Inspired by the fact that Indonesia plans to create a marine protected area covering 2.96 million acres, I thought I'd poke around a bit and see what else I could learn about the area.

Getting started:

• Indonesia is the largest archipelagic nation in the world, with a coastline stretching over 36,000 square miles around more than 17,000 islands. It's believed that Indonesia has nearly 20,000 square miles of coral reefs, not including remote reefs that have not been mapped.
• Check out the more than 53,000 topside and underwater images tagged "Indonesia" on Flickr to get a sense of the area. It's enormous, diverse, and beautiful. Pay close attention to Erwin Kodiat, javajive, Farl, gerb, and ScottS101.
• Note that Scuba Diving's readers recently ranked the sprawling nation as the top dive destination in the Pacific/Indian Ocean.
• If you want to pick up reading material about diving in Indonesia, Amazon has several Indonesia-centered guides available.
• For an overview, look at Kararu, which has an excellent summary of the dive conditions and marine life in the area.  
• Keep in mind that the fabulous John Boyle ranks Indonesia's Hairball Too (a dive site in Lembeh Strait) as one of his three favorite dive sites on the planet, and Scuba Diving News recently ranked Liberty the 9th best dive spot on the planet.
• Visit Asia Dive Site, which has a nice summary of the major destinations in the region. Moreover, Dive Global lists many of the dive operators that service various spots. If you don't find someone you like, check out Scuba Travel.
• FiNS has a number of articles covering various parts of the region, including Bali and Sulawesi.   

A closer look:

• To narrow your focus (or confuse you entirely, because of the loads of info there), head over to the website for Kapal Selam (Indonesian for "submarine"). This Indonesian dive club provides an incredible assortment of information, including an exhaustive list of the area's dive sites and dozens of trip reports from throughout the region. Erwin Kodiat counts himself as a member.
• To learn about Lembeh Strait's unusual assortment of marine life, swing by Asian Diver. 
• Ken Knezick has produced a number of excellent trip reports about Indonesia. Particularly good is his overview called Exploring Indonesia, in which he concludes that "Composed of 13,000+ mostly uninhabited tropical islands, Indonesia is an immense, diverse, and intriguing nation..[that] remains peaceful, easily accessible to travelers, and a superb tourism value."
• Finally, print out Starfish's summary of useful dive-related phrases in Indonesian, and you'll never be misunderstood.

What do YOU know about Indonesia?