- Small-scale fishers in Indonesia face declining catches as illegal trawlers deplete fish stocks in near-shore waters, violating exclusion zone regulations.
- Trawling, a destructive fishing method banned in certain areas, is widely practiced due to weak law enforcement, with local authorities citing budget constraints for lack of patrols.
- The impact on traditional fishers has been severe, with daily catches and incomes plummeting, leading to economic hardship, job changes and social issues, such as increased poverty and divorce rates.
- Fishers and advocacy groups are calling for stricter enforcement of fishing laws and government action to protect small-scale fishers’ rights and livelihoods.
TANJUNG LEIDONG, Indonesia — At around 5:30 a.m., after the tide starts to recede, Zulkifli Dalimunthe rushes to the shore a stone’s throw from his house, where he anchors his small wooden boat.
Working by himself, the 40-year-old fisher usually takes his vessel about 1-3 nautical miles (2-5.5 kilometers) out to sea from Tanjung Leidong, a coastal village in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, to cast his net for fish.
“I have been a fisher for almost 20 years, and now it’s getting harder,” the father of five tells Mongabay.
Lately, his catch has been shrinking as trawl vessels operate in his fishing grounds.
“How can I catch a lot of fish if the trawlers have already caught fish in our area?” he says. Sometimes he goes farther out to sea, up to 5 nmi (9 km), but the trawlers also operate there.
“We feel like we’re being colonized,” Zulkifli says.
In Indonesia, trawling — an industrial fishing method in which large nets are dragged through the water — has been banned, permitted, rebanned and repermitted several times since 1980. Under the latest rules, issued in 2023, trawlers can operate beyond a 12-nmi (22-km) near-shore zone, which is reserved for traditional and small-scale fishers.
Fishers like Zulkifli, however, say it’s an open secret that trawlers operate illegally within the exclusion zone. These include bottom trawlers, which are especially controversial for the way the huge nets, and the heavy gear that weighs them down, drag along the seafloor and ruin the habitat.
Local fishers say these boats are depleting the waters of the fish that sustain their livelihoods, with law enforcers nowhere to be found — a common issue in many parts of the world, including Cambodia, Madagascar, Tunisia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and elsewhere.
In Tanjung Leidong, Zulkifli says, trawlers often catch fish around 2 nmi (3.7 km) from the coast. “The farthest the trawlers operate is 5 miles from the coast,” he says.
On a recent trip with Zulkifli into the waters of the Malacca Strait, which divides Indonesia’s Sumatra Island from Malaysia in the east, Mongabay saw two pairs of trawl boats fishing 1.5 nmi (2.8 km) from the coast — deep inside the exclusive zone. (Trawlers often operate in pairs, dragging a net between them.)
“See for yourself how the trawlers catch fish in our fishing zone,” Zulkifli says on the deck of his boat, about the length of a minivan and only half as wide. “The nets reach the seabed, capturing all the fish — even the coral is caught in there.”
Zulkifli works about nine hours that day, pulling in one of the nets he’s laid out the previous morning, and selling his catch to collectors in the afternoon. Five kilograms (11 pounds) of crab, 2.3 kg (5 lbs) of sole and 3.4 kg (7.5 lbs) of white croaker earn him 220,000 rupiah, about $13.50.
“It used to be very easy to get 10 kilograms [22 lbs] of crab in a day, also threadfin and sole. Now the average is 3-5 kilograms [6.6-11 lbs] per day,” he says.
“How can I survive if the conditions continue like this?”
Syahril Lubis, 43, a fish collector in Tanjung Leidong who usually buys Zulkifli’s catch, tells Mongabay in the village that afternoon that he’s just bought 7 kg (15 lbs) of fish from three other fishers. In the past, he could usually get 30-50 kg (66-110 lbs) from just one fisher.
“Now the average is often 2, 3, 5 kilograms, at most 7 kilograms,” he says.
‘I know it’s wrong, but …’
Budi, not his real name, who works on a trawler, tells Mongabay the boats usually drop their nets just 150 meters (490 feet) from the edge of the mangrove forest and tow them in pairs for 1-3 nmi. A small trawler usually employs five workers; a bigger one, eight to 10.
Budi used to be a small-scale fisher like Zulkifli, but he went bankrupt and sold his boat because his catch was dwindling and he could no longer rely on it to support his family. With no other option, he began working as a trawler deckhand for a wage of 100,000 rupiah ($6) per day, usually in 12-hour shifts.
Working for the trawlers doesn’t sit well with him. “I know it’s wrong, but I’m just a worker,” he says. “I obey the boss’s orders, the shipowner.”
While out at sea, he often sees other fishers he knows personally.
“Sometimes I can’t bear to look at them, especially when the trawler plows through their nets,” he says. “Sometimes the fishers get angry, demanding compensation [for their damaged nets], but the shipowner doesn’t give adequate compensation.”
In one trip, Budi says, a trawler can catch 100-200 kg (220-440 lbs) of fish. Fish like anchovy and croaker are immediately boiled and dried on the ship, while crabs, threadfin, sole and shrimp are put on ice.
