The Daily Catch

Surfing hot shots catch waves in Lombok’s pretty Gerupuk Bay, while sampan-paddling locals catch lobsters.

 

 

Yani dusts a live spiny lobster with sand and wraps it in a funnel of newspaper. The Daily Catch.

 

“My dream is to run a bed and breakfast for surfers,” the fisherwoman says, nodding toward the bay and breaks beyond. “Is my yard too dirty for them?” 

 

Not at all. This is a rustic, working idyll: an ideal spot for a hammock and a Bintang. Knotted to a clothesline are three pink octopuses. Thin as kites, their long, polka-dot legs swirl in the sea breeze.Plots of seaweed dry on mats. Old women huff under the weight of work. The air is salty and sings with bird chirp and motor purr. Clouds of fuzzy fishing net lie bundled with rope and flotation bottles.

 

And beyond this are the slate-blue water of the bay, the one-armed fishing boats, the low hills and the Indian Ocean. This is Gerupuk, a fishing and seaweed farming village with some big waves seven kilometers from Kuta, Lombok, the island east of Bali.

 

“Not at all,” I say. “Tell me about the lobsters.”

 

The lobsters skitter and scuffle like cockroaches inside a plastic bucket, all legs and shell and spindly antennae. Bare-handed, Yaniseizes a glistening green-black monster by the antenna, championing her prize.The lobster is studded with orange-tipped spikes.

 

“Do they bite?”

 

“Ooh, yes. They’ll have your fingers. Would you like some coffee? It’s sweet.”

 

“Lovely.”

 

“You know, lobsters will eat anything. Fish, crabs, each other, even their offspring. Even you if you fall in …”

 

At the shoreline, Yani’s husband Abin unties a lobster net from the side arm of his narrow woodenboat and wrests it from the water. There are half a dozen lobsters inside and two further lobster netsunderwater.

 

“We co-own a boat with five others, but I have my own sampan too. You know sampan?”

 

Among the sampans offshore, small leaf-roofed huts on bamboo platforms float on yellow and blue drums.

 

“That’s where we cultivate the lobsters,”Yani explains. “We catch them wild and grow them in lobster cars, and we wait for the price to rise.”

 

Abin tips the lobsters into a wide container. Again that skittering sound, crustacean carapace on plastic bucket. These lobsters have exquisite teal shells with azure highlights, orange horns and flame-red legs. Their antennae are thick and whip-like. When lifted in the air, the lobsters snap their tail fins. Snap! Snap!

 

Yani folds sheets of newspaper into triangles while Abin powders each lobster with a mix of sand and sawdust.

 

“It helps preserve them,” Yani explains, wrapping the dusted lobsters in individual newspaper cones like kebabs. Then she packs them in a cardboard box. “They’ll stay alive in these boxes for 24 hours.”

 

The lobsters are sent to Mataram and Surabaya, although buyers also visit Gerupuk.

 

“If local restaurants have customer requests, they’ll buy from us too,” adds Yani. “Do you eat lobster? How many lobsters do you eat?”

 

Legend has it that in the US state of Massachusetts, lobsters were once so plentiful that servants revolted at being fed them more than twice a week.

 

Yani marvels at this. “American pembantu eat lobster?”

 

Taking Stock

 

I met lobsterman Jeff Rich on Mount Desert Island, Maine, in 2010. He explained that, in a policy designed to preserve healthy lobster stock, licenses were limited and so took years to come by.

 

“They wait for four people to die, or retire, and then issue one new license,” he said.

 

Regulations govern the size of lobsters that can be taken, and berried females – females with eggs – must be released.

 

“Look,” says Abin, turning over a female lobster. Thousands of tiny eggs stick to the swimmerets under her tail, like clusters of caviar. She snaps her flippers. Maine lobstermen cut v-shaped notches into the tail fins of breeding females to alert subsequent lobstermen that they are not keepers. The notches protect females through several molts, giving them years of reproduction. Abin listens with interest, then sprinkles the berried lobster with sand and wraps her in a newspaper cocoon for sale.

 

She is passive in her paper pouch, but the other lobsters agitate their sheaths, punching holes through the newspaper, their spiky, spindly, segmented legs and antennae creeping over the lip of the box, feeling for escape.

 

“There are 15 lobsters in this box, weighing around a kilo each,” says Abin, tucking straying limbs inside.

 

“You’re soleh,” says Yani suddenly, approvingly, of what she takes to be modesty as she points to my knee-length skirt and sleeved T-shirt. “Not like those other foreign girls with the surfers: they wear skirts up to here.” She chops a hand at her crotch and clucks.

 

Tourists in scanty shorts cruise past the lobster cars on their way to the wave breaks. In the shade behind Yani sits a bare-chested woman breast-feeding a baby; her areolae are dark and taut and round as saucers.

 

Four blond Europeans astride two motorbikes stop; dust whirls around the wheels. The sun is fierce overhead now.

 

“Dude,” one lilts. “Do you know where is the Swedish Surf Camp?”

 

I ask Abin if he has ever tried surfing. He hasn’t. Behind him the seaweed farmers resting in the shade also shake their heads. “I can’t swim,” says one. “I don’t have a board,” says another. “I’m scared of waves,” says the woman with the three pink octopuses on the washing line. Yani’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter says nothing, but shreds a plastic bag between her milk teeth, spitting small wet pieces onto the deck. The lobsters rustle in their dark box.Our coffee cups are empty now, just grounds in the bottom.

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She is passive in her paper pouch, but the other lobsters agitate their sheaths, punching holes through the newspaper, their spiky, spindly, segmented legs and antennae creeping over the lip of the box, feeling for escape.

 

“There are 15 lobsters in this box, weighing around a kilo each,” says Abin, tucking straying limbs inside.

 

“You’re soleh,” says Yani suddenly, approvingly, of what she takes to be modesty as she points to my knee-length skirt and sleeved T-shirt. “Not like those other foreign girls with the surfers: they wear skirts up to here.” She chops a hand at her crotch and clucks.

 

Tourists in scanty shorts cruise past the lobster cars on their way to the wave breaks. In the shade behind Yani sits a bare-chested woman breast-feeding a baby; her areolae are dark and taut and round as saucers.

 

Four blond Europeans astride two motorbikes stop; dust whirls around the wheels. The sun is fierce overhead now.

 

“Dude,” one lilts. “Do you know where is the Swedish Surf Camp?”

 

I ask Abin if he has ever tried surfing. He hasn’t. Behind him the seaweed farmers resting in the shade also shake their heads. “I can’t swim,” says one. “I don’t have a board,” says another. “I’m scared of waves,” says the woman with the three pink octopuses on the washing line.

 

Yani’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter says nothing, but shreds a plastic bag between her milk teeth, spitting small wet pieces onto the deck. The lobsters rustle in their dark box.Our coffee cups are empty now, just grounds in the bottom.

 

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