai Waisai is a town in the south of the island of Waigeo in the Raja Ampat Islands, Indonesia. Founded in 2003, it is the capital of the Raja Ampat Regency and is home to a little over 8,000 people. It is a transit point for tourists visiting the rest ...

in the south of the island is the capital of the

Raja Ampat Regency Raja Ampat Regency is a regency of Southwest Papua Province of Indonesia. The regency, which was formed based on the Law 26 of 2002, was inaugurated on 12 April 2003, and consists of a number of groups of islands situated off the north-west end of ...

History

Jorge de Menezes Jorge de Menezes (c. 1498 – 1537) was a Portuguese explorer, who in 1526–27 landed on the islands of Biak (Cenderawasih Bay), whilst he awaited the passing of the monsoon season, and on the northern coasts of the Bird's Head Peninsula, calling ...

, a Portuguese explorer, landed on Waigeo Island in 1526–27. Islam first arrived in the Raja Ampat archipelago in the 15th century due to political and economic contacts with the

Bacan Sultanate The Sultanate of Bacan (كسلطانن باچن) was a state in Maluku Islands, present-day Indonesia that arose with the expansion of the spice trade in late medieval times. It mainly consisted of the Bacan Islands (Bacan, Kasiruta, Mandioli, etc ...

.Wanggai, Toni V. M. (2008)
Rekonstruki sejarah umat Islam di tanna Papua
econstruction of the History of lslam in Papua Syariff Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta (in Indonesian). Retrieved 2022-03-13. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Sultante of Tidore had close economic ties with the island.Slama, Martin (2015),
Papua as an Islamic Frontier: Preaching in 'the Jungle' and the Multiplicity of Spatio-Temporal Hierarchisations", ''From 'Stone-Age' to 'Real-Time': Exploring Papuan Temporalities, Mobilities and Religiosities''
ANU Press, pp. 243–270, During this period, Islam became firmly established and local chiefs had begun adopting Islam.

Alfred Russel Wallace Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural se ...

spent some time on the island and studied the flora and fauna during the late 1850s while on his scientific exploration trip. Since 1997, the island has been the site of a substantial

pearl farming A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...

operation owned by the Australian company Atlas Pacific.

Languages

Languages spoken on Waigeo include

Papuan Malay Papuan Malay or Irian Malay is a Malay-based creole language spoken in the Indonesian part of New Guinea. It emerged as a contact language among tribes in Indonesian New Guinea (now Papua, Central Papua, Highland Papua, South Papua, and West ...

Biak Biak is an island located in Cenderawasih Bay near the northern coast of Papua (province), Papua, an Indonesian province, and is just northwest of New Guinea. Biak is the largest island in its small archipelago, and has many atolls, reefs, and c ...

, Ma'ya, and Ambel. Their distributions within the island are given below. * '' Ambel'' is spoken in central Waigeo. * '' Ma'ya'' is spoken in northwest Waigeo. * ''

'' is spoken in the southwest and eastern parts of Waigeo.

Fauna and flora

Waigeo brushturkey The Waigeo brushturkey (''Aepypodius bruijnii'') or Bruijn's brushturkey, is a large (approximately 43 cm long) brownish-black megapode with a bare red facial skin, red comb, maroon rump and chestnut brown below. There are two elongated red ...

(''Aepypodius bruijnii'') *

Waigeou cuscus The Waigeou cuscus or Waigeou spotted cuscus (''Spilocuscus papuensis'') is a species of marsupial in the family Phalangeridae. It is endemic to the island of Waigeo in Indonesia, and consequently the spelling Waigeo cuscus is often used instead ...

(''Spilocuscus papuensis'') *

Waigeo rainbowfish The Waigeo rainbowfish (''Melanotaenia catherinae'') is a species of rainbowfish in the subfamily Melanotaeniinae. It is endemic to West Papua in Indonesia. It reaches a maximum length of around 7.5 cm. This species was described as ''Rhom ...

(''Melanotaenia catherinae'') *

Waigeo seaperch The Waigieu seaperch (''Psammoperca waigiensis''), or Waigeo barramundi, is a species of marine fish in family Latidae of order Perciformes. The only species of genus ''Psammoperca'', it is native to tropical coastal waters from the Bay of Benga ...

(''Psammoperca waigiensis'') *

Wilson's bird-of-paradise Wilson's bird-of-paradise (''Cicinnurus respublica'') is a species of passerine bird of the family Paradisaeidae. The first footage of the Wilson's bird-of-paradise ever to be filmed was recorded in 1996 by David Attenborough for the BBC documen ...

(''Diphyllodes respublica'') *

Golden-spotted tree monitor The golden-spotted tree monitor (''Varanus boehmei)'', also known commonly as the golden speckled tree monitor, is a species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit ...

(''Varanus boehmei'') * ''

Achaea simplex ''Achaea simplex'' is a species of moth of the family Erebidae. It is found in Waigeo, Mysol, the northern Moluccas, Sulawesi and Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the ...

'' * '' Hypochlorosis ancharia'' * '' Hypolycaena phorbas'' * '' Karstarma waigeo'' * ''

Nepenthes danseri ''Nepenthes danseri'' (; after B. H. Danser, botanist) is a species of tropical pitcher plant. It is known only from the northern coast of Waigeo Island; plants from Halmahera, the largest of the Maluku Islands, are now recognised as belonging ...

Protected Areas

* Waigeo Barat Timur Nature Reserve protects much of the island's interior. * Raja Ampat Marine Park covers Mayalibit Bay in central Waigeo, and parts of the southern and southwestern shores.Raja Ampat Marine Park. Accessed 8 August 2021
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References

External links

* {{Authority control Raja Ampat Islands