Lilis, a 56-year-old who has been harvesting green mussels from Jakarta Bay for the last 12 years with her son and husband, said fewer and fewer people had been visiting the Kamal Muara fish market in the last several months following the reports.

“We used to have a lot of people come here in the morning to buy mussels, but now there are fewer customers visiting the market. I am lucky that a seafood restaurant buys all my harvested mussels, so I haven’t been affected too much. However, other fishermen have suffered a drop in sales,” Lilis told the Jakarta Post on Wednesday morning after harvesting mussels with her husband and son.

Lilis said almost all residents living in the fisherman’s village near the fish market relied on green mussels to make a living.

“Some people harvest the green mussels, some get money by cooking the mussels for other fishermen or shucking them, some are vendors for raw and cooked mussels at the market,” she said.

The sales decline has exacerbated other problems, with mussel harvesters working with razor thin revenues while dealing with a decrease in production due to the prolonged dry season.

“Harvesting green mussels is quite expensive. We spend Rp 5 million to 7 million (US$353 to $495) to buy bamboo and ropes for collecting mussel larvae, and they can only be harvested six months later,” she said, adding that fisherfolk could harvest around 100 buckets of mussels during a good harvest.

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