I'm completely mesmerised by everything around me, for a brief moment I can almost forget why we are here. But then on the shoreline I see a brown smudge that somehow looks wrong and out of place and the spell is broken. I peer forward and as we get closer I can see the smudge becoming more defined - it's logs. Piles of giant logs. Actually not logs, trees. Stacks and stacks of dead trees. There are so many of them. Huge, ancient trees.

This is one place where felled trees are taken from the forest then transported by truck to be put onto log barges to go to the mill. We head back to the ship to follow the route the logs take and sail further down the coast, where we reach a large saw mill.

Even from where the ship is - offshore - we can see smoke rising and huge sheds. This is a large operation. There are more stacks of logs on the docks, higher than the ones we saw before.

We approach the dock, looking at the severed ends of huge, dark Merbau trees stacked facing out over the sea. I wonder where they are going. Merbau is a hard wood and often call "Indonesia's Mahogany". Most of it is exported for flooring. I wonder if people would still be proud of their beautiful hard wood floor if they looked down and saw the ecosystem destroyed, people's homes gone, the polluted lands and seas, the poor conditions for workers... would they still show their neighbours?

Japan and China are the largest importers of forest products from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. China re-exports substantial amounts to countries like Japan, the US and the EU. These products show up in shops as as Bintangor (from PNG) or Meranti-faced plywood or Merbau flooring and furniture. Merbau sawntimber is also sold to Australia for decking and flooring.

We hold up a banner on the end of the log pile, and later back in the boat, folding the banner up we find thick red sap stains, almost as if the cut trees are bleeding. "The trees are crying," says our boat driver.

Along the coast at each little fishing village, we see children playing, women washing, men fishing - daily life conitunes on the shoreline. Workers wave back to us from the docks. The kids playing on the rocks are at first afraid of our strange boat full of people in bright orange life-jackets - they run and hide. But a plucky one stays behind, and soon the others come back waving and shouting excitedly at the strange sight of us.

We meet local fishermen, fishing from small, brightly painted dug-out canoes with outriggers for balance. With huge grins they hold up the big fish they have caught for us to see. We chat as we bob around on our respective little boats. Many of the fishermen used to work at the mill, they say the conditions were hard and there were often protests against the owners, who responded with violence.

These fishermen left the mill to make a life from the ocean. Looking at their harbour, where the fishermen are at work, the women are washing on the shore and children swimming, there is a scummy run off from the mill. Oily patches reflect, multi-coloured on the rippling surface of the sea. They tell us the log pontoon collapsed a while back, now we can see many of these huge old Merbau logs submerged below the waterline, rotting in the ocean.

This can't be the fate for what's remaining of the Paradise Forests. We must put an end to this trade now and stop illegal and destructive logging.

- Sophie