J

em>JP/Novia D. Rulistia Heru Purnomo believes that doing good things for the environment will lead to good luck for his business.

Starting around five years ago, the 35-year-old decided to change the business style of UD Pulau Mas, one of the country's largest grouper and lobster exporters, to something more sustainable.

'Just like many others, we started the business by focusing more on production; accepting fish caught with cyanide and Napoleon [humphead] wrasse because demand was very high.' Heru said recently. 'At first, we did not realize that sustainability was essential for this industry.'

Heru, who established the company with his parents in 1998, said he made the decision after he found out that the company's first fish cage operation in Pompongan Island in Mamuju Regency, West Sulawesi, was buying only small fish.

Most fishermen there, he said, used cyanide, which damaged the coral reefs where the fish lived and destroyed other fish species, too.

'We used to buy big fish from them. But as time went by, the fish there were getting smaller and smaller. We were so surprised that in around three years, we had no big fish anymore,' he said.

'I knew there must be something wrong, and we had to fix that if we wanted to survive,' Heru added.

He then discussed things with the fishermen he bought from, asking them to stop using cyanide and to change to traditional fishing methods. When none of the fishermen agreed, Heru left the site, closing all of his businesses in the area.

'From that moment on, we did not want our fishermen to use cyanide, stopped fishing for Napoleon wrasse as their stock had depleted, and only used sustainable fishing methods,' he said.

Just when Heru thought he had done the right thing, a similar problem emerged in the company's second fish cage: The stock of fish there was also decreasing, although not as fast as at the first site.

'I was so confused as to what triggered that. I thought what I had done was enough,' he said.  

Heru then met an Australian from the World Wildlife Fund who enlightened him.

 'She informed me about the minimum size method for the catch. I admit we used to catch fish of all sizes. I think that makes sense, allowing the fish to mature first before catching them,' he said.

Spreading the information to the fishermen that the company would only buy fish above 600 grams was another tough task.

'It was very difficult at first to make them understand the company's new regulation, because it has never been in their tradition to catch only big fish. They just caught fish of whatever size,' Heru said.

Business, however, suffered, with revenue plunging about 40 percent in the first year after he implemented the practice in 2010, and continuing to drop 20 percent in 2011.

'The business dropped 40 percent, showing that 40 percent of the fish we bought from the fishermen were juveniles,' Heru said.

But to his surprise, in the third year, the company reached a turning point, as revenues climbed up by 30 percent.

Bali-based Pulau Mas now exports around 150 to 200 tons of live grouper, caught only through sustainable fishing method, a year to Hong Kong.

It has a total of 53 fish cages throughout ccentral and eastern Indonesia, and employs hundreds of fishermen.

 'The main key in this industry is the fishermen, and I hold their key: price incentive. I can buy their catch at a good price because they are good, so my buyers want to spend a good price on it, too,' he said.

'And I'm sure none of my fishermen are poor.'

Heru said the fish that are caught by fishing rods were usually 30 to 40 percent more expensive than those caught using cyanide. In addition, the fish that are caught with fishing rods can stay fresh longer than those killed with cyanide.

'This business style allows us to stay in one place. Educating the fishermen for the long run is more efficient than having to move to one site to another,' he said.

Despite his achievement in encouraging fishermen to stop catching juvenile fish and to continue sustainable fishing practice, Heru feels the need to also introduce the efforts to the children of the fishermen.

Heru then worked together with a group of local comic book artists to make a comic book about sustainable fishing.

'We need to introduce that as early as possible, because if their fathers die, it is possible that when the children when they grow up they use destructive fishing methods again. So we made a comic book to help the children understand,' the fish lovers said.

In addition, Heru also made a short movie on sustainable fishing practices that will be circulated to fishermen's village near all the firm's fish cage locations.

'That's one of my ways to communicate with them, to help them understand the reasons why I always insist on asking them to do that,' he said.  

As his business has been growing in a sustainable way, Heru, a high school graduate, is currently thinking of giving a touch of advanced technology to his business to allow for more transparency. 'What I do now is always for the fishermen and the environment, because without them, this business can't survive,' he said.