The catch is sold to traders at port, who then sell it on to exporters in Tanjung Balai, a Sumatran coastal city that serves as a conduit of goods to local markets and across the strait to Malaysia.
Almost all small trawlers catch fish in the traditional fishing zone to keep operational costs low, Budi says.
“One trip to sea costs at least 1.5 million to 2 million rupiah [$91-123] for fuel costs, ship workers and logistics,” he says. “If you go farther, up to 12 miles, the operational costs are higher, so you choose the nearby zone.”
Budgetary constraints
Mongabay also accompanied Syahril Peranginangin, the head of the Indonesian Traditional Fishers Union (KNTI) office in North Labuhanbatu district, which encompasses Tanjung Leidong, out to sea near Simandulang, another village in the area. Three more pairs of trawlers could be seen invading the fishing grounds of small fishers, all well within the exclusive zone.
Rustam Harahap, 50, is a fisher in Simandulang, where the poverty of those in his profession is more visible. He says he was perturbed by the trawlers’ activity. “In four months the wood of my boat has to be replaced. Where will I get the money to fix it?” he says.
He says his catch has decrease over the past two years. “It used to be easy to get 10 to 30 kilograms of fish — now it’s hard to catch even 2 kilograms,” he says. His average daily income is now less than 200,000 rupiah ($12), and sometimes dips below half that. To supplement his income, he raises chickens behind his house.
Rustam estimates there are currently 15 pairs of small trawlers and two larger ones operating in the exclusion zone outside his village. Besides the ones owned by businesspeople from Tanjung Leidong, they also come from the coastal cities of Belawan and Tanjung Balai, as well as Batubara district, he says.
In 2016, Rustam and dozens of other fishers set fire to three trawlers they blamed for depleting their waters. “If there were more, we would have burned them all,” he says.
The fishers had previously reported the trawlers to the police on three occasions, he says, but to no avail. Yet when the owner of the boats, a Tanjung Leidong businessman, filed a complaint against them, the police duly arrested 40 villagers and charged 17 of them, including Rustam.
They were jailed for 24 days. The charges were dismissed before trial, following mediation between the police, the government and the businessman. “I never knew what the results of the mediation were,” Rustam says.
After the case, the trawlers stopped for a while, but then slowly resumed their illegal operations as before. “There have never been any patrols here, so the trawlers are free to catch fish here all day, every day,” Rustam said.
Provincial government authorities acknowledge the lack of oversight, attributing it to a lack of funding.
“Through all of 2024, we’ve only had a budget for nine days of patrols,” Partogi Hasudungan Panggabean, head of supervision at the North Sumatra Marine Fisheries Service, tells Mongabay at his office. “We’ve proposed an increase in the budget, for an ideal of four days patrol a month, but it was not approved … In addition to the lack of budget, we also lack a team,” he added.
Aripai Tambunan, a member of the North Sumatra provincial parliament who sits on the commission overseeing fisheries issues, tells Mongabay the lack of law enforcement funds in 2024 is due to provincial government spending on the gubernatorial, district and mayoral elections that year.
He says his commission will push for an increase in the budget for coastal surveillance, given the importance of the issue.
“I think the budget for patrols at sea needs to be increased in the coming years, because this is very important, as President Prabowo [Subianto] said recently, to maintain marine resilience and protect small fishermen,” Aripai says by phone.
“If necessary, firm action should be taken, for example capsizing ships that are proven to be carrying out illegal fishing,” he adds.
Exodus
Today, the small fishers of Tanjung Leidong and Simandulang can only watch as trawlers ply their waters daily.
“We are helpless — we have no strength to fight back,” Rustam says.
More than 53% of Indonesia’s 3 million small fishers live in poverty, according to Miftahul Khausar, a researcher from the KNTI, the fishers’ union. He calls on the government to take firm action against illegal trawling. “Many fishermen have changed jobs,” he tells Mongabay. “In fact, the bad economy has triggered a high divorce rate among fishing families.”
Zulkifli says he hopes that under Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto, the government will be more serious about tackling illegal fishing that harms small fishers.
“I want a minister who cares about fishers’ rights,” Zulkifli says.
Syahril, the fish collector, says authorities need to do a better job of enforcing the law.
“From the top level, the regulation is good, but at the lower level, especially in coastal areas like North Labuhanbatu, the regulation is not implemented,” he says.
He says small fishers are now risking everything, including their lives, facing an uncertain climate. If the weather is bad at sea, they return home without a catch; this is now compounded by the trawlers and the government’s inability to stop them.
“It is very ironic: fishermen have a big role in providing fish food sources, but their lives are very far from prosperous,” Syahril says.
Banner image: Zulkifli Dalimunthe pulls in the net he cast the previous morning. In recent days, his catch has been getting smaller. Now he rarely gets high-value fish such as crabs, shrimp and large threadfin. Image by Tonggo Simangunsong for Mongabay.
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