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Ihad always pictured Bunaken Island as possessing some of the region’s most beautiful beaches, places where pot-smoking backpackers whiled away the days on expanses of powdery white sand amid coconut trees, like scenes straight out of Danny Boyle’s movie “The Beach.”

As Bunaken is probably best known for its diving, I’d also had a clear image in my mind’s eye of exquisite displays of coral, teeming with fish in all the colors of the rainbow. That is, until I actually visited Bunaken.

The island is not difficult to reach by public transportation, however boats depart only once a day (at an unscheduled time between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.) from the murky harbor in the North Sulawesi capital of Manado, which is situated on the island’s northern peninsula.

The group of reporters I was traveling with — all of whom were in town for Sail Bunaken 2009, which finished on Aug. 20 — had chosen to charter a boat, which allowed us to leave for Bunaken in the morning rather than the afternoon. Charter boats are available at the harbor and cost about Rp 500,000 ($50) for a round trip.

It was a sunny day with a near cloudless sky, and the oily, garbage-ridden water gradually turned a sparkling Caribbean blue as the motorboat blazed toward the majestic Manado Tua, or Old Manado — an inactive volcano located across from the western tip of Bunaken Island.

The Bunaken-Manado Tua National Park, which comprises five islands, including Bunaken and Manado Tua, as well as Siladen, Montehage and Nain, is visited by up to 20,000 thousand divers each year.

According to one of the crew members, it would take less than an hour to travel the eight kilometers to Bunaken’s main pier. Stopping at a dive spot called Fukui, we stepped onto a glass-bottomed boat, which then cruised above the dead skeletons of the park’s scleractinian (stony) coral.

Seen through the water, the clumps of coral reminded me of the pale, rugged surface of limestone cliffs, broken up by the colorful tropical fish that were darting and splashing around in front of them.

One of the reporters in the group told us that the coral had been in better condition more than 10 years ago, but he did not expand.

I became curious as to what had happened, so later I called Cipto Aji Gunawan, a professional diver who has been exploring Bunaken’s waters since the early ’90s and who is also a consultant with the Marine Eco Tourism Development Agency.

He said that the coral reefs around Bunaken Island were actually in worse condition more than a decade ago.

“When I first came to Bunaken in 1991, I saw that, due to the irresponsible practices of traditional fishermen, especially through the use of explosives, many of the coral reefs around the island were destroyed,” the 40-year-old Cipto said.

“Between 1995 and 1996, the damage spread all around. I even have a picture of an area where the coral seemed to have been intentionally removed, creating a trail leading to one of the island’s resorts. It was presumably done so that boats could move through the shallow waters.”

Last year, Cipto said, the coral reefs started to improve as “various groups” had begun doing restoration work.

But the damage around Fukui was still massive, despite conservation attempts like replanting the coral beds with the rapid-growing snowflake coral, with its white polyps.

“Coral is not so fragile that it dies if it’s touched by the fins of divers or by people standing on it. It also has a way of growing out of sedimentation,” Cipto said. “But there is a limit [to how much the coral can withstand], and, more often than not, people have absolutely no clue what that limit is.”

Cipto said the coral beds in areas deeper than five meters were in relatively good condition. They are in a worse state in the vicinity of areas where human activity is high, including where the glass-bottomed boats operate.

Returning to our charter boat, we arrived five minutes later at Bunaken’s only pier, which was surrounded by anchored boats.

This side of the island, where the concrete pier is located, is a popular spot for food and souvenir vendors. Small cottages and beach-side resorts, which began to sprout up on Bunaken in the early ’90s, are also visible.

The hot sun had become scorching. As my group sipped coconut drinks under the shade of a banyan tree, I saw other visitors taking photos and bargaining over bracelets and necklaces crafted out of tiny seashells. Snorkeling equipment could be rented for Rp 60,000 a day.

It was not the exotic beach I’d had in mind. And looking over at the cyan-hued sea, the only weed I could see was brown algae.

“You should visit the other side of the island, where there is no [physical] development. The beach is more beautiful,” said Ama, a Bunaken native.

Maybe next time. For now, I am happy to have taken home a bagful of bracelets and some photos of the island that many of my friends envy me for having visited.