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span class="caption" style="width: 331px;">Not a drop to drink: An elderly woman draws seawater to be used for washing. The residents say a lack of freshwater is one of the greatest problems of living in the village.Orang laut, Bajau, Lua'an, Turijene, Pala'u and Bajo are all synonyms referring to these seafaring people. But among the Bajo people, they call themselves the Sama while those outside the community are named Bagai.

The Bajo people are better known as a group occupying the waters of eastern Indonesia, but according the late Adrian B. Lapian, a historian focusing his research on the maritime history of the Indonesian archipelago, the Bajo are also familiar to the residents of every Indonesian coastal area.

Citing examples, he mentioned a village named Labuhanbajau on Simeulue Island, west of Aceh, which shares its name with villages in Central Sulawesi and Manggarai, West Flores. The Bajo are also known to the people of the Riau-Lingga waters of Sumatra and those in the South China Sea.

In his book Seafarers, Pirates, Sea Kings: A History of Sulawesi's 19th Century Maritime Zone, Lapian also refers to a past assumption, particularly held in the colonial period, that the seafarers were identical to merciless pirates who killed their victims.

In Lapian's view, the activity of seafarers acting as pirates should be seen as a defensive attempt to maintain their maritime zone.

Francois Robert Zacot, a French anthropologist who researched and stayed with the Torosiaje Bajo community for several years, exposed the legend of Bajo people's ancestors, who were said to have come from Malacca, or Malaysia.

In his book The Nomadic Bajo Sea People: The Experience of an Anthropologist, Zacot records a legend about a woman fleeing from Malacca. Her boat later washes ashore in Bone (now South Sulawesi). The woman was adopted by the local king and becomes his daughter-in-law. However, the history and origin of the Bajo people are still obscure to him.

Today, the existence of the Bajo people in Gorontalo province is sometimes negatively perceived by society. While the Bajo rely on the sea to make a living, they are known to fish with explosives and to cut down mangrove trees.

In 2012, for instance, fish bombs claimed the lives of two Torosiaje fishermen and seriously injured several others.

In 2007, four fishermen in Torosiaje were arrested for using explosives. 'Fish bombs are chosen because of the fishermen's economic pressure,' said Ahmad Bahsoan, director of the Natural Resources Management and Advocacy Network (Japesda), Gorontalo, an NGO that provides guidance to the people of Torosiaje.

According to Ahmad, to prevent the number of fish bomb victims from rising, local fishermen need to be given side businesses in order to abandon the bad practice. Some solutions have been discussed since 2010, Ahmad said, when the network cooperated with the Tomini Bay Sustainable Livelihoods and Management (SUSCLAM), an NGO engaged in coastal resources preservation in the Tomini Bay zone.

The fishermen in Torosiaje were provided with capital to build a rumpon, an environmentally-friendly fish aggregating device. But in his opinion, the effort hasn't yet been significant, compared with the complex causes behind the poverty in Torosiaje.

'The government should seriously endeavor to invigorate the local economy of Torosiaje in a sustainable and environmentally oriented way so as to relieve them of the trap of poverty,' Ahmad added.