“My grandfather, who was born in 1921, could predict the weather next month just by looking at the sky. He would say ‘the wind will come from the west while the current flows to the east,’ and it happened,” he said last week during a discussion held by the Indonesian Traditional Fishermen Association (KNTI).

“Now, if my generation tries to predict the weather, we would get it wrong.”

Sulaiman’s story shows how fishermen struggle to make a living amid the effects of climate change.

“According to ‘island people’ like myself who have knowledge of climate from our ancestors, we should be in the middle of the northern wind season. However, seasons skipped and we are in the southwestern wind season,” he continued.

The scrambled climates and ocean currents bring uncertainty for fisherfolk like Sulaiman, greatly affecting their potential catch.

Even worse, extreme weather also causes high tides that could endanger fisherfolk.

The latest data available on the People’s Coalition for Fisheries Justice (KIARA) website shows that 207 fishermen died in 2014 at sea due to high tides and strong winds.

KNTI expert council head Alan Koropitan said fisherfolk across the globe were feeling the squeeze not only from extreme weather but also plummeting fish supplies.

“According to Science Magazine, global fish stock has decreased by 4.1 percent over the last 80 years,” he said.

A 2018 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also shows that fish capture stagnated at around 90 million tons from 1994 to 2016.

Alan said fisherfolk in Indonesia were facing worse conditions as 90 percent of the country’s fisherfolk used small boats that were below five gross tonnages (GT), causing them to be unable to sail far beyond the coastal
region.

“Ninety percent of our 543,845 fishing boats are below 5 GT according to Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry data. Therefore, you can imagine that they all are facing bad weather, declining fish stock and are being pitted against each other in the coastal area,” he said.

He further said that the challenging condition had heightened conflict among fisherfolk, especially between trawl and traditional fishermen.

The World Resource Institute’s climate senior program lead, Barakallah Robyn, told The Jakarta Post that global warming had a huge impact on marine life, which eventually impacted fishermen’s livelihood.

He said fish and other marine life needed a perfect temperature as a nursery ground for them to reproduce, and therefore they moved to cooler areas.

“Tropical climate regions such as Indonesia become warmer and it affects circulation. The current itself works as a nutrient distributor for marine life and increasing temperatures cause the mass migration of marine species to cooler areas,” said Barakallah.

“Pelagic fish, such as mackarel, tuna and skipjack tuna are following the current as their migration route. Therefore, the changing sea current also changes their migration route.”

Furthermore, the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide also causes ocean acidification, which kills coral reef and makes the ocean to be uninhabitable.

“Coral reef is dying due to ocean acidification. If it dies, the fish will not find nutrients and they lose their habitat,” he said.

Alan said Indonesian fishermen needed to take action against the threat of global warming.

“The simplest way is to rehabilitate our coastline with mangroves,” he said.

He said Indonesia’s mangrove forest coverage had plummeted from 4.1 million hectares in the 1980s to less than 3 million ha in 2015.

“Our fishermen are also still neglecting aquaculture. According to ministry data, in 2018 we had 276,630 ha of fish farms. Do you know how big our potential is? Twelve million ha,” he said.

As a high number of deaths were recorded due to extreme weather, Alan urged the government to start an information system that could warn fishermen of incoming storms or high tide.

“As most of our fishermen are within 12 nautical miles, they still have phone service. The government, through the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency [BMKG], could issue a warning through phone applications or messages,” he said.

Barakallah agreed that fish farming could be an alternative but urged people to open farms without cutting down mangrove trees in the coastal area.

“I think fish farms in open seas is ecologically better than in the coastal area. That’s because if the farmers cut down mangrove trees to open up the farm, then it still causes ecological damage,” he said.

The World Resources Institute is also developing an online platform called trenlaut.id to gather and store information about fisheries and maritime conservation.

“We’re developing trenlaut.id with several ministries to serve as a public platform on fisheries, aquaculture and maritime reserves. Hopefully we’ll launch it this year,” he said.

He also hoped the platform could inform fishermen about potential extreme weather and storms.

Besides the climate crisis, the KNTI’s Alan said fishermen had also complained about contravening regulations on fishing licenses between the fisheries ministry and the Agrarian and Spatial Planning Ministry.

A 2007 law on coastal area and small islands management mandates the fisheries ministry to give “location licenses” that grant people the right to gather resources in coastal areas.

However, the agrarian ministry also holds the authority to handle land rights licensing in coastal areas based on a 2016 ministerial decree on coastal and small islands land management.

“We hope the licensing can be integrated and issued by a single agency, possibly through the proposed omnibus law,” Alan said. (mpr)

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