Sunda Kelapa Harbour, Jakarta, Indonesia
28 July 2009

Note: The area of coverage in this GEOEYE-1 image is approximately 0.75 km x 0.75 km.
The reduced resolution image on display has undergone compression and so does not represent the true resolution of the original satellite image.

The image focuses on the schooner harbour of Sunda Kelapa, the old port of Jakarta. The boats (pinisis) of the Bugis and the Makassarese of South Sulawesi are angle-parked in the narrow boat channel. These colourful boats have been used for coastal trading for hundreds of years and the old port of Jakarta has been one of their traditional harbours for a very long time. The boats are tens of m long, several hundreds in tonnage, and those in the boat channel have straight sterns and probably not so high sailing masts as the earlier versions. The boat channel ends at the old fish market beyond the southern margin of the image. The rest of the old harbour is less romantic with a busy waterfront of warehouses, containers, and coastal shipping. A breakwater towards the northeast protects the shipping from the choppy waters of the Jakarta Bay and the western side of Sunda Kelapa is a mosaic of degraded wetland and densely packed one-storied houses.