Indonesian Fishers Mount A Community-Led Fight Against Destructive Fishing

Mustam Daeng Beta exhaled slowly before he began describing his time as a young fisherman many years ago.

“Fish bombing was regular, also using poison,” Daeng Beta told Mongabay Indonesia in an interview on April 22 at his home in the village of Tompotana in Indonesia’s Takalar district, South Sulawesi province. “[We] never got caught, maybe because my boss had the backing from a certain side. But that was a very long time ago.”

On the island of Lombok, some 800 kilometers (500 miles) southwest of Takalar, across the Flores Sea, tour guide and certified scuba diver Herman also recalled dynamite fishing taking place with impunity. His home village of Padak Guar, in East Lombok district, features an expansive coral reef that Herman said was a key spawning and breeding site for fish.

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