A very small rocky island, a nesting ground for sea turtles, surveyed here before it became the tourist stop it is today — back when you could have the whole place to yourself.
Penyusuk is a very small rocky island just off shore from Bintan — granite boulders, tide pools, a rim of coral rubble beach, and open water all around. It's a nesting ground for sea turtles. Today it's a tourist destination, with tours out to it and a few cabins on the rock. This survey is from before that: a day out to an island that, at the time, was entirely empty — no boats, no visitors, nobody else on it at all.
Trash is always an issue these days, and there's no pristine beach left anywhere — some plastic waste turns up no matter how far out you go. The South China Sea especially. Even an island this small and this far from anywhere had bottles washed up in the coral rubble, tangled into driftwood, caught between the rocks.
Every photograph from this survey, in full — click a cover to open its gallery and scroll through all of it.